A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds 73% of Americans worry AI companies have not gone far enough to prevent serious social harm, with negative views of AI at a survey high and a majority favoring a development slowdown.
Three-quarters of Americans — 73% — worry that AI companies have not gone far enough to prevent artificial intelligence from causing serious harm to society, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday.
The four-day online poll of 1,277 US adults, which concluded Sunday and carries a margin of error of 3 percentage points, found that 39% think AI is having a negative impact on society, up from 36% last month and the highest share since Reuters/Ipsos began asking the question in March. Only 11% called the technology a positive thing.
Most respondents said federal officials should play a major role in setting safety standards, reflecting low confidence in industry self-regulation. Separately, 55% said slowing AI development would be a good thing, compared with 13% who said it would be bad. Asked to weigh priorities, 73% said it was more important for the United States to ensure AI is developed safely and responsibly than to stay ahead of the rest of the world; 23% put global leadership first.
Sixty-nine percent said they had followed news that major AI companies were calling for a slowdown plus greater oversight. Reuters linked the mood to recent disclosures about agent cybersecurity incidents and public quits and warnings from researchers inside frontier labs, as well as midterm pressure over data-center buildouts.
This brief covers the Tuesday Reuters/Ipsos poll release. It is not a rewrite of the Buist antitrust slowdown suit or company slowdown essays.