How are Americas using AI? This poll reveals 3 findings

Fast Company

5 days ago

Most U.S. adults say they use artificial intelligence to search for information, but fewer are using it for work, drafting email or shopping.
Younger adults are most likely to be leaning into AI, with many using it for brainstorming and work tasks.
The new findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that 60% of Americans overall — and 74% of those under 30 — use AI to find information at least some of the time.
The poll highlights the ubiquity of AI in some areas — as well as its limits in others. Only about 4 in 10 Americans say they have used AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, a sign that the tech industry's promises of highly productive AI assistants still haven't touched most livelihoods after years of promotion and investment.
At the same time, wider AI adoption by younger Americans shows that could change.
There's a particularly large age divide on brainstorming: About 6 in 10 adults under age 30 have used AI for coming up with ideas, compared with only 2 in 10 of those age 60 or older. Young adults are also more likely to use AI to come up with ideas at least 'daily.'
Young adults are most likely to use AI
Bridging the generations are people like Courtney Thayer, 34, who's embracing AI in some parts of her life and avoiding it in others.
Thayer said she is regularly using ChatGPT to come up with ideas about planning what to eat, while also having it calculate the nutritional value of the pumpkin-banana-oat bread she's been baking for years.
'I asked it to make a meal prep for the week, then to add an Asian flair,' said Thayer, of Des Moines, Iowa. 'It wasn't the most flavorful thing I've ever had in my life, but it's a nice stepping off point. More importantly, I use it for the amount so that I'm not over-serving myself and ending up with wasted food.'
The audiologist has embraced AI at work, too, in part because AI technology is imbued in the hearing aids she recommends to patients but also because it makes it easier and faster to draft professional emails.
She avoids it for important information, particularly medical advice, after witnessing chatbots 'hallucinate' false information about topics she spent years studying.
Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they use AI for work tasks at least sometimes, while about one-third say they use it for helping to write emails, create or edit images, or for entertainment, according to the poll. About one-quarter say they use it to shop.
Younger adults are more likely than older ones to say they have used artificial intelligence to help with various tasks, the poll shows.
Searching for information is AI's most common use
Of the eight options offered in the poll questions, searching for information is the most common way Americans have interacted with AI. And even that may be an undercount, since it's not always apparent how AI is surfacing what information people see online.
For more than a year, the dominant search engine, Google, has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person's search query, appearing at the top of results.
Perhaps defying emerging media consumption trends, 28-year-old Sanaa Wilson usually skips right past those AI-generated summaries.
'It has to be a basic question like, 'What day does Christmas land on in 2025?'' said the Los Angeles-area resident. 'I'll be like, 'That makes sense. I trust it.' But when it gets to specific news, related to what's happening in California or what's happening to the education system and stuff like that, I will scroll down a little bit further.'
Wilson, a freelance data scientist, does use AI heavily at work to help with coding, which she said has saved her hundreds of dollars she would have had to pay for training. She also occasionally uses it to come up with work-related ideas, an attempt to bring back a little of the collaborative brainstorming experience she remembers from college life but doesn't have now.
When it first came out, Wilson said she also used ChatGPT to help write emails, until she learned more about its environmental impact and the possibility it would erode her own writing and thinking skills over time.
'It's just an email. I can work it out,' she said. 'However many minutes it takes, or seconds it takes, I can still type it myself.'
Most don't use AI for companionship — but it's more common for young adults
The least common of the eight AI uses was AI companionship, though even that showed an age divide.
Just under 2 in 10 of all adults and about a quarter of those under 30 say they've used AI for companionship.
Wilson has no interest in AI companions, though she isn't surprised that others do because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her generation's social experiences.
'I totally understand and sympathize behind why people in my age group are leveraging it in that way,' Wilson said.
Thayer, the audiologist, also has no interest in AI companionship, though she tries to be polite with chatbots, just in case they're keeping track.
'I mean, I am nice to it, just because I've watched movies, right?' Thayer said, laughing. 'So I'll say, 'Can you make me a meal plan, please?' And, 'Can you modify this, please?' And then I'll say, 'Thank you.''
The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
—Matt O'Brien and Linley Sanders, Associated Press
The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.