Artificial intelligence has crossed a psychological threshold in the United States: concerns about what it could do to politics and the economy now rank among Americans’ 10 biggest fears. Chapman University’s 12th annual Survey of American Fears places AI’s potential damage to the political process at No. 3, with 51.9% of respondents saying they are afraid or very afraid, while 49.7% fear it could hurt the economy. The findings mark AI’s first appearance in the survey’s top 10.
The results put technology anxiety alongside more familiar national fears. Government corruption remains No. 1 at 61.1%, followed by the possibility of the United States becoming involved in another world war at 58%. Fear of a loved one becoming seriously ill reached 51.8%, while 50.6% worried about someone they love dying. The war concern climbed from sixth place in 2025 to second this year, and biological warfare and terrorist attacks also entered the top tier amid broader anxiety about international conflict.
Chapman and NORC at the University of Chicago collected the data from 1,221 adults surveyed online between April 7 and April 21, 2026. The sample came from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, designed to represent U.S. households, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.79 percentage points. This year was the first time researchers included several questions specifically focused on artificial intelligence, making the new rankings a baseline for tracking how public sentiment changes as the technology becomes more embedded in daily life.
The survey suggests that Americans are not reacting to every emerging technology in the same way. Respondents expressed more hope than fear about abundant clean energy, life-extension medicine, and humans working alongside robots in manufacturing. By contrast, continuous employee monitoring, genetically engineered babies, and AI romantic partners produced substantially more anxiety than optimism. The pattern indicates that people may be more comfortable with technologies framed as expanding human abilities than with systems associated with surveillance, intimacy, or decisions traditionally controlled by people.
Familiarity may also soften some of the apprehension, although the data do not prove that using AI causes people to become less fearful. Forty-six percent of respondents who use AI at least weekly feared that it could damage the political process, compared with 55% of those who never use it. That gap could reflect greater understanding, different kinds of users, or other factors rather than a direct effect of exposure.
For the entertainment and games industries, the results point to a public mood that is more complicated than simple enthusiasm or rejection. Audiences may welcome AI-assisted tools when they help people create, build, or solve problems, while remaining wary of automation that threatens jobs, manipulates information, monitors behavior, or reshapes civic life. Chapman’s survey will likely give researchers a useful annual yardstick as those distinctions become harder to avoid in everything from political campaigns and workplaces to blockbuster filmmaking and game development.
