Article
More "meh" than menace?
Originally posted on LinkedIn on October 17, 2025.
More “meh” than menace? The Pew people just published their global survey on AI hopes and fears. 🌍😐 It doesn’t deliver the doom or the drum-roll many expected. Instead, the most common answer in many countries is gloriously unsexy: people feel equally concerned and excited about AI. Not fear. Not fervour. Ambivalence. Which, if you build or regulate this stuff, is both a challenge and an opportunity. ✅ What Pew gets right ✅ 📊 The pattern is consistent: heavier internet users and the better informed skew a touch more excited. So “exposure breeds terror” is not supported. 🤷🏽♂️ Ambivalence at the centre. The equal-concern/equal-excitement group is often the largest. That matters more than the headline “more concerned than excited” because it tells you where the movable middle lives. 🤔 Where the story overreaches (or needs caveats) 🤔 ⚖️ The headline is pessimistic. Yes, “more concerned than excited” is true in the medians, but the modal reality is mixed feelings. Designing for ambivalence beats marketing to fear. 🤝 Trust looks like identity, not inspection. Confidence in the EU, US, or China only shows who people already like. That’s vibes, not a verdict on actual regulatory capacity. ❓What should you do with an ambivalent public❓ ⚙️ Design for trade-offs. Show benefits and limits. Offer opt-outs and human fallbacks. 🧪 Prove safety, don’t assert it. Publish test results and show your working. Less poetry, more evidence. 🥇Localise trust. Don’t rely on someone else’s badge. Earn confidence with your own audits and user control. 🧠 Educate towards agency. The more people know, the less they panic. Build in explainers and simple choices. If you are treating people as either terrified or euphoric, you’re solving the wrong problem. The centre ground is curious, cautious, and persuadable. 🔗 Source: https://lnkd.in/d_vwFD2s #AI #PublicOpinion #Trust #Policy #EdTech #HigherEducation #GovTech #ProductManagement #UX #RiskManagement