Global poll shifts attention toward China
China is increasingly being viewed as the world’s leading artificial intelligence power, according to a new international survey that suggests the United States no longer enjoys unquestioned dominance in the global AI race.
The poll was conducted by U.K.-based research firm Public First and surveyed more than 18,000 people across 15 countries. It found that perceptions of AI leadership vary sharply by country, with China gaining ground in much of the world.
U.S. still leads in some countries
Just over half of American respondents still identified the United States as the dominant AI superpower. Majorities in Japan, India and Vietnam also said they viewed the U.S. as the leader in artificial intelligence.
However, respondents in the other 11 countries surveyed saw China as the leading AI power. That group included close U.S. allies such as France, Canada and the United Kingdom. In Germany, only 23% of respondents said the United States was dominant in AI.
Public First distinction noted
The polling firm Public First has no connection to Public First Action, a political group backed by artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
Washington weighs regulation and competition
The findings arrive as lawmakers in Washington debate how much federal oversight artificial intelligence should face. Policymakers are weighing two competing risks: too much regulation could slow innovation and allow China to pull ahead, while too little oversight could create serious harm for civil society.
President Donald Trump framed AI leadership as a global power issue.
“We are leading China by a lot,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday. “Whoever leads that is going to really lead the world, to a large extent.”
Sacks warns against heavy oversight
Former White House AI czar David Sacks has argued that excessive regulation could weaken the United States in its competition with China. He specifically criticized proposals for a clearance process for advanced AI models similar to the Food and Drug Administration’s review system for medicines.
“If you try to have an FDA for AI and there are some people who want to go that far, then I think we could lose this AI race to China,” he said on Fox Business last week.
His comments came barely a month after a senior White House economic adviser told the same network that the administration was considering a pre-release safety testing system comparable to the approval process used for pharmaceuticals.
Americans grow more pessimistic on AI
The survey also suggests that the United States may not have a united public appetite to accelerate AI development. Public First asked respondents each year from 2024 to 2026 whether artificial intelligence would make things better or worse for themselves, society and the next generation.
Among U.S. respondents, optimism about AI’s impact on society has weakened. In 2024, 39% said AI would make society better, while 34% said it would make society worse. In 2025, those figures rose slightly to 40% and 36%.
This year, however, only 31% of U.S. respondents said AI would improve society, while 40% said it would make society worse.
Personal optimism also declines
Confidence that AI will improve people’s own lives has also dropped sharply. In 2024, the measure stood at a net positive 15 points. This year, it fell to a net positive 5 points.
Views about the next generation deteriorated even more. Expectations moved from a net positive 10 points to a net negative 4 points.
Young Americans show the sharpest shift
The change was especially clear among American respondents aged 18 to 24. In 2025, young Americans believed AI would improve society by a 4-point margin. One year later, that outlook reversed, with young respondents saying AI would make society worse by a 13-point margin.
Young respondents in the United Kingdom showed a similar pattern. By contrast, countries such as Singapore and India continued to show broad and persistent confidence that AI will have a positive effect on society.
Misinformation and jobs lead concerns
In the United States, the top concerns about artificial intelligence were misinformation, deepfakes and job loss. These anxieties are growing as AI-generated content becomes easier to produce at large scale and spread across online platforms.
Zuckerberg sees a new era for social media
Social media companies are already preparing for a major increase in AI-created material. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described artificial intelligence as the next major stage in the evolution of his platforms.
“Social media has gone through two eras so far. First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly. The second was when we added all the creator content,” he said on an October earnings call. “Now, as AI makes it easier to create and remix content, we’re going to add yet another huge corpus of content on top of those.”
Entry-level jobs fuel labor anxiety
Young adults are also facing a labor market clouded by warnings from leading AI executives. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next one to five years.
Resource concerns rise sharply
The poll also found a major increase in concern about AI’s use of resources, including electricity. In 2024, 52% of respondents said they were worried about resource usage. By 2026, that figure had risen to two out of every three respondents.
Those concerns are closely linked to the rapid expansion of data centers, which require large amounts of power and often depend on water-based cooling systems.
Data center backlash reaches local politics
Local opposition to data centers has already affected elected officials. In one Missouri town, half of the city council was voted out after approving a $6 billion data center.
In Indianapolis, one councilman said his home was shot at one week after a rezoning plan was approved for a data center developer’s project. A note reading “NO DATA CENTERS” was left on his front porch.
Trump asks tech firms to cover power needs
In March, Trump issued a “ratepayer protection pledge” asking major technology companies to supply or pay for their own electricity as they rapidly build computing hubs across the United States.
A race shaped by public trust
The survey points to a broader challenge for the United States: maintaining technological leadership while responding to public unease about AI’s effects on jobs, information, energy use and social stability. As China gains recognition abroad, American policymakers face growing pressure to balance speed, safety and competitiveness.
