China is eclipsing the United States as the perceived artificial intelligence superpower in much of the world, according to a new global poll that reveals deepening anxieties among Americans about the technology's impact on jobs, misinformation, and resource consumption.
The survey, conducted by U.K.-based research firm Public First and surveying over 18,000 people across 15 countries in the current year, found that respondents in 11 of the 26 countries polled—including close U.S. allies such as France, Canada and the United Kingdom—see China as the AI leader. Just over half of American respondents, as well as majorities of people responding in Japan, India and Vietnam, still see the U.S. as the dominant AI superpower. In Germany, only 23 percent of people saw the U.S. as dominant.
The findings underscore a troubling disconnect: even as American officials assert technological leadership, global confidence in U.S. dominance is fragmenting, while domestic sentiment toward AI has shifted sharply negative in the three-year span ending this year.
The Confidence Collapse
Public First tracked respondent sentiment across a three-year span ending this year, asking whether AI would make things better or worse for themselves, society generally, and the next generation. The results show a marked deterioration in American optimism.
In 2024, 39 percent of U.S. survey participants said AI would make things better for society while 34 percent said it would make things worse. In 2025, that ticked up to 40 percent and 36 percent, respectively. This year, only 31 percent believed AI would make society better, while 40 percent took the opposite outlook.
Confidence that AI will improve respondents' personal lives fell from a net positive 15 points in 2024 to 5 points this year. Prospects for the next generation deteriorated from a net positive 10 points to a net negative 4 points.
The trend was most pronounced among American respondents aged 18 to 24. That group believed in 2025 that AI was going to improve society by a 4-point margin, but a year later that plummeted, with young Americans believing AI would be worse for society by a 13-point margin. Young respondents in the United Kingdom mirrored those results.
What Americans Fear Most
In the United States, worries about misinformation, deepfakes and job loss topped the list of Americans' concerns about the new technology. The anxiety reflects real developments in the digital landscape: social media companies have been reckoning with a barrage of AI-generated content that can be created at unprecedented speeds.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the scale of this shift about 8 months ago on an earnings call, stating: "Social media has gone through two eras so far. First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly. The second was when we added all the creator content. Now, as AI makes it easier to create and remix content, we're going to add yet another huge corpus of content on top of those."
Young adults also viewed the labor market with acute anxiety amid predictions from top AI executives that new models could automate a significant portion of entry-level, white-collar jobs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI will be able to eliminate half of these jobs in the next one to five years.
Fears about resource usage, including electricity consumption, have risen sharply. In 2024, only 52 percent said they were worried about AI's resource demands. In 2026, that number rose to two of every three respondents.
Communities Push Back Against Infrastructure
Local backlash against data centers—which use large amounts of energy and often rely on water-based cooling systems—has rattled elected officials and revealed the distributional consequences of AI expansion. In one Missouri town, half of the city council was voted out after approving a $6 billion data center. A week after a rezoning plan was approved to accommodate a data center developer's project, a councilman in Indianapolis said his home was shot at, and a note reading "NO DATA CENTERS" was left on his front porch.
The intensity of community opposition prompted official action. About 3 months ago, Trump issued a "ratepayer protection pledge" asking major technology companies to provide or pay for their own electricity supplies as they rapidly establish computing hubs across the country.
The Regulation Question
Official responses to these concerns have diverged sharply. President Donald Trump said Wednesday, "We are leading China by a lot. Whoever leads that is going to really lead the world, to a large extent." Former White House AI czar David Sacks has cautioned against overregulation of the technology, including the idea of creating a clearance process for cutting-edge models that mirrors the Food and Drug Administration's drug-review protocol. Sacks said on Fox Business last week, "If you try to have an FDA for AI and there are some people who want to go that far, then I think we could lose this AI race to China."
These statements reflect a policy tension: officials concerned with international competition resist regulatory frameworks, even as Americans express mounting concerns about the technology's social and environmental impacts.
Why This Matters:
The polling data reveals a critical governance challenge: Americans are increasingly skeptical that AI will benefit them or future generations, yet policymakers are resisting the regulatory safeguards—including environmental oversight and labor protections—that might address these concerns. The erosion of confidence is most acute among young people, who face the greatest exposure to job displacement and misinformation. Meanwhile, the loss of global perception of U.S. AI leadership suggests that the current approach—prioritizing speed over regulation—may not deliver the competitive advantage its advocates promise. Community resistance to data center expansion demonstrates that the costs of AI infrastructure are geographically concentrated, falling disproportionately on local residents who bear environmental and resource burdens while benefits accrue nationally and globally. The divergence between official confidence and public anxiety, combined with the geographic inequality of AI's impact, underscores the need for democratic deliberation about how AI development should proceed and who bears its costs.