Most Americans worry AI will permanently displace workers, poll finds

In fact, 71% are afraid that artificial intelligence will cause permanent job loss, according to a new poll by Reuters and Ipsos. The poll surveyed 4,446 U.S. adults nationwide between August 13 and 18. Respondents said they were concerned that “too many people will lose their jobs” because of AI.

Additionally, 47% of respondents said that AI is bad for humanity, 58% said that AI could risk the future of mankind, and 67% said that AI will have uncontrollable consequences.

These fears reflect a turning point in the U.S. job market. Job cuts are hitting knowledge workers especially hard, from entry-level to management positions. We’ve seen large waves of layoffs at companies such as Microsoft $MSFT, Duolingo, and Walmart $WMT. At the same time, many companies have spent big on AI. At Duolingo, CEO Luis von Ahn announced an initiative in April to make the language-learning app “AI-first.”

Last month, the U.S. job market had its weakest stretch in years. Payrolls grew by a meager 73,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, far below the roughly 110,000 anticipated. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate edged up to 4.2% (the highest level since October 2021), and the overall workforce shrunk, showing that joblessness rose even as fewer people were seeking work.

In July, Microsoft Research published a paper that measured the jobs with least and greatest resistance to AI replacement. Researchers analyzed 200,000 anonymous and privacy-scrubbed conversations between U.S. users and Microsoft’s Bing Copilot, the company's premier generative AI tool, to find the most common work activities for which people seek AI assistance.

— Shannon Caroll and Catherine Baab contributed to this article.