Young adults are growing more skeptical and angry about artificial intelligence. The share of Gen Z respondents who say they feel angry about AI rose from 22% last year to 31% this year, with the oldest members of the cohort expressing the most anger. The sentiment appears tied to fears that AI is shrinking opportunities for entry-level workers, a threat the youngest adults perceive more acutely than mid-career peers, The New York Times reported.
More than half of respondents ages 14 to 29 said they regularly use generative A.I. Yet the share who felt hopeful about the technology fell to 18 percent from 27 percent since last year.
Among young adults in the workforce, close to half said the risks of A.I. outweighed its potential benefits on the job, an 11-point jump from the previous year, while only 15 percent saw it as a net benefit.
The survey of more than 1,500 people was conducted in the United States in February and March and also recorded concerns about the technology’s effects on creativity and critical thinking, according to The New York Times.
“In most of these cases, Gen Z-ers have become increasingly skeptical, increasingly negative — from a place where even last year, they weren’t particularly positive about it,” said Zach Hrynowski, a senior education researcher for Gallup involved in the survey, according to The New York Times.
A Nature study
A study of 608 non-English major students learning In university English-as-a-foreign-language found that reliance on A.I. tools in learning correlated with greater interpersonal incompetence, according to a study published by Nature. Students with higher awareness of A.I. ethics showed a weaker link between tool dependence and interpersonal difficulties, researchers said.
Controlled experiments indicate a measurable shift toward less exploratory thinking and a reduction in critical engagement when participants receive help from a chatbot. A report from the MIT Media Lab associated using tools like ChatGPT for tasks such as essay writing with reduced brain engagement and diminished learning over time, as measured by neural and linguistic metrics.