In general, what is your personal sentiment towards AI products and companies?

Positive (18%) – "Energy usage, ozone depletion, and other environmental issues aside, people need to understand that AI is happening, it will be ubiquitous, and it will be so quicker than email and the internet was. Those afraid of AI "coming for their jobs" need to embrace the technology as a user and level up. All jobs in the future will involve AI to some extent. whether it be building, implementing, or interacting with AI. It's not if, it's how quickly."

• "AI helps support tasks that require time but don’t require personal relationships. The human quality is still needed to interpret and develop ideas."

Negative (67%) – "The implementation of AI has been full of over promises, missing guardrails, and reckless disregard for the negative impacts on society and the environment, not to mention that it's built on a foundation on intellectual property theft. Is there any wonder there is a backlash?"

• "I am a teacher and I see the immediate impact of AI use to replace thinking and effort in the classroom and even in social conversations. We will have a population incapable of critical thinking and with a total lack of background educational knowledge totally dependent on what AI tells them."

"AI slop online has been reducing the quality of videos, blog posts, opinions pieces everywhere. At work, people relying on AI for all the heavy lifting of preparing work plans are producing poorly made documents, because they do not do the deep thinking required for the crafting of well thought out work plans."

• "I had misgivings very early on about AI and humans notoriously underestimate the unintended consequences of progress. Very surprised that there wasn't a more rapid uproar from artists, writers, singers etc. While the biggest positive may be in the medical field there are just too many possible bad results especially given the motivations and opinions of the "learning models". This isn't even addressing data centers that will need massive resources."

"Can there be positive use cases for AI? Absolutely. What's actually coming down the pipe, though, seems to be theft of IP, job losses (appropriate or not), and a hamhanded push to force communities to just "deal with" the consequences of data centers in their back yards. I'm surprised the backlash has taken this long."

• "I think AI is useful in some instances, but I do not want it intruding in my daily life. I am tired of it always "trying to help" when I'm on the computer. Also, the younger generation needs to learn communication skills, especially how to write. If AI is writing for them, they learn nothing and can't tell what's correct and what's not. If the USA needs to keep up with military AI to keep us safe, so be it. Otherwise, as a society, I think we should be more cautious and use it with a full understanding of its impact."

"Big tech has its eye on the dollar sign, and the public knows it. They haven't invested any resources in pitching the benefits of AI to the public in a meaningful way or developing any significant safety guardrails. They are more concerned about demeaning anyone who voices their concerns and paying people to tout it as revelatory and inevitable. I'm glad to see people pushing back against big tech, who have gotten too comfortable trying to dictate our lives."

Unsure/other (15%) – "I see AI's potential to be a powerful tool, capable of changing problem solving and automation on the same level that email did to communications. My concern is that this tool concentrates power in the hands of whoever is controlling the "algorithm" of it all, and these people have profits as their primary motive, not the benefit of the general population."

• "I use AI pretty frequently in support of my job. I think when applied to daily life appropriately, it can ease common points of stress and make mundane mental tasks less of a burden on the average person. However, there are talks in my community about building a data center within a few miles of where I live, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Although I fully understand the economical and environmental impact of my own AI usage, I'm struggling to work through my cognitive dissonance. I enjoy the benefits of AI, however I do not want to pay for it via taxes and increased water consumption and suffer the various side effects of a data center nearby. What I do feel strongly about is that AI companies should not be allowed to let the public bear the burden of their organization, regardless of location."