More People Are Freaked Out by AI Than Excited About It

Can you easily discern six ways that artificial intelligence (AI) is used around you every day? We don't mean interacting with a generative AI that creates pictures or text for you, such as Dall-E or ChatGPT, but the more subtle AI usage you'll encounter. If so, go take this quiz on AI awareness, then come back and keep reading.

Most people get from three to five of those questions right, according to Pew Research Center, the creator of the quiz. It was used in a survey of 11,004 US adults (part of Pew’s American Trends Panel) back in December—well before ChatGPT took over tech news.

The most obvious AI use for most respondents was in fitness trackers, followed by the new wave of chatbots that are answering customer questions online and in text messages.

The higher the education level, or the higher the household income, the better chance that a person would be able to ID an AI.

Higher Ed/inc means greater awareness of AI

Pew also found that the more someone uses the internet, the more likely they are to recognize an AI—among people who use the internet less than once a day, 65% could identify just two or fewer AI uses in the six-question quiz and just 6% nailed all six answers. The higher their level of awareness of AI, the more people believe they interact with an AI regularly.

In all, about a quarter of US adults say they have heard a lota lot about AI. Only 15% said they’d heard nothing at all. Those numbers also fluctuate depending on gender (more men have heard a lot about AI than women), as well as on race, age, income, education, and political leanings.

No discussion of AI should take place without thinking about its ethical ramifications, which includes surveying people about AI. Pew asked about AI's pitfalls and found that 38% of respondents are more concerned than excited; only 15% are more excited than concerned (46% felt both emotions equally). The stronger the knowledge of AI, the more excited people are.

What may surprise you, considering all the AI news lately, is that Pew says that people's outlook on the technology hasn’t changed much since last year’s version of this survey.

For more, read the full report at Pew, and take a look at its extended report on AI in the healthcare field—most of us are uncomfortable with the thought of a provider relying on AI.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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