Americans Seek More Control Over AI's Role in Daily Life, Surveys Reveal

Americans Want More Control Over the AI in Their Lives, Pew Survey Finds

Macy has been working for CNET for coming on 2 years. Prior to CNET, Macy received a North Carolina College Media Association award in sports writing. Artificial intelligence is everywhere now, powering song recommendations on Spotify, filling inboxes with AI-written emails, and showing up in classrooms and workplaces around the world. You may not feel like you get much say in where and how AI shows up in your life. You're not the only one. That's the takeaway from a Pew Research Center report published Wednesday, which finds that six out of 10 Americans (61%) want more control over how AI is used in their lives. More than half (57%) say they currently have "not too much" or "no control" at all in whether AI is used in their lives. Just 13% say they feel they have "a great deal" or "quite a bit" of control. It's becoming apparent that Americans may be receptive to AI playing some kind of role in our daily lives, but are resistant to AI involvement becoming unavoidable. Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source. The numbers highlight what Pew calls an "AI control gap," or a widening sense that the choice to opt out is slipping away. AI already powers weather forecasts, financial fraud detection and drug research, areas where Americans told Pew they're comfortable seeing it play a role. But in more personal aspects of life -- relationships, spirituality and creative thinking -- people overwhelmingly want to keep AI at arm's length. The survey shows Americans are twice as likely to rate AI's risks as "high" compared with its benefits, and 53% admit they're not confident they can tell the difference between AI-generated content and human-made work. Still, a large majority (76%) say it's "very important" to them to know the difference. Read also: Most People Use ChatGPT for Personal Life, Not Work, According to a New OpenAI Study The push for more control comes as AI quietly embeds itself in consumer devices and online platforms. From Apple's latest "AI-powered" iPhones to Google search results summarized by chatbots, Americans are bumping into AI even when they don't seek it out. And unlike toggles for ad tracking or location services, tools to manage when AI is used are far less visible. That lack of agency fuels growing skepticism over AI. For instance, half of Americans say they're more concerned than excited about AI's role in daily life, which is 13 percentage points higher than it was in 2021, when AI use was a mere fraction of what it is today. Pew's findings echo broader anxieties surrounding the prevalence and implementation of AI tools. Lawmakers are weighing rules around transparency, safety and consent, while AI companies race to normalize AI in everything from education to health care to the devices you carry with you everywhere. But the Pew survey findings suggest that if companies want to build public trust, they'll need to give people clearer off switches and choices about when AI is adopted, so that AI use feels like a choice rather than an inevitability.

Americans want AI to stay out of their personal lives

A new study from Pew suggests that Americans aren't particularly optimistic about AI. A full 50 percent of respondents said they were more concerned than excited about the use of AI in their daily lives. That's down ever so slightly from 52 percent in 2023, but it's up significantly from 37 percent in 2021. Americans expressed a number of concerns about AI, chief among them that it will negatively impact our ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships with other people. Just 18 percent believed that AI should play any role at all in dating and matchmaking, with just 3 percent being comfortable with it playing a "big role." The theme in general was that Americans are okay with AI performing analysis on large data to, say, predict the weather, or find cures for disease, but they wanted it to stay out of their personal lives. Two-thirds of people want it to stay out of their love lives entirely, and 73 percent believe it has no place advising people on their religious beliefs. Another concern was the spread of misinformation. 18 percent of respondents rated misinformation as their number one concern, behind only its negative impact on human abilities and connections. Americans felt that it was very important to be able to identify AI-generated work, but 53 percent said they were not confident in their ability to do so. Interestingly, in a reversal of what you'd expect with the emergence of new technologies, it's actually younger Americans who are more concerned. 57 percent of those under 30 said they were extremely concerned that AI would erode people's abilities, while only 46 percent of those over 65 said the same. Broadly, though, it's clear that Americans are taking a skeptical eye towards AI. 61 percent said they wanted more control over how AI is used in their daily lives. Unfortunately, 57 percent believe they have little or no control over that.

US Adults Worry AI Will Make Us Worse at Being Human, New Survey Says

There are widespread fears that artificial intelligence will harm our social and emotional intelligence, empathy and sense of individual agency by 2035, according to a new survey published Wednesday by Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center. The national survey asked 1,005 US adults to rate how they think AI will impact human capacities and behaviors, including moral judgment, self-identity and confidence. In every area, respondents believed the effect of AI tools and systems over the next decade would be more negative than positive. In terms of the bigger picture, the researchers found that US adults expected AI to have a mixed impact on "the essence of being human" over the coming decade. Two in five (41%) said AI will provide as much good as it will harm, with 25% believing AI changes will be mostly for the worse. Only 9% said AI will change humanity for the better. "The grand narratives about AI have gone in both directions," said Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center and one of the report's authors. For as many stories as there are about AI's outstanding abilities, many more show how it can hurt people. The respondents' mixed views on the technology could reflect that. "They do have a sense of these warring narratives," Rainie told CNET in an interview. And the stories are everywhere, as AI grows to play a bigger role in education, workplaces and health care. Tech companies are spending billions of dollars to develop the most advanced AI. Google has integrated its Gemini AI into every part of its business, and ChatGPT's daily active users reached a record high of 700 million in August. As AI tools and systems become more capable and integrated into our lives, it's important to evaluate their impact on how we think, act and do things. Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source. The same survey questions were given to a group of tech pioneers, builders and analysts earlier this year, with some observable differences in how those experts perceive AI's impact on humanness compared to the public. In general, the experts were less pessimistic about AI's impact on human traits, whereas the public reported more concerns about AI harming our intelligence and cognitive abilities, such as the ability to think critically, make decisions and solve problems. Interest in how AI affects our brain's learning processes is not new. An MIT study in July found significant differences in brain activity between people writing using AI versus those who don't. Those who used AI reported a "superficial fluency" but didn't retain a deep understanding or sense of ownership over their knowledge. The study renewed uneasiness over the role AI could play in education and learning. A key theme in recent studies is the concern that people could increasingly delegate important thought processes, like decision-making and problem-solving, to AI. Advances in AI technology are getting better at handling work tasks, and the rise of agentic AI makes it easier for chatbots to complete tasks independently. These semi-autonomous tools can be more efficient than humans in some cases. However, AI isn't foolproof and can hallucinate or make up false information, so letting it take the reins on important decisions can have negative consequences. Another massive concern is the impact of AI on its users' mental health. Individual well-being has been a point of conversation, as more examples emerge of how AI is an inadequate replacement for therapists. Teenagers and children are particularly vulnerable, with more than a few high-profile cases of AI enabling self-harm and suicide. The issue has drawn the attention of Congress and advocacy groups, leading them to inspect the effectiveness of AI guardrails to prevent misuse and abuse.

Americans don't want to turn everything over to AI

Why it matters: Americans are starting to set boundaries for what they want to turn over to AI -- and what they don't. By the numbers: Americans see AI as a way to boost efficiency, but they remain wary of handing over decisions tied to values, relationships or democracy, Pew found. * 74% of Pew respondents said AI should play a role in weather forecasting and 70% said it should help with detecting financial crime. The other side: 66% said AI should not judge whether two people could fall in love. * 60% oppose AI having a role in making decisions about how to govern the country. The big picture: Since 2021, Pew has been asking participants how they feel about the increased use of AI in daily life. * In 2023, 2024 and 2025, about half of Americans said they were more concerned than excited about it. * That's up from 2021 and 2022 -- before the launch of ChatGPT -- when only 37 and 38 percent said they were more concerned than excited. * Only a quarter of Americans now say the benefits of AI are "high" or "very high." Of that 25%, "efficiency gains" was the most commonly cited benefit. Between the lines: Participants in the study also said AI will weaken core human skills. * 53% of Americans believe AI will erode people's creativity. * 50% say it will hurt users' ability to form meaningful relationships. Stunning stat: Although Americans told Pew they want to put boundaries on AI's role in our lives, more than half said they're "not at all" confident or "not too confident" they can detect whether content was created by a human or a bot. * Most Americans say it's "extremely" or "very important" to be able to determine if content is AI-generated. The intrigue: Chatbot interfaces are so open-ended that users who turn to the tools for research may be drawn into using them for more personal, creative or emotional questions. * Anthropic studied how people use its Claude chatbot and found that "in longer conversations, counseling or coaching conversations occasionally morph into companionship -- despite that not being the original reason someone reached out," per a report released in June. What they're saying: Physicians and educators tell Axios that there are real risks in inviting chatbots deep into our personal, creative and religious lives. * AI is "going to fundamentally change us as a human species," pediatric physician Dana Suskind told Axios in a July interview. "I think we need to be incredibly intentional, because we may end up in a place that we never imagined." * It's "not just writing, but reading too, that's being affected so profoundly by these technologies," says Bruce Holsinger, English professor at University of Virginia and author of "Culpability," a novel about a family's struggles with the impact of AI. * Instead of "slowing down and thinking and breaking apart a sentence for ourselves... you just pop a PDF in and say, 'Tell me the main points. What are the takeaways?'" Holsinger told Axios in an interview last month. State of play: Americans are cautiously experimenting with AI, but the Pew data mirrors a growing skepticism of chatbots used for creative pursuits, therapy and intimate companionship, especially when it comes to teens and children.