(Bloomberg) – Will artificial intelligence ultimately help or hurt U.S. workers? A Brookings Institution survey offers fresh fodder for the debate, showing opinion is heavily tilted against AI at a time companies are increasingly looking for ways to include it in everything they do.
Some 38% of respondents said AI would reduce jobs, while only 12% thought it would create positions, according to an online national survey of 1,535 adult internet users conducted May 9-11 by the Washington-based think tank. Men were more likely than women to say AI would cause job losses. By age, the group most concerned about that possibility was 25-to-34-year-olds: Just 10% said the employment impact would be positive and more than four times that expected a negative fallout.
While the U.S. is seen as the global leader in AI, there’s concern China is closing the gap, the Brookings survey showed. Some 21% of the respondents said the U.S. is No. 1, while 15% picked China. When asked who’d be in the top spot in 10 years, 21% said the U.S. and 20% said China.
China’s government has made it a national priority to overtake the U.S. in AI. Meanwhile, at a recent meeting that included companies ranging from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and Intel Corp. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Boeing Co., the White House unveiled a hands-off regulatory approach to enable innovations in AI.