Anthropic asked 80,000 people what they think about AI. The answer is: It's complicated.
Ukrainians seeking solace in the war, parents being able to pick up their children on time after AI cleared their workload, or a lawyer in Israel worried they are slowly forgetting how to think for themselves, Anthropic has identified what people want from AI and what they fear.
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The AI company interviewed more than 80,000 people, spanning 159 countries, which Anthropic says is the largest qualitative research project of its kind.
The study’s main finding presents an uncomfortable truth and a duality in users: the things people love most about AI are often the very things they fear.
Known as the “light and shade” problem, the study highlights that while people may value AI for emotional support, they are also three times more likely to fear becoming dependent on it.
Many respondents said they said AI was an emotional support, such as using it after the loss of a parent or even in exceptional circumstances such as war.
“I am mute, and we made this text-to-speech bot together — I can communicate with friends almost in live format without taking up their time reading. Something I dreamed about and thought was impossible,” said a white-collar worker in Ukraine.
The report found that AI in the workplace to automate tasks was one of the biggest use cases of the technology, which respondents said would free them to focus on other, more important work. But when pressed on what AI would really unlock, respondents said time with family.
However, the technology also presents a double-edged sword, as people fear they will lose cognitive abilities.
“I use AI to review contracts, save time... and at the same time I fear: am I losing my ability to read by myself? Thinking was the last frontier," one study participant, who is a lawyer, wrote.
The study found that lawyers were particularly exposed to both sides of the dilemma, with nearly half having encountered AI unreliability firsthand. But they also reported the highest rates of realised decision-making benefits of any profession.
About 11 percent of respondents said they had zero fears over AI but the remaining 89 percent noted five main concerns.
One of the biggest fears for AI users was whether the chatbot was unreliable. Some 27 percent of respondents said they were concerned about AI making poor or incorrect decisions, versus only 22 per cent who cited improved decision-making as a benefit.
The second biggest fear for AI users was the impact of the technology on jobs and the economy (22%), and what it would mean for wage stagnation and widening inequality. There is jointly the fear that AI was making decisions without human oversight and humans becoming passive (22%). The fourth fear was users losing the ability to think critically (16%), and the last was AI not being regulated and unclear accountability when things go wrong (15%).
A world divided on AI
Around the world, 67 percent of respondents had a positive view of AI but some continents were more optimistic than others.
Users in North America, Western Europe and Oceania worried more about governance gaps, regulatory failure, and surveillance.
But Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia were much more positive about AI and said the technology was an economic equaliser that made it simpler to start businesses or access education.
“I'm in a tech-disadvantaged country, and I can't afford many failures. With AI, I've reached professional level in cybersecurity, UX design, marketing, and project management simultaneously. It's an equaliser,” one user in Cameroon said.
But users in North America, Western Europe and Oceania worried more about governance gaps, regulatory failure, and surveillance.
East Asia showed it had little concern over who controls AI but showed great concern about what it does to cognitive atrophy.
The general trend is that in wealthier countries, where AI is already in use at work, people are more worried about the technology taking their jobs because they can already see it happening. But in poorer countries, people are less worried about AI’s impact as AI has yet to enter workplaces, and they have more pressing economic concerns.
Anthopic said that the findings would inform how it continues to develop its AI chatbot Claude.
