Fear of AI-driven job losses now outweighs hope for new jobs, according to a study cited by Euronews. The report says more people expect artificial intelligence to lead to fewer jobs than to job creation, while a good share of respondents still don’t know what it’ll do to the number of jobs at all. That uncertainty sits right where employers and governments like it: workers left guessing, while the people building the systems keep the profits and the power.
The study drew on a survey conducted between February and June 2026 and polled over 50,000 people from 37 countries. It found that people’s view of a country and their trust in its artificial intelligence regulation are closely linked, according to Moira Fagan, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center and one of the authors of the study. That’s not a technical footnote. It’s a reminder that trust in AI governance is really trust in the states and blocs that claim the right to manage the future for everyone else.
Who Gets to Govern the Machine
In Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, people trust China more than the United States or the European Union with AI governance. Across the other seven middle-income countries where the question was asked, a median of 43% trust China to regulate AI, 35% trust the US and 34% trust the EU, Fagan said. The numbers are blunt. None of the big powers inspire much confidence, but the competition for legitimacy is still measured in the language of regulation, governance and control.
Fagan said: “Favourable views of China tend to be quite high in middle-income countries – and opinion has risen in many places since last year, likely contributing to some of the high marks we see for trust in China on this particular dimension.” That line says plenty about the political weather around the world’s tech empires. People aren’t being asked whether they want corporate automation at all. They’re being asked which state-backed machine they trust to manage it.
The survey says worries about job losses due to AI are particularly high in wealthier countries. In Australia, South Korea and the US, around seven-in-ten adults or more believe AI will result in job loss over the next 20 years. Richer countries are also more concerned about AI increasing economic inequalities than middle-income ones, the report says. So much for the glossy sales pitch. The richer the country, the clearer the fear that automation will be used the way capital always uses technology: to squeeze labour, deepen inequality and call it progress.
The Labour Question They Can’t Dodge
Fagan said these tendencies appear to be linked to other data, including people’s familiarity with the technology. “People in wealthier countries are more likely to say they have heard or read a lot about AI. And we also found that people with higher AI awareness are more likely to believe it will lead to job loss,” she told Euronews Next. The more people know, the less comfort they seem to find in the promises. That’s not irrational fear. It’s experience catching up with the marketing.
The survey found that young adults aged 18 to 34 are more concerned about AI-related job loss than older generations in both high-income and middle-income nations, including Canada, France, Singapore, Sweden, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. The people with the most years of work ahead of them are the ones most likely to expect the machine to take work away. That should tell policymakers something, though they’ll probably prefer another panel discussion.
Opinion divides are less pronounced when it comes to the rise of AI in daily life. Across the 37 countries, a median of 37% are more concerned than excited, while a median of 41% are equally concerned and excited, the survey found. That split is the political reality in miniature: not enthusiasm, not trust, just a population being dragged into a system it didn’t design and can’t control.
The Euronews piece says the publication comes at a crucial moment for AI. Leaders of major AI companies, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei, are increasingly concerned about the risks their AI creations pose to humanity and are calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development. Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, also backed the deceleration effort in her State of the Union address to the European Parliament earlier this week and pledged closer safety cooperation with Canada, the UK and other like-minded partners. The same institutions and executives that helped drive the race now want to be seen as the adults in the room. The public is left with the bill, the uncertainty and the job losses.