Americans fear AI permanently displacing workers: Report
The six-day poll, which concluded on Monday, showed 71% of respondents said they were concerned that AI will be "putting too many people out of work permanently." The new technology burst into the national conversation in late 2022 when OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot launched and became the fastest-growing application of all time, with tech heavyweights like Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Google owner Alphabet and Microsoft offering their own AI products.
While at present there are few signs of mass unemployment (the U.S. jobless rate was just 4.2% in July) artificial intelligence is stirring concerns as it reshapes jobs, industries and day-to-day life.
Some 77% of respondents to the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they worried the technology could be used to stir up political chaos, a sign of unease over the now-common use of AI technology to create realistic videos of imaginary events. President Donald Trump last month posted on social media an AI-generated video of former U.S. Democratic president Barack Obama being arrested, an event that never happened.
Americans are also leery about military applications for AI, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. Some 48% of respondents said the government should never use AI to determine the target of a military strike, compared with 24% who said the government should allow that sort of use of the technology.
Another 28% said they were not sure. The general enthusiasm for AI shown by many people and companies has fueled further investments, such as Foxconn and SoftBank's planned data centre equipment factory in Ohio. It has also upended national security policies as the United States and China vie for AI dominance.
More than half of Americans, some 61%, said they were concerned about the amount of electricity needed to power the fast-growing technology.
Google said earlier this month it had signed agreements with two U.S. electric utilities to reduce its AI data centre power consumption during times of surging demand on the grid, as energy-intensive AI use outpaces power supplies. The new technology has also come under criticism for applications that have let AI bots hold romantic conversations with children, generate false medical information and help people make racist arguments.
Two-thirds of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they worried that people would ditch relationships with other people in favour of AI companions.
People were split on whether AI technology will improve education. Some 36% of respondents thought it would help, while 40% disagreed and the rest were not sure.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey gathered responses online from 4,446 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Economic Times
2 minutes ago
- Economic Times
The boom in American-born employees isn't real. Here's why
Agencies Something remarkable has been going on lately with the population estimates maintained by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. They show a decline of 1.9 million in the foreign-born working-age population in the US (defined here as ages 16 through 64) since March and an increase of 3.3 million in the native-born working-age population since December. The foreign-born working-age population may well be shrinking. The flow of illegal immigration across the Mexican border slowed sharply last year and has ground almost to a halt this year, and since January the Trump administration has been narrowing legal immigration channels, canceling temporary legal immigration programs and increasing the pace of deportations for those here illegally. It's extremely unlikely that 1.9 million people ages 16 through 64 have left the country since March, but the direction at least could be correct. Such an increase in the native-born working-age population, on the other hand, is impossible. Changes in that population are quite easy to predict, given that we know how many people were born in the US 16 to 64 years ago and how many have died since — and, while there admittedly aren't great recent statistics on this, the number of native-born Americans who leave the country permanently is most likely small. Just going by births, the 16-to-64 US population is due for six consecutive years of declines from this year through 2030. All this is context for understanding the 2.5 million job increase in native-born employment since December that the BLS is also reporting. Given that it came after a year of foreign-born workers seemingly driving all US employment gains, it is understandably being greeted by Trump administration officials (and would-be Trump BLS chief E.J. Antoni) as evidence of a remarkable turnaround wrought by Trump's economic policies. As you can probably already tell from the population data I've cited, it's not that. But what is it, exactly? The big changes in population and employment are artifacts of how the BLS estimates population for the purposes of calculating the labor-force statistics it derives from the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey, the so-called household survey. The priority is generating accurate percentage indicators such as the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate and employment-population ratio, not reliable time series of the levels of employment or establishment survey — aka Current Employment Statistics — that is the other contributor to the monthly BLS employment report is aimed at generating accurate estimates of the level of nonfarm payroll employment and is revised repeatedly as late responses come in and then a backup set of statistics based on state unemployment insurance records is released. A big downward revision in past months' payroll jobs totals in the employment report released early this month led Trump to fire the director of the BLS and nominate Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist with a reputation for sloppy, partisan work, as the agency's new employment indicators from the household survey aren't subsequently revised, but every January the BLS does adjust its population numbers to align them with the latest population estimates from the Census Bureau. This December, the Census Bureau revised its national population estimates upward to better reflect the big wave in immigration from mid-2021 to mid-2024, estimating net immigration of 2.8 million people from mid-2023 to mid-2024, and increasing its estimate of 2021-2023 net immigration from 2.1 million to 4 million. This and other changes in the 2024 population estimates led the BLS to report a 3 million increase from December to January in the 16-and-older civilian, noninstitutional US population, with the gains split roughly evenly between native-born and foreign-born. Again, this wasn't because anybody at BLS thought the US 16-and-older population actually grew that much from December to January, just that the new population estimates were higher than the previous ones, and it doesn't revise earlier estimates. (For a more detailed explanation, I recommend this piece by Jed Kolko, who as undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs in the Biden administration oversaw the Census Bureau.) The Census Bureau also makes forward-looking monthly population estimates once a year based on anticipated deaths, 16th birthdays and immigration trends, which the BLS uses to produce its monthly population totals until the next annual update. The monthly BLS estimates of changes in the native-born and foreign-born population and workforce, though, are based on what people say in the monthly household surveys. Since Donald Trump became president, foreign-born residents of the US appear to have become much less likely to respond to the surveys or tell survey takers they weren't born in the US. Because the overall monthly population numbers are on autopilot, this has resulted in declining foreign-born population and employment numbers and increasing native-born native-born workers were in fact making big employment gains now, these would show up in their ratio of employment to population, which is best measured for so-called prime-age workers 25 to 54 so as not to be skewed by the aging of the population. Prime-age employment-to-population numbers for native- and foreign-born workers are not available in seasonally adjusted form and thus jump around a lot from month to month, so I've taken annual averages, which indicate that both native-born and foreign-born employment rates are flat and possibly beginning to trend downward. President Trump's immigration crackdown is to some extent based on the theory that it will improve job prospects for native-born workers by removing foreign-born competitors. Because immigration is the only possible source of growth in the US working-age population for the rest of this decade, though, stopping or reversing its flow will also make it hard to achieve much of any economic growth. So far, in any case, the net result for native-born workers appears to be no improvement at all. (Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates) Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Swiggy, Tencent backer Prosus gets Rajinikanth fan to script India AI play India's F&O boom puts spotlight on retail protection through education Can new shipping laws bury the ghost of British legacy? As big fat Indian wedding slims to budget, Manyavar loses lustre Stock Radar: Bajaj Auto showing signs of reversal after falling over 30% from highs; medium term should 'buy the dip' F&O Radar | Deploy Bull Call Ladder in JSW Steel stock to benefit from bullish outlook Time for risk-takers to come out of hibernation? 5 mid-cap stocks from different sectors with an upside potential of up to 27% Buy, Sell or Hold: Motilal Oswal initiates coverage on JSW Cement; Emkay Global sees over 30% upside in Gravita India
Economic Times
4 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Chinese troops swelter through rehearsal for major military parade
Reuters People walk by paramilitary police officers standing guard ahead of a rehearsal for a military parade, which marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, at Wangfujing street in Beijing, China August 16, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Rows of neatly dressed soldiers marched in unison to shouted instructions at a training ground in humid Beijing on Wednesday, as China prepares to unveil new domestically produced military hardware at a parade next month. President Xi Jinping will inspect troops in the capital's Tiananmen Square at the event to mark 80 years since the end of World War II, with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and other world leaders expected to attend. Pin-straight lines of men and women clutching guns packed the pavement at a rehearsal on a military training square under the hot sun in southeast Beijing on in their twenties stared sternly as sweat collected on their faces and soaked through their Ranran, an army guard, said she was "extremely proud" to participate in the parade on September 3. "China often uses the term 'steel-gun rose' to describe its female soldiers," she said. "The combination of roses and guns, we really like it."Troops wearing white, green and navy blue uniforms with Chinese flags on their chests started and stopped to the piercing voices of the officers directing the that is "strict, difficult and practical" has always been the army's tradition, said Lan Yu, a second-level staff had not lasted long, he said, because parade training was part of their daily schedule.- New hardware -Millions of Chinese people were killed during a prolonged war with imperial Japan in the 1930s and 40s, which became part of a global conflict following Tokyo's attack on Pearl Harbor in ruling Communist Party has held a series of blockbuster events in recent years to commemorate its wartime resistance. China's military will showcase its latest equipment on September 3, "reflecting the evolution of modern warfare", Major General Wu Zeke, an official at China's military commission, told a news briefing on Wednesday. "All of the weapons and equipment taking part in this review were selected from domestically produced, currently active main battle systems, with a significant proportion being newly unveiled equipment," Wu said. These will include strategic heavy weapons and hypersonic precision systems, as well as unmanned and counter-unmanned equipment making their public debut, he parade, which will last around 70 minutes, will "fully showcase our military's powerful capability to prevail in modern war", Wu said. It will also feature ground troops marching in formation, armoured columns, aerial echelons and other high-tech fighting Kremlin has confirmed that Putin will attend, and Chinese officials said other world leaders were also expected at the raised its defence spending for 2025 by 7.2 percent in increase comes as Beijing's armed forces undergo rapid modernisation and eye deepening strategic competition with the United has the world's second-largest military budget but lags well behind the United States, its primary strategic rival.
India.com
5 minutes ago
- India.com
Global Tech Leader Suresh Dodda Delivers AI Breakthroughs in Benefits and Payroll
Dodda is a 24 year veteran of tech leadership and groundbreaking AI research, and is revolutionizing Benefits and payroll systems into strategic intelligence engines. Suresh Dodda is a global AI researcher and enterprise technology leader who is enabling innovations that are revolutionizing industries such as human capital management and data privacy to high definition medical imaging. Having over 20 years of experience in the technology field and an experience of translating academic research into real-life practice, the work of Dodda is changing the way organizations are functioning. In his award winning research paper, AI-Driven Decision Support Systems in Management: Enhancing Strategic Planning and Execution, he proposes AI driven frameworks to integrate payroll, attendance and benefits data into predictive models. Such systems help predict labor costs, the trend of benefits and identify compliance risks and transform HR and payroll into key strategic functions rather than back-office operations. Dodda is additionally the single author of the IEEE-published paper Exploring Variational Autoencoders and Generative Latent Time-Series Models Synthetic Data Generation and Forecasting. This innovation employs generative AI to generate privacy-safe datasets of workforces that can be used in predictive modelling and simulation of workforces without revealing sensitive data, an important application in regulated sectors. His work Exploring AI-Driven Innovations in Image Communication Systems to Enhance Medical Imaging Applications in healthcare uses AI to enhance medical images as they are transmitted, processed, and analyzed. The outcomes: crisper images, less time delay in diagnosis and real-time decision making to the radiologists and clinicians. The global giants have already integrated the AI-driven solutions by Dodda in various spheres, saving millions of dollars and establishing new standards of efficiency. His work has been acknowledged by the industry peers as innovative and on a large scale. Dodda is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of BCS and IETE, serving on editorial and advisory boards of leading AI and engineering journals and major industry awards, including IEEE, TITAN, AVIA and Globee. His awards are Titan Award 2024- Technical Professional of the Year and Global Leaders Award- Most Emerging Technology Leader (AI & ML Research). In the future, Dodda is working on AI chatbots to be used in HR interactions, sophisticated fraud detection systems, and secure international medical imaging systems. Tomorrow AI will not only analyze data but will also actively influence the improvement of business strategies and healthcare outcomes, he says. Dodda is a U.S.-based Master of Computer Applications and an AWS Solutions Architect. An expert in AI/ML, Java, Spring Boot, and microservices, he is developing data-intensive cloud-native platforms, and mentors talent worldwide, on platforms such as ADP List.
