Americans Fear AI Will Take Their Jobs, But Hope It Can Cure Cancer

Americans rank job loss as their biggest fear about artificial intelligence (AI), while curing diseases like cancer tops their hopes, according to a survey of nearly 52,000 people by Anthropic.

The findings expose a gap between what the public wants from AI and what it dreads, as real layoff data and political pressure over automation build across the United States.

Job Loss Outranks Every Other AI Fear

Anthropic surveyed 51,993 Americans in late 2025 for its first Public Record study. Job loss ranked as the top fear at 64%, leading in every state.

Concern ran from 71% in Iowa to 57% in Mississippi. It led among Democrats at 67% and Republicans at 62%.

“Americans with postgraduate degrees are nearly 10 percentage points more worried about job loss than those with a high school education or less,” the survey found. “At the same time, people who use AI at work every day are notably less worried about job loss than people who don’t use AI at all: 54% versus 70%.”

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AI Job Loss Concerns Among Americans. Source: Anthropic

Cognitive dependency followed at 56%, then misinformation at 52%. Only 15% of Americans said they trust AI companies to steer the technology. According to the findings,

“That was the lowest figure for any institution we tested, below the federal government (20%), state and local government (19%), and international bodies (20%), and far below independent experts (43%).”

AI Layoffs and a Billionaire Pushback

The fear is not abstract. BeInCrypto reported that AI drove 38,579 US job cuts in May, about 40% of the month’s total.

For 2026, employers have tied 87,714 cuts to AI. That total already exceeds the 54,836 attributed to the technology across all of 2025.

The pressure has reached Washington. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have urged Congress to protect workers now.

Not everyone agrees. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rejects the job-loss narrative, predicting that AI will create labor scarcity instead. Bezos made the case as his AI startup, Prometheus, raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.

“A lot of people who, for example, today have two-earner households, perhaps one of those earners will choose not to be in the job market, so they’ll become a one-earner household,” Bezos said.

Americans Want Cures and Accountability

On the hopeful side, 48% placed curing diseases like cancer or Alzheimer’s in their top three uses for AI. Helping people with disabilities followed at 36%.

American Hopes for AI. Source: Anthropic

Support for oversight ran high. 71% of respondents want government involvement in AI, including 79% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans.

Asked how to keep AI development steered toward humanity’s interest, 47% backed holding companies legally liable for harm. Another 44% wanted safety prioritized over growth.

Anthropic plans to repeat the Anthropic Public Record as AI adoption deepens. The early reading shows a public eager for breakthroughs yet skeptical of the firms building them.

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