On September 30, 2026, Murmuration brought together researchers, organizers, journalists, and civic leaders in Boston for More Human: Life, Democracy, and Connection in the Age of AI, an exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing the ways we learn, connect, organize, and participate in civic life. Across a series of lightning talks, speakers Sarah Stamper, Abby Binder, Danielle Allen, and Susan Page examined AI’s implications for human connection, trust, learning, and democracy. Grounded in Murmuration’s research supported by the Walton Family Foundation, AI and the Human Future: Americans’ Views on Artificial Intelligence Across Life, Society, and Democracy, the conversations challenged us to look beyond what technology can do and consider what we want it to help us build—and how we can keep people, relationships, and communities at the center of our future.
About Sarah Stamper
Sarah Stamper has been a neuroscientist for over 15 years, specializing in the quantitative analysis of behavior and systems. At Murmuration, a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services to help communities build and activate the power to transform America, Sarah leads a team of data and scientific experts building cutting-edge data and insights that empower partners to better understand, engage, and mobilize their communities. She also authors State of Us, a series that explores what America is feeling, thinking, and moving toward together, for Murmuration’s Substack. Before joining Murmuration, she led product and data science at Helm, a civic technology company. She also previously led research at the Art & Science Group, providing valuable data and insights to K-12 institutions, higher education, and nonprofit organizations, shaping their approaches to community engagement and strategic planning.
Continue reading for the full transcript
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Good evening. I'm Sarah Stamper. I'm the Chief Research Officer at Murmuration, and I have the best job at Murmuration because when we get to talk to 3,000 Americans every day about their lives, their communities, and how things are changing, I get to hear it first.
And so, as you can imagine, a lot of what we've started hearing when we ask people, "What's keeping you up at night? What are you talking about around your kitchen table?" has been AI and the impact that folks think it has on their lives, their communities, and the future that they want to shape together.
So I'm absolutely delighted to be here to give you a sneak peek of our report that is coming out on October 8th. So, over the last 12 years, Murmuration has built a really large-scale civic listening infrastructure. And every day, we have individuals who are in our in-house survey panel, and that means that we can talk to the same people over and over and over again, and we can understand how their lives change, what's new, and what impact the issues of the day are having on them and their lives.
We also pick an extra 500 random people, through Civic Pulse, to send them a series of open-ended questions. And all of this means that so far this year, we've talked to more than 750,000 people about what's going on and what they need in their lives to thrive. That led us to do a deep dive into AI, and we asked not only about adoption and trust and tried to understand the technology element of it, but we also ask about community and connection and cognition and our democracy, and ultimately, how people think this is going to affect the future. And so we're gonna show you highlights today from the 7,000 or so folks who who answered these specific questions.
Forty-five percent of people are using AI when they need to use it and when they think AI is helpful, and they envision real benefits. They see benefits for helping people learn new things, for expanding access to knowledge, for doing things more efficiently and helping people create. But sitting alongside that opportunity and the potential benefits is real concern, and in particular, a lack of confidence that other people using AI actually know how to do it and should be using it.
I think that's a really interesting finding, right? It feels very American that we trust ourselves to use it, but not everybody else. There's concerns about misinformation and fake content, about loss of privacy and surveillance, concerns about job loss, and also identity and other kinds of fraud.
So people are skeptical, right? And there's more belief that AI is going to have a negative impact on the world, and that's particularly pronounced for young people. There is also a big gender gap amongst that population. There is a 20-point difference between Gen Z (under-30) women and men on whether AI will have a positive or negative impact on the world.
But, as Emma mentioned, we're not in a moment where we don't have a choice. Here's how someone in Oklahoma talked about that. They said, "Our freedom to choose is to decide how dependent we are on technology." And so at this moment, what are the choices that people want to make? And what we found overwhelming, no matter how we tried to ask the question, no matter what element of AI we were talking about, whether we were talking about AI in your lives, AI in the schools, AI in communities, we found that people are already drawing lines around what they want to remain more human.
The first is connection. So as AI becomes more capable, people are placing greater emphasis on the parts of life that still feel distinctly human. And so that means that the overwhelming majority of us still prefer to talk to another person when they're having a difficult time, and that we believe it's important to preserve opportunities for human creativity and interaction. This is what we heard from someone in New Mexico: "AI can only simulate emotion, empathy, caring, or concern. It will never truly replace human interaction, only supplement."
The second element where we found people really wanting to draw lines and carve out something to remain more human was community. We found that 92% of people believe local residents should have the most say when the infrastructure required to continue supporting AI is being built in their communities. We actually found more hesitation around how fast the United States should be expanding AI, with almost half of Americans saying it should only expand if there is community buy-in and support, and if all of the environmental concerns are addressed. Here is a young woman from California who says, "Data centers should be kept far from local communities, especially those who heavily oppose it. In the end, the impact heavily outweighs any benefits."
And then finally, the higher the stakes, the more strongly people want human judgment to remain in control. We found that 81% of people are now concerned that AI will make it harder to tell what is real and true in an election. Seventy-five percent of people think that even if AI is used, humans, particularly in government and public decisions, should have the final say. Fifty-four percent of people think that it is unacceptable for political campaigns to use AI materials. And we found only 42% of people would have confidence in the decision of a local government official if that recommendation had come from AI. So to put a bow on that, here is a young woman in Arizona who said, "I think being able to come to conclusions on your own without influence from AI platforms is important, especially when it's about world issues such as politics and environmental concerns."
At the heart of everything we heard over and over and over again was that Americans are asking for a future in which human agency, human connection, and human judgment remain at the center.