Anthropic has released the findings of its first representative survey series, the Anthropic Public Record, offering one of the most comprehensive looks yet at how Americans actually feel about artificial intelligence. Conducted online by YouGov between November and December 2025, the poll captured responses from 51,993 Americans aged 16 and older across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Unlike typical AI surveys that poll chatbot users, this one targeted the general public, and the results reveal a deeply ambivalent nation — hopeful about what AI could cure, but worried about what it might cost.
Curing Disease Tops American Hopes for AI
When asked to name their three biggest hopes for AI, nearly half of respondents — 48 percent — chose curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. Helping people with disabilities ranked second at 36 percent. Technological progress and making everyday life easier tied at 23 percent each. The least popular hope was AI as a therapist or cure for loneliness, a use case that has been widely discussed as a major opportunity but has also caused real harm.
Job Loss, Cognitive Dependency, and Misinformation Dominate Fears
The survey shows that Americans are far more worried about tangible, human-scale risks than about science-fiction scenarios. A full 64 percent of respondents fear that AI will cost them their jobs. That concern rises with education level and ranks first in every single state. Fear of cognitive dependency — the loss of the ability to think independently — comes in second at 56 percent. Misinformation ranks third at 52 percent. Only 15 percent of Americans trust AI companies to make the right decisions about how the technology is built and deployed.
Each of these fears has roots in earlier technologies, including automation, smartphones, and social media. Americans are far more concerned about humans misusing AI than about the “AI goes rogue” scenario that parts of the AI industry love to debate.
Cognitive Dependency: Widely Feared, Rarely Felt
The second-biggest fear — cognitive dependency — turns out to be largely theoretical for most people. Of the 56 percent who worry about it, only about one in five say they would actually struggle if AI disappeared tomorrow. Meanwhile, among the 44 percent who are not worried, roughly a third would genuinely feel the disruption. The fear is most acute in knowledge- and creativity-heavy fields. Workers in arts and design and in education report the highest levels of concern, at 61 percent. Educators report observing cognitive atrophy in their students 2.5 to 3 times more often than the average respondent. Construction workers worry least, at 39 percent.
Most Americans Do Not Want AI Doing Their Job
About 75 percent of respondents rate AI at least as good as humans at research. Yet most still do not want it anywhere near their own work. On most tasks, a majority of Americans did not want AI involved in their jobs, and even on the tasks they rated AI most capable of — such as research and data analysis — nearly half said they want no AI involvement in their own work. Acceptance does track with perceived ability. The better people think AI is at a given task, the more willing they are to let it help. And daily AI users at work are much less worried about job loss — 54 percent — than people who do not use AI at all, at 70 percent. Hands-on experience seems to take the edge off the fear, likely because it shows both where AI can help and where it falls short.
What This Means for Professionals and Developers
The survey data makes one thing clear: resistance to AI in the workplace is not simply about Luddism or lack of exposure. It is a rational response grounded in real concerns about economic displacement and cognitive erosion. For professionals building or deploying AI tools, the implication is that trust must be earned through transparency, reliability, and demonstrated respect for human judgment. The data also suggests that direct experience with AI reduces fear — but only when that experience includes honest exposure to the technology’s limitations, not just its capabilities.
Why This Survey Matters Now
This is the first representative survey of its scale focused on the general public rather than on AI users. It provides a baseline for understanding how attitudes shift as AI becomes more integrated into daily life. For anyone working in AI policy, product development, or enterprise deployment, the message is straightforward: the public is not hostile to AI, but they are deeply skeptical of those building it, and they want a say in how it is used.
For readers who want to engage directly with the data, the full Anthropic Public Record dataset is available through Anthropic’s research portal. Reviewing the state-by-state breakdowns and demographic splits can provide a more granular picture of how these attitudes vary across the country — and where the biggest gaps between hope and fear remain.
