Terry JonesDespite the many bright promises made by experts that the coming artificial intelligence Golden Age will leave us all better off both financially and personally, Americans aren’t buying it. A majority fears being blindsided by a wave of layoffs and higher costs from AI’s seemingly inevitable presence in our lives, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.
In this month’s national online poll, taken from July 28 through Aug. 1, 1,463 adults were asked three questions about AI, starting with: “Do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will mostly create new jobs, mostly take away jobs, or not make much difference?”
Of those responding, just 19% said AI will “mostly create new jobs,” while a whopping 55% said it would “mostly take away jobs.” Only 16% answered it would “not make much difference,” while 10% weren’t sure.
Those numbers are slightly higher than September 2025’s identical I&I/TIPP Poll, when 54% said AI’s advent would take away jobs, while 17% believed it would create them. The share saying they were “not sure” dropped four percentage points, to just 10% this year. So public opinion seems to be solidifying.
If you expected major differences by political party, as is often the case with questions about economic impacts, you would be disappointed.
There was near-unanimity among Democrats, Republicans and independent voters that AI will be a job-killer, not a job-creator. Most Democrats (18% create, 58% take away), a plurality of Republicans (26% create, 48% take away) and a large majority of independents (12% create, 64% take away) all believe jobs will be lost, not gained.
Indeed, in rare unanimity among the 36 demographic groups tracked by I&I/TIPP, none thought AI would create more jobs than it would destroy. None.
There was more bad news for AI backers in I&I/TIPP’s second question: “Some reports suggest that AI consumes substantial amounts of electricity and could lead to increased power costs. Do you see this as a serious problem, a minor issue, or not a problem at all?”
Overall, 53% called power costs associated with AI a serious problem, while (27%) said it would be a minor issue. Just 10% termed it “not a problem at all,” while 10% weren’t sure. Meanwhile, the share saying it would not be a problem increased over the year, by three percentage points.
Compared to the I&I/TIPP survey of September 2026, concern that AI’s power demands are a “serious problem” is up three percentage points, while those calling it a minor issue dipped two percentage points (see chart, above).
Once again, by political party, there was broad agreement that power costs for AI would be a problem: Democrats (59% serious problem, 25% minor issue), Republicans (47% serious problem, 30% minor issue) and independents (55% serious problem, 27% minor issue) held a broad consensus on the energy cost issue.
But not everyone agreed. Age turns out to be a big differentiator for AI. The older the potential voter, the more problems they expect for energy prices.
Indeed, among those age 18 to 24, the responses broke even: 42% said power costs would be a serious problem, an equal 42% said it would be a minor issue, and 10% called it no problem.
But the older the voter, the bigger the problem: For those 25 through 44 years (44% serious problem, 31% minor issue, 16% not an issue), 45 through 64 years (52% serious problem, 26% minor issue, 8% not an issue) and, finally, 65 years and over (71% serious problem, 15% minor issue, 4% not an issue), electricity costs are a major issue.
A final question asks voters: “Which comes closer to your view of AI right now?” Four possible responses were provided.
Overall, 20% selected “It’s overhyped and won’t live up to its promises,” while more than twice that level (42%) answered “It’s dangerous and its risks are being downplayed.” Just 26% said “It will bring big benefits worth the risks,” while 13% weren’t sure.
How does that compare with the September, 2025 poll? Those calling AI “overhyped” is the same, while those calling it “dangerous” has actually fallen three percentage points. And those seeing “big benefits worth the risks” has increased five percentage points, a statistically significant swing.
There were minor differences by political affiliation. One in five of Dems, Republicans and independents agreed AI was “overhyped” and won’t “live up to its promises.” But 44% of Dems, 37% of GOP voters and 47% of independents called AI “dangerous” and its risks “downplayed.”
Republicans were most optimistic, with 34% agreeing that AI will bring “benefits worth the risks,” while just 23% of Democrats and 20% of independents agreed.
As we noted higher up, it’s hard to think of another current issue where there’s such a wide gap between the optimistic expert class and the common people who will supposedly benefit from the advent of the AI age.
But then again, public opinion has changed substantially since earlier in the year.
Recall that, as TIPP Insights reported in February, the stock market sold off sharply on news that “China’s ‘DeepSeek’ R1 AI software had leapfrogged other global AI versions and that it did so with an unbelievably parsimonious development cost of only $6 million.”
As the chart below shows, that report shocked Americans, with more than half saying they were concerned about China having an AI edge over the U.S. and expressing a desire for more government investment.
As Bob Dylan once sang, “Things have changed.” Today, there’s growing concern among a majority of Americans about AI’s impact on jobs and energy costs, with 62% describing it as either “overhyped” or “dangerous.”
The near-insatiable demand for more energy to fuel the AI boom has become a feature of the modern economy. And the AI boom is not going away.
As George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen recently noted, “Market sentiments rise and fall, but in the grand scheme of things, the market will not doom the AI revolution. Instead, if you think in terms of the broad sweep of history, you will see that everything is on track, and we are putting more and more of the transition costs behind us.”
In short, the AI revolution is here, whether we like it or not.
Knowing this, should Americans be more worried about ensuring that ever-more-powerful AI doesn’t become a political tool for any one ideology or party? That, unfortunately, might be tough.
A meticulous recent study by Just The Facts asked major AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Grok, and Claude, 100 questions each to uncover the degree of bias in their answers, either intentional or non-intentional.
The result: “When tested with the full battery of 100 questions, all of the AIs but Grok answered with more falsehoods from the political left than from the political right, while Grok did the opposite.” At least seven other studies (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) have made similar findings.
As AI continues to expand in the coming years, Americans may well become more used to its presence. But as the I&I/TIPP Poll shows, many remain skeptical of claims made about AI and its impact on the economy, energy, family, and society.
I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past six presidential elections.
Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.
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By scanning every piece of data that was stored on the internet before the maturation of modern AI, AI is mining the mother lode of all information. It took humans a lot of time and effort to create that body of knowledge. The relatively high cost of writing words by using human brains as central processing units tended to produce text of relatively high quality. AI companies are now buying rare and out-of-print books and using the text as training data for their models, for precisely this reason. If a human being had to carefully choose each and every word that was written, then the final text had to be worth the while of the human who traded part of his life to write it.
However, AI can now write entire articles and stories instantly for the marginal cost of the electricity needed to run the AI. If AI is used to replace human creators, and the humans all lose their jobs, then the amount of new content created by humans will drop to almost zero. It’s simple economics: if the supply of AI slop is infinite and dirt cheap, and it’s good enough to replace human content creators, then the price paid for new content will drop to almost zero. Humans can’t eat electrons. We need money to buy food. If there’s no money to be made, then only eccentrics and hobbyists will bother to create anything new and interesting. All creative endeavors will resemble modern Hollywood, where remakes and reboots and sequels outnumber original scripts.
Many people think that AI is a gold mine, but so far AI has been ‘mining gold at Fort Knox’ by using high-quality data created at great expense by humans. But Fort Knox can only be looted once. AI has yet to show that it can go beyond plagiarizing humans and create new ‘gold standard’ original results. Until AI grows beyond its current limitations, the hope that AI will become the solution to all of the world’s problems will remain unfulfilled. The investors who think that they have found a gold mine may discover to their chagrin that they have paid a premium price for fool’s gold.
For more details, go to Substack and search for “‘Looney Tunes’ Gave Us the Perfect Metaphor for the Limits of AI”. Keep the quotation marks when you search for the article. As a bonus, there’s a cartoon to watch.
Jobs are only one element in the economic chain of bringing goods and services to market, i.e., a cost. Imagine the benefits arising from automation erasing a major cost factor, the growth of productivity, and the knock-on effect on shelf prices.
In the AI Race, the first nation to reach the SKYNET moment wins.
I wouldn’t mind it being the USA.