AI and the Human Future

Executive Summary

Millions of Americans now use AI tools to answer questions, solve problems, learn new skills, and complete everyday tasks. For many, AI has already become another part of daily life, much like smartphones or search engines before it. Yet while adoption is accelerating, acceptance is proving more complicated.

People are neither embracing AI unconditionally nor rejecting it outright. Instead, they are actively negotiating what role they want it to play in their lives. They see real benefits in AI, particularly its ability to help people learn, expand access to knowledge, and save time. At the same time, they worry about misinformation, privacy, economic disruption, and the erosion of critical thinking. Most revealingly, three-quarters believe they personally know when it is appropriate to use AI, yet only about one-third express similar confidence that other people do. AI is already here; Americans are still deciding where it belongs.

One boundary that emerges centers on human connection. Many may be willing to talk with AI, but they are reluctant to treat it as a substitute for other people. When facing a difficult time, they overwhelmingly prefer support from another person rather than an AI chatbot, and they are more likely to believe AI could increase isolation than reduce loneliness. As machines become better at simulating conversation and companionship, people continue to place particular value on relationships rooted in genuine human care and connection.

A similar tension appears around human cognition. People welcome AI when it helps people learn, create, and work, but become more cautious when it begins doing the thinking for them. They favor preserving human creativity and interaction in workplaces over maximizing AI-driven efficiency and want schools to help students learn without becoming overly dependent on AI. Across work and education, the pattern is remarkably consistent: AI can support human effort, but people do not want to outsource judgment, creativity, or the learning process itself.

As AI moves from individual lives into communities, the question shifts from what the technology can do to who decides how it changes the places people call home. Americans want local residents to have a substantive voice in decisions about AI infrastructure, believe technology companies should bear much of the cost associated with its energy and resource demands, and prioritize community support and environmental impacts over a race to build as quickly as possible. These findings do not suggest a wholesale rejection of technological progress. Instead, they reflect a belief that the people living with the consequences of technological change should retain agency over how that change happens.

That concern becomes most pronounced when AI intersects with democracy and public life. Americans worry that AI could make it harder to know what is true during elections, express skepticism about AI-generated campaign materials and government decision-making, and overwhelmingly believe important public decisions should continue to have a human making the final call. Yet they are not opposed to AI playing a civic role: many are interested in using it themselves to better understand public issues and government. Here again, the distinction is between AI that expands people's capacity to participate and AI that assumes authority on their behalf. As technology becomes more capable, Americans still want democratic responsibility and accountability to rest with people.

These findings reveal something larger about how people are responding to AI. When respondents were asked which parts of being human would matter most as technology becomes more advanced, human connection and thinking rose above everything else. Others named individuality and free will, creativity and imagination, and morality and ethics. Their answers suggest that the national conversation about artificial intelligence is becoming about more than adoption, innovation, or technological capability.

In other words, Americans are not simply deciding what they think about AI. They are deciding what they believe should remain fundamentally human: how we connect, how we think and create, how we shape our communities, and how we govern ourselves.