Survey: 64% Fear AI Will Cost Jobs; 48% Hope for Cures

Anthropic’s Public Record survey of 51,993 Americans in late 2025 found 64% of respondents fear artificial intelligence will cost people their jobs, while 48% placed curing major diseases among their top three hoped-for uses.

The survey asked Americans nationwide about their biggest worries and best hopes for AI. Job loss was the leading concern in every state, ranging from 71% in Iowa to 57% in Mississippi. The issue topped concerns for both Democrats and Republicans, at 67% and 62% respectively. Respondents with postgraduate degrees reported nearly 10 percentage points more worry about job loss than those with a high school diploma or less. People who use AI at work every day were less likely to report fear of losing jobs than nonusers, 54% versus 70%.

Other prominent fears included growing dependence on AI for thinking and decision-making, cited by 56% of respondents, and the spread of misinformation, cited by 52%. Trust in companies developing AI was low: 15% of respondents said they trust AI firms to steer the technology, compared with 20% who trust the federal government, 19% who trust state and local government, and 20% who trust international bodies. Independent experts topped the list of trusted sources at 43%.

On potential benefits, 48% named curing diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s among their top three uses for AI. Helping people with disabilities was selected by 36% as a top hope.

Views on regulation and safety also featured in the survey. Seventy-one percent of respondents supported some government role in overseeing AI, including 79% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans. When asked how to keep AI development aligned with public interest, 47% supported holding companies legally liable for harm and 44% said safety should be prioritized over growth.

Labor market data cited alongside the survey show tens of thousands of job cuts in the U.S. have been linked to AI. One month recorded 38,579 cuts attributed to AI. For 2026 so far, 87,714 job cuts have been tied to AI, a total larger than the roughly 54,836 reductions reported for all of 2025. Those figures have prompted calls from some lawmakers for stronger protections for workers; senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have urged Congress to act.

Not all industry leaders share the view that AI will cause widespread unemployment. Jeff Bezos, whose AI startup Prometheus recently raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation, predicted AI will create labor scarcity rather than mass joblessness. He observed that some two-earner households might shift to one earner if one person chooses to leave the job market.

Anthropic said it will repeat the Public Record study as AI adoption expands. The company described the survey as an early snapshot of public attitudes that include hopes for medical breakthroughs and skepticism toward the firms building the technology.