Survey: Americans Fear AI Job Losses, Hope for Cures

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI model, released results from a national poll it calls the Public Record. The survey collected responses from nearly 52,000 U.S. adults in late 2025. The company has filed to go public.

Job loss was the leading concern: 64% of respondents reported worrying that AI would cause job losses. That concern ranked highest among Democrats and Republicans and in every state surveyed. Concern was greater among respondents with college or advanced degrees.

Nearly half of respondents placed curing diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s among their top three hopes for AI. Helping people with disabilities was the second-most common hope at 36%. Hopes that AI could substitute for human connection, such as offering therapy or reducing loneliness, ranked lowest among the options presented.

Trust in companies that build AI was low. Fifteen percent of respondents reported trusting AI companies to make decisions about how the technology is developed and used. That level of trust was lower than trust in the federal government, state and local governments, and international bodies, and well below the 43% who reported trusting independent experts. The survey did not publish detailed demographic splits for trust beyond the overall figures.

Support for government oversight was broad. More than 70% of respondents favored a government role in regulating AI, with 79% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans in favor. Respondents identified privacy, child safety and corporate liability for harm as the top areas for government action.

Anthropic plans to repeat the survey regularly and expand it beyond the United States. The company described the poll as a baseline of public opinion at a time when AI capabilities are expanding and policymakers are debating new rules.