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Weekly AI users reported less fear than nonusers, but the findings do not show that using AI reduces anxiety—or that anxiety has risen.
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Chapman University’s 2026 fear survey found that 51.9% of respondents feared AI could harm politics and 49.7% feared economic harm, placing the concerns third and seventh among the fears measured. Because researchers asked these AI-specific questions for the first time, the rankings establish a baseline—not evidence that public anxiety has risen. For product and policy watchers, the results show that public concern extends beyond job loss, while the survey’s findings on AI use point to an association, not proof that familiarity reduces fear.
Government corruption ranked first at 61.1%, followed by U.S. involvement in another world war at 58%.
Weekly AI users were less likely than nonusers to fear political harm, but nearly half still expressed that concern.
Respondents expressed more hope than fear about abundant clean energy, life-extension medicine, and manufacturing robots, but the reverse for employee monitoring and AI romantic partners.
Political harm from AI ranked third, while economic harm ranked seventh. Both landed in the top 10 in the first year researchers asked several specific AI-fear questions.
The results put concerns about AI alongside established fears about government, war and family health. In the survey, 51.9% of respondents were afraid or very afraid that AI could harm politics; 49.7% feared it could hurt the economy. Government corruption remained first at 61.1%, followed by U.S. involvement in another world war at 58%.
The first-time inclusion matters. AI’s appearance among the leading fears establishes where these concerns ranked when measured, not whether Americans became more anxious about them over the past year. There is no prior-year result for these newly introduced questions to support that comparison. The findings measure people’s fears, rather than whether the political or economic harms they anticipate will happen.
Christopher Bader, a Chapman sociology professor and the survey’s founder, interpreted the results as concern extending beyond employment. “These findings make it clear that Americans are concerned not just about what AI might mean for their jobs, but about its potential impact on our political system and the economy,” he said. The two questions capture those wider concerns rather than asking only about personal job loss.
Responses to other emerging technologies varied by the proposed use, rather than showing uniform enthusiasm or rejection. Chapman’s findings distinguished technologies that generated more hope than fear from those that produced the opposite response. That distinction gives a more specific picture of public sentiment than treating attitudes toward AI, robots and other technologies as a single verdict.
The newly published results describe views collected six months earlier. NORC at the University of Chicago surveyed 1,221 adults online from April 7 through April 21, 2026, using its probability-based AmeriSpeak panel. Chapman reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3.79 percentage points. This was the university’s 12th annual fear survey.
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