Anthropic released findings from its inaugural Anthropic Public Record survey, a large-scale study of nearly 52,000 Americans conducted in November and December of 2025, revealing that the public holds remarkably consistent views on AI's promise and peril across traditional political and demographic divides. The survey marks the first time the AI safety company has directly surveyed the general public rather than just Claude users, offering a window into how non-technical Americans think about artificial intelligence development and regulation.

What Do Americans Hope AI Will Accomplish?

When asked to identify their top three hopes for AI from a list of 17 possibilities, Americans showed clear priorities. Nearly half of respondents, 48%, ranked curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's as one of their top three hopes for AI. This was followed by helping people with disabilities at 36%, then making technological progress and making life easier in general, each tied at 23%.

The dominance of health-related hopes reflects a broader pattern in the data: Americans tend to focus on concrete, near-term benefits rather than abstract technological advancement. Notably, hopes that AI might substitute for human contact, such as therapy and reducing loneliness, ranked lowest among the options presented.

Why Do Americans Fear Job Loss More Than Any Other AI Risk?

While hopes centered on health and human welfare, fears painted a different picture. AI-induced job loss emerged as the most common concern in every single state, held by 64% of Americans. This was followed by cognitive dependency, a fear that AI integration could leave people unable to think for themselves, at 56%, and misinformation at 52%.

What makes the job loss concern particularly striking is its consistency across demographic groups. The fear was the top-ranked concern among Democrats at 67% and Republicans at 62%, in households with children at 59% and without children at 66%, and in every state from Iowa at the high end with 71% to Mississippi at the low end with 57%. This bipartisan, geographically distributed anxiety suggests job displacement has become a genuinely shared concern rather than a partisan talking point.

Interestingly, the data revealed a counterintuitive pattern: people who use AI at work every day are notably less worried about job loss than people who don't use AI at all, with 54% of daily users expressing concern compared to 70% of non-users. This suggests that hands-on experience with AI may help people develop skills and fluency that allow them to augment rather than automate parts of their job, or that direct experience reveals AI's current limitations.

How Do Americans View Government's Role in AI Regulation?

The survey found strong support for government intervention in AI development and deployment. Over 70% of Americans surveyed believe the government should play a role in regulating AI, and this support was notably bipartisan. When asked which areas should receive government attention, respondents prioritized three specific domains:

• Privacy Protection: 56% of Americans said the government should focus on protecting personal data and privacy in AI systems
• Child Safety: 52% identified protecting children from AI-related harms as a priority for regulation
• Liability for Harm: 49% wanted the government to establish clear legal responsibility when AI causes damage

When asked what would best ensure AI benefits humanity, Americans ranked holding AI companies legally liable for harm at 47% and prioritizing safety over growth at 44% as the highest-leverage actions. Only 15% of Americans said they trust AI companies to make decisions about how AI is developed and used, underscoring a significant credibility gap between the industry and the public.

Steps to Understand Public Sentiment on AI Development

Anthropic is taking a multi-pronged approach to understanding how people think about and use AI, combining different research methodologies to build a comprehensive picture:

• Public Surveys: The Anthropic Public Record will be repeated regularly and expanded in scope as new topics become salient, allowing researchers to track how attitudes change as model capabilities advance and adoption deepens
• User Interview Studies: Anthropic recently conducted a global qualitative study of 81,000 Claude users through Anthropic Interviewer, a tool designed for conducting in-depth interviews at scale to understand how people actually use the technology
• Usage Data Analysis: The company regularly releases data from the Anthropic Economic Index, which draws on anonymized Claude usage data to show how people around the world are employing AI in their work and daily lives

The company plans to expand the Anthropic Public Record survey outside the United States in the future, allowing for international comparisons of AI attitudes and concerns.

What Does the Data Reveal About American Consensus on AI?

Perhaps the most striking finding from the survey is what it reveals about agreement rather than division. On most questions, AI did not heavily divide Americans along typical partisan, geographic, or educational lines. Instead, there was broad consensus across topics: Americans are eager to realize AI's promised benefits but fear the disruption it may bring, and they want accountability from the companies building it.

To the extent disagreement existed, it was largely only in the intensity of people's views rather than fundamental disagreement about whether AI poses risks or offers benefits. This suggests that the polarization often associated with emerging technologies may not fully characterize public opinion on AI, at least not yet.

The survey methodology was rigorous, with a nationally representative online sample of 51,993 Americans sourced from YouGov and weighted to US Census benchmarks. State samples ranged from 232 people in Alaska to 1,902 in New York, with state-level margins of error between plus or minus 2.6 and plus or minus 9.1 percentage points, ensuring reliable state-by-state comparisons.

As AI capabilities continue to advance and adoption deepens, Anthropic's ongoing public record research will provide a crucial barometer of how American attitudes evolve. The initial findings suggest that the public is neither reflexively opposed to AI nor uncritically enthusiastic about it, but rather pragmatically focused on ensuring the technology delivers on its promises while minimizing concrete harms.