About 68% of Americans who use AI every day are worried about it, according to a Gallup survey commissioned by Microsoft, and concern runs even higher among people who use the technology less frequently. The finding cuts against a common industry assumption that adoption tracks with enthusiasm. Overall, 74% of Americans reported feelings of worry about AI, and only 36% expect it to mostly help the country.
The study polled roughly 1,000 people in each of 37 countries between April and July, with results eventually planned across 140 countries. India, Australia, and Malaysia are not yet in the reported cohort. The current sample already covers most of the world's largest AI markets outside South Asia, and it puts the United States at the anxious end of the international spectrum.
Canada tracks closely with the American pattern. Some 29% of Canadians surveyed reported using AI daily, and more than half of those daily users expressed concerns about the technology's impact. Broader awareness produces a similar picture: 64% of Canadians aware of AI said it worried them. Western wealth and Western worry appear to move together in the data.
Key facts
- 0168% of Americans who use AI every day say they are worried about it, according to a new Gallup survey commissioned by Microsoft.
- 02Gallup polled about 1,000 people in each of 37 countries between April and July, with the project set to eventually span 140 countries.
- 0374% of Americans reported feelings of worry about AI, and only 36% expect the technology to mostly help the country.
- 04Singapore had the highest daily-use rate at 46%, with 77% expecting AI to help the country and 89% reporting positive emotions.
- 05Only 36% of people surveyed globally said they trust AI's results a lot; in the US, just 45% of daily users expressed that confidence.
The picture inverts in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Singapore had the highest share of daily users at 46%, with more than 80% of AI-aware respondents expecting the technology to improve their everyday lives and 77% expecting it to help the country. In China, 35% of people report using AI daily and most expect it to help the country. Israel showed a comparable pattern of high use and high optimism.
Optimism does not translate cleanly into trust in AI's output. Across the full sample, only 36% of respondents said they trust AI's results a lot. Daily users are generally more trusting, especially in high-adoption markets like Singapore, Israel, and China, but in the United States just 45% of daily users expressed that level of confidence. The rest use it anyway.
“One of the clearest findings is that attitudes toward AI are multidimensional. People can be curious about AI, expect it to be beneficial and use it frequently while still being worried about it.”— Pablo Diego-Rosell, Senior scientist at Gallup
Positive emotions still outweigh negative ones in aggregate. In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed, people mostly reported feeling curious about AI, and only about 32% said they felt worried. Positive sentiment peaked in China at 90%, Singapore at 89%, and Kenya at 87%. Curiosity, in other words, is the median global response, and worry is a Western concentration.
Sentiment inside China may not have held steady since the survey closed in July. Chen Yixin, head of China's Ministry of State Security, recently framed AI as a national-security question at the state level. US president Donald Trump and Chinese premier Xi Jinping are set to discuss AI safety when they meet on Thursday, elevating the topic from consumer sentiment to bilateral agenda.
“AI will have "a systemic impact on the political and security environment," and could threaten China's "political security, institutional security, and ideological security."”— Chen Yixin, Head of China's Ministry of State Security
The gap between adoption and comfort has a clear industry backdrop. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI will wipe out jobs en masse, tech companies have cut hundreds of thousands of roles while redirecting spend to AI infrastructure, and entry-level openings are shrinking in categories where models are getting good fastest. The survey captures how those signals are landing with people who use the tools every day.
The report's most useful contribution is treating attitudes as multidimensional rather than binary. A daily ChatGPT user in Ohio can find the tool genuinely useful, expect it to matter for the economy, and still want harder rules on how it is deployed in hiring, healthcare, or schools. Those positions are not contradictions in the Gallup data; they are the modal position.
The commercial implication for AI companies is that user growth is no longer a proxy for political tailwind. Adoption in the United States is high and rising, but so is the appetite for regulation, disclosure requirements, and limits on AI's use in consequential decisions. Vendors selling into enterprises with US-heavy customer bases should plan for a market that keeps buying the product while pushing lawmakers to constrain it — and price the resulting compliance load into their roadmaps.
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