'Public opinion is ahead of the media discourse on AI'

The crowded market of artificial intelligence (AI) visions has gained two striking new entries in recent months. The first, courtesy of Pope Leo XIV, draws attention to the challenge of preserving human dignity in the age of all-knowing machines. Then there is Elon Musk. In his version, AI will deliver nirvana in five to 10 years as it becomes smarter than humans, work becomes optional and money disappears. We will become pet labradors to a superintelligence making every meaningful decision for us.

With AI discourse dominated by ever wilder claims, it is worth looking at the snapshot captured by Mandate's nine-country survey. The global pollster asked nearly 14,000 respondents in the United States, the United Kingdom and seven European countries about their attitudes toward AI.

The findings suggest a striking geographical divide. While 50% of Americans and 46% of Britons say AI's effects on society are already negative, the figure reaches only 35% across continental Europe. Even where ideology enters the picture, geography remains decisive. Among progressive voters in the US and UK, majorities see AI as harmful. Among similar political groups in Hungary, Poland and Spain, however, positive and neutral answers dominate. Hostility toward AI on the left is, for now, not a European product but a distinctly Anglo-American one.

Why the difference? One reason is that Europe is not leading the frontier race. Local opposition to gigantic data centers has not gripped the continent as it has in the US. Some 63% of Americans say a data center next door would be bad news, compared with between half and a third of that figure in European countries.

Meanwhile, the wave of job losses attributed to AI has not yet begun in Europe. A technology whose costs are still largely hypothetical may be easier to embrace than one already being felt. Usage data points in the same direction. Anglophones use AI the least: Only 37% of Britons and 47% of Americans use an AI chatbot weekly, compared with 65% of Spaniards. Given how loudly AI dominates British and American media and politics, that gap looks less like ignorance than skepticism.

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