Public have more fear than hope on AI and future of work, study finds

Seven in 10 of the UK public are worried about the economic impacts of AI, six in 10 think it will eliminate more jobs than it creates, half think its impact will be worse than a normal recession - and one in five think it will create civil unrest.

People are particularly worried about the impacts on entry-level jobs and young people more generally: nearly six in 10 agree with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's 2025 prediction that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.

New research by King's College London's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Policy Institute finds that while fear of AI's impact on jobs and society is widespread and cuts across every group, there is somewhat less concern about the impact on people's own jobs, and some groups are more excited about the positive impacts, particularly employers, men generally and male undergraduate students in particular.

The findings are being launched at the King's AI Summit: Workforce Futures on 19-20 May, where Baroness Martha Lane-Fox and Dame Chi Onwurah MP will speak alongside senior leaders from industry, academia, policy and the media to address urgent questions about the impact of AI on the future of work.

The study, the first wave of a major new tracker on attitudes to AI and The Future of Work, surveyed four groups: a 2,000 representative sample of the general public; a 1,000 sample of young people aged 16-29; 1,000 university students; and 500 employers.

General Attitudes to AI

• Half of the public (48%) would rather avoid AI, 41% are afraid of it and only 24% think it's positive for humanity, compared with 39% who disagree
• Despite this, more say they will (43%), rather than won't (26%) use it in the future - and men (30%), university students (43%) and particularly male university students (52%) say it is a positive for humanity.
• The majority of parents of 11-to-29-year-olds have not engaged with their children on AI - though around three in 10 have discussed career implications and encouraged their children how to use AI tools.

AI and the Future of Work

• Seven in 10 workers (69%) are worried about the economic impact of AI job losses - and this concern is just as strong among employers (64%).
• Most of the public (57%) think AI will lead to widespread unemployment, with only 17% believing it will create as many or more jobs - compared with nearly half of employers (48%) who take that more optimistic view.
• One in five (22%) believe AI will eliminate jobs fast enough to cause civil unrest - rising to a third among university students (34%).
• Most of the public (56%) and employers (59%) agree with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's 2025 prediction that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within 5 years.
• The public are much less convinced by the World Economic Forum prediction that AI will create twice as many jobs as it displaces by 2030: only 25% agree, although employers are again more positive (47%).
• The majority of all groups predict that AI's economic benefits will mainly go to wealthy investors and large companies, rather than workers or society as a whole (65% of the public and 58% of employers).
• There is, however, some optimism: 69% of employers are excited about new job opportunities opening up as a result of AI, as are most university students (56%). However, only 35% of workers and 28% of the overall public feel the same.
• And, again more positively, most workers are not worried about AI replacing their own job (55%) - although one in 5 graduate workers (19%) are very worried.

How AI is Already Affecting Society and Work

• People are much more likely to think that other people's ability to think has been negatively affected by AI (60% think this is the case) than their own ability (only 27% think this about themselves).
• Male university students are the most confident that AI is improving their ability to think for themselves (41%) - and female university students are most likely to think it's worsening (46%).
• Nine in 10 students (89%) who use AI for their studies have encountered problems with it - most commonly factual errors (37%) and made-up sources (31%) - with this causing a serious or moderate problem for 45% of them.
• The public underestimate AI's current reach into the workforce: people guess that 35% of UK workers are in jobs with tasks that AI could potentially perform or enhance, while, the International Monetary Fund estimates that it's twice this at 70%.[i]
• When asked about AI's main impact on jobs, employers are much more likely to say it is mainly assisting workers (56%) than replacing them (12%), in contrast with public who are more likely to say that AI is replacing workers (32%) than assisting them (24%).
• Half of workers who use AI (47%) say it has made no real difference to whether they are better or worse at their job - in contrast to employers, where nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say they seen at least modest improvements in productivity.
• A fifth of employers (22%) have already made roles redundant or reduced hiring because of AI - rising to 29% among large organisations.
• Almost two thirds (64%) of employers say investors, shareholders or senior leadership are encouraging them to use AI - with fewer than one in 10 (9%) saying they are discouraged
• Despite the growth of AI, 8 in 10 current university students (78%) would still choose to do a degree - but 3 in 10 (30%) would switch to a different subject

How well prepared are we?

• People see schools (35%), the government (34%) and universities/colleges (26%) as most responsible for ensuring young people are prepared for changes to the world of work.
• Six in 10 university students (60%) think universities CAN prepare them for AI - but only 36% say they ARE being prepared.
• More generally, only one in 5 (20%) agree the educational system is preparing young people for a world shaped by AI.
• There is strong public appetite for intervention: majorities back government-guaranteed retraining (53%), an AI retraining tax on companies (53%), and close regulation of AI firms, even if it slows down development and innovation (66%).
• If AI delivers productivity gains, more people would rather see them reflected in higher pay than shorter hours - this is strongest among employers (62%) and university students (53%)

The public are broadly negative about AI - but expect to use it anyway

Four in 10 (41%) of the public say they are afraid of AI, and only 24% think it is positive for humanity, compared with 39% who disagree. Almost half (48%) say they would rather avoid AI-based technologies altogether. Around a quarter to a third say they neither agree nor disagree with these statements, suggesting public opinion remains highly unsettled.

The gender gap is pronounced. Women are more likely to disagree than agree that AI is positive for humanity (44% vs 18%), positive for the UK (34% vs 23%), and that AI will improve their lives (41% vs 22%). Men are more evenly divided, and on whether AI is positive for the UK are slightly more likely to agree (33%) than disagree (29%).

University students are more positive than the wider public, with 47% saying AI is positive for the UK and 43% that it is positive for humanity, compared with just 28% and 24% of the general public respectively. But the gender gap persists even among students: a majority of male students believe AI is positive for both the UK (58%) and humanity (52%), while only 38% and 39% of female students agree.

Despite broadly negative views, more people agree (43%) than disagree (26%) that they will use AI in the future, suggesting that people are making pragmatic choices even where their attitudes remain sceptical.

Real concern about the future impact of AI on jobs and society

Worry about the economic impact of AI-driven job losses is widespread and remarkably consistent: 69% of workers, 68% of university students and 63% of employers all express concern. A majority (57%) believe AI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates, leading to widespread unemployment.

One in five (22%) go further, saying AI will eliminate jobs fast enough to cause civil unrest - a share that rises to a third (34%) among university students.

If AI does lead to widespread job losses, half (50%) the public say the economic consequences would be worse than a normal recession, because AI would keep improving and taking more jobs before workers could recover. University students are the most pessimistic, with 56% taking this view.

Looking ahead five years, the public's expectations of AI's role in the job market darken considerably: while 32% currently say AI is mainly replacing workers, this rises to 47% when asked about the situation in five years' time. Employers remain far more optimistic, with 49% expecting AI to be mainly assisting rather than replacing staff (23%) even in five years.

Across all groups, around six in 10 predict that AI's economic benefits will flow mainly to wealthy investors and large companies. Just 7% of the public think the benefits will be shared fairly across society.

People are less worried about their own job than jobs in general

Despite the scale of general concern, people are noticeably less worried about AI's impact on their own job. A majority of workers (55%) say they are not worried about their own job being replaced by AI. However, 38% are worried, including 16% who are very worried. Graduate workers (45%) are more likely than non-graduates (34%) to express concern about their own role.

University students show the same pattern of anxiety about their futures more broadly: while 8 in 10 would still go to university (77%), 30% say they would choose a different undergraduate degree given the growth of AI, and 12% say they would choose not to go to university at all. A majority (60%) expect AI will have made the job market much tougher for them by the time they graduate.

Do we know what's already happened to jobs?

The public have a reasonably accurate sense of recent declines in entry-level job vacancies, with nearly half (48%) saying the number of advertised vacancies has decreased since 2022 - broadly in line with the reality. In June 2025, Azuna reported a 32% decline in entry-level roles since the launch of ChatGPT, and Indeed reported a 33% year-on-year drop in graduate jobs advertised. However, university students - the group most directly affected - are more than twice as likely as the overall public to incorrectly say vacancies have increased (19% vs 9%).

When asked what proportion of UK workers are in jobs AI could potentially perform or enhance, the public's median guess is 35%. The International Monetary Fund's estimate is 70% - twice as high - reflecting the large role of the service sector in the UK compared with other advanced economies. Workers, young people and university students guess only slightly higher at 40%.

The most common view on what has driven the decline in entry-level vacancies is that no single factor is to blame, with 31% of the public citing a combination of all causes. However, university students are nearly twice as likely as the wider public to single out AI as the main factor (19% vs 10%).

How workers and university students are using AI

Three-quarters (77%) of university students use AI at least a few times a month, compared with 46% of workers. More than one in four students (27%) use AI daily or almost daily. Students use AI most commonly to help write or edit text (36%), gather and summarise information (32%), and prepare for exams (31%).

But almost nine in 10 students (85%) who use AI say they have encountered problems with AI-generated content, compared with two-thirds (65%) of workers who use AI. The most common problems for both groups are factual errors or inaccuracies (37% students, 31% workers) and made-up sources, quotes or statistics (31% and 19%). Fewer than half of students (43%) say they usually or always check and verify AI output before using it.

How employers are using AI

Almost all employers (92%) are already using AI in some area of their organisation. More than half (55%) use it for data analysis, and two in five for research (40%) and administrative tasks (39%). The overwhelming majority (86%) say AI has led to productivity improvements, with significant and modest improvements reported in equal measure (43% each). Increasing productivity is the most common reason given for AI adoption (63%), comfortably ahead of improving quality or accuracy (50%).

Employers who have seen productivity gains most commonly say AI has freed staff up for higher-value work (40%) or enabled further investment in AI (39%). But a fifth of all employers (22%) say they have already made roles redundant or reduced hiring specifically because of AI - a figure that rises with organisation size, from 9% of small employers to 29% of large ones.

Almost nine in 10 employers (88%) say they are confident they understand how their employees are using AI at work. The biggest reported barrier to wider adoption is concern about errors and bias (35%), followed by the cost of implementation (30%) and lack of relevant skills (25%).

How well prepared are we - and what should be done?

Just one in five (20%) believe the education system is preparing young people well for a world shaped by AI. Almost half of the public (49%) say young people should prioritise vocational and technical careers over university as better protection from AI - a view shared by two-thirds of employers (67%).

Public appetite for government intervention is strong. Two-thirds (66%) say AI companies should be closely regulated even if it slows development. Majorities across all groups back both government-guaranteed retraining for workers displaced by AI (53%) and a tax on companies that replace workers with AI to fund retraining (53%), though employers are the most resistant to the latter, with 43% opposing it.

A clear majority (58%) of workers say they should benefit from AI productivity gains through higher pay. A similar proportion of employers (58%) agree in principle, though 36% say companies should be free to keep the financial gains.

Professor Elena Simperl, Director of The King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence, King's College London, said:

"These findings tell us something important: the British public isn't asking us to slow down on AI, they're asking us to do it better. People want these tools, they want more of them, and they've used them enough to know where they fall short. Employers see creative thinking as the top benefit AI can offer, ahead of productivity, but the public and the experts both doubt that today's tools deliver this. That puts a real onus on those of us building and deploying AI to make systems that genuinely support learning, creativity, and critical thinking, and honestly, too few people in the sector are working seriously on this. Moreover, women seem to be more cautious about AI than men. That should make us ask who we are designing for, and who is being left out of the conversation."

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of The Policy Institute at King's College London, said:

"The public, workers, young people and university students are watching the rapid development of AI with more fear than excitement, with real concern for what it will do to jobs, particularly at entry levels, and, therefore, the prospects for our young people and the economy in general.

"This is perhaps no surprise when key figures, such as Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei predicted that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within 5 years. Amodei has since painted a more optimistic picture of the labour market adapting and creating new opportunities. However, the public are much less convinced about similar claims: only a quarter agree with the World Economic Forum that AI will create twice as many jobs globally as it will eliminate by 2030.

"This, therefore, is a vision that will need to be explained, and demonstrated, to the public. It is still early days, and our baseline study shows that many don't yet have firm views or much direct experience of AI's impact - but that's likely to change quickly, and we'll need to outline clear plans on how we will adapt and support people in the transition.

"On that, the public's instinct is move more carefully, with the majority favouring regulation and protection of jobs over fast adoption, alongside clear government and employer-backed plans for retraining. People mostly look to the government, schools and universities to help our young people adapt, but there is clearly much more to do here: for example, while a majority of university students say their university can prepare them well for an AI-shaped job market, only 36% say they currently are being well prepared."

Dr Bouke Klein Teeselink, Lecturer in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, King's College London, said:

"This survey gives a really interesting window into how British students, workers, and employers feel about AI. Some of the main concerns held by the public, such as fewer job openings, a contraction in entry-level roles, and increased pressure on white-collar work, echo what I find in my own research on AI and the UK labour market. But none of these effects is fixed. With the right training, policies, and institutional support, there is a clear path forward to a more hopeful future, with rising productivity, broader opportunity, higher incomes, and faster scientific progress."

Study details
Fieldwork was carried out by Opinium across 16-29 April 2026, consisting of four studies: a nationally representative sample of 2,000 UK adults aged 16+ (weighted on age, gender, education, region, ethnicity, work status, 2024 vote, EU referendum vote, and political attention); a sample of 1,002 GB adults aged 16-29 (weighted on age, gender, region, ethnicity, work status, and education); a sample of 1,000 GB university students (weighted by gender, age, and course level); and 506 UK employers (decision-makers in UK businesses with 11+ employees).

[i] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market#fn:6