FOCUS POLL: Americans on AI, In Their Own Words
Artificial intelligence is reshaping American life faster than most people feel prepared for, and public opinion is still catching up. Slingshot Strategies’ new “focus poll”—combining the depth of a focus group with the scale of a national poll—takes the temperature on where Americans stand on AI. The results reveal how they feel about AI broadly, which companies and tools they trust (or don’t trust) and why, what about the technology scares and excites them most, and what they think about AI's expanding role in war and the economy.
Read the full memo here.
Conventional polling registers public opinion as a show of hands. The “focus poll” methodology captures the voices behind them. For this survey, fielded from March 23 to April 3, 2026, 1,087 U.S. adults were prompted with open-ended audio questions about AI, with their responses captured by microphone. These responses were then transcribed, categorized, and analyzed. This approach breaks down broad sentiment and expands understanding of it. Through in-depth, verbal responses, we see the language respondents reach for on their own — the concerns, comparisons, contradictions, and ambivalences that a multiple-choice question would flatten into a single data point, and crucially, the issues, stories, opinions, and feelings they raise without being led.
“Too much polling feels and sounds the same, it produces undifferentiated results too often, and the findings have become less and less interesting,” said Slingshot Strategies Founding Partner Evan Roth Smith. “So we’re going back to basics: let people speak in their own words, at whatever length they want, on the topics they’re actually thinking about, at scale. The result is the nuance and granularity of a focus group married to the analytical robustness and statistical significance of a poll.”
“On a fast-developing issue like AI, no multiple-choice question or pollster-crafted test is going to provide actual insights into what people are feeling in their own lives. As you’ll see, what respondents tell us in this focus poll is far more interesting, and often more surprising, than anything we could have elicited using a traditional approach.”
KEY FINDINGS
Americans are using AI and see its potential, but concern is widespread. 33%, a plurality, fall in the "concerned but mixed" camp. The most common worries: lack of regulation, job loss, and the erosion of truth through misinformation and deepfakes. A few respondents independently noted that even the builders of AI themselves don't seem to feel in control.
"AI—it's scary and intriguing at the same time. I'm using it more and more at work and for entertainment. It's quick, it's come a long way in a short time. I think in the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous, but for now, I'm enjoying having information made available instantly."— Man, 52, Democrat, white, OH
"AI is fine. It is really hard to do anything without it sometimes. It's really helpful but it also can be very dangerous if we don't use it in the correct way. So I'm here for it now but I don't know how much longer I will be able to support it."—Man, 28, Republican, Hispanic, NJ
Most respondents have little to say about specific AI companies because they don't know enough to differentiate them. Where opinions formed, they centered on ethical conduct, data privacy and surveillance practices, and whether companies prioritize profit over public good. Anthropic drew positive mentions from several respondents for its stance on military and surveillance uses. Palantir and xAI drew the most negative mentions.
“I don't think any company really thinks of whether they should. Just because they can with AI doesn't mean they should, but they don't think that way."—Man, 41, Republican, Hispanic, CO
“I think many of these companies are trying to do good things regarding artificial intelligence, but obviously profit is their bottom line, so they are self-serving in terms of what is good for the corporation. So that could mean that safety mechanisms would be shortcut, decisions would be made based on what's good for profit, not necessarily what's good for humanity.” — Woman, 75, white, Democrat, NJ
"Actually, yes I do have strong feelings. When I heard about the Anthropic maker of Claude refusing to bow down to the demands of the White House, it made me more positive about them than any of the others. I don't want an AI maker that will bow down to anybody."— Woman, 62, Democrat, white, OH
"I have a lot of negative feelings about these companies, specifically OpenAI because of ChatGPT and Palantir because of the way that they are using their cameras to police our communities. It is embarrassing how we are letting them affect our America."—Man, 22, Democrat, white, KS
Anthropic's refusal to cooperate with the government on domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons drew genuine praise across party lines—with some respondents treating the subsequent blacklisting as validation rather than punishment. Broader opposition to AI in warfare, and to domestic surveillance of Americans especially, was the dominant note throughout.
"OpenAI are traitors to humanity and Anthropic should get a medal." —Man, 27, Democrat, Black, OH
"I was very impressed by their ethics and morality. I think there may be a time when AI tools will benefit the military, but I'm very concerned. It's like 1984 in reality. I'd certainly be more interested in using Claude because of their ethics." — Woman, 79, Democrat, white, KS
Strong feelings about Elon Musk—in both directions—dominated responses to his role in the industry. Whether respondents ended up positive or negative on xAI’s Grok had less to do with the product than with how they already felt about its owner. On the incident involving Grok’s sharing of sexualized images of women and minors, responses were more viscerally negative than anywhere else in the survey, and the reaction crossed normal dividing lines.
"I think that anything Elon Musk owns is problematic. He is hugely intelligent, but he is also a deeply flawed, self-serving human being. His intelligence is outweighed by his avarice and hubris."—Woman, 75, Democrat, white, NJ
“I am literally horrified. This is ridiculous. This is, oh my god, I have no words. 23,000 images of children. Oh my god, they should all be in jail. Whoever, Elon Musk, all of them, this whole company, should all be behind bars. This makes no sense. This is ridiculous. This is disgusting.” — Woman, 43, Democrat, Black, LA
On AI in war, the gap between abstract and specific framing mattered. When asked about AI in warfare generally, voters leaned opposed. But when presented with a specific scenario—AI processing targeting data in Iran—a plurality of respondents expressed support, drawing a distinction between AI as an analytical tool and AI as a decision-maker. The most powerful dissents invoked civilian casualties, with several respondents independently citing the bombing of a girls' school as evidence that AI targeting is already failing.
“I don't trust AI being used in war. If you think about some of the movies that we've seen come out of Hollywood, it never ends well. So, I am totally against AI being used in war.” — Woman, 62, Democrat, white, FL
"In practice, it seems like a good idea, but obviously they already fucked up that one time using that technology, so who knows what other civilians could be killed because of the AI's calculations."—Man, 34, Republican, white, MI
"I think that's the point of using AI — to achieve things quicker, to get things done quicker so we're not at war for long periods of time and to minimize the risk of American lives."— Man, 35, Democrat, white, FL
The responses on job displacement were among the most personally specific in the survey. People connected the question directly to their own work, their households, and their sense of economic stability. The dominant feeling was fear, with some calling for regulation and a smaller share expressing resignation that the process is already too far along to stop.
"If AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment, I don't think that robots buy consumer goods. So if we create mass unemployment, the whole economy collapses."—Woman, 79, Democrat, white, MI
"I'm not a huge fan of artificial intelligence, mostly because I'm a musician and an artist, and I don't like how companies are able to use past works that artists have done and not pay current artists. I also don't like how AI is taking people's jobs and funneling the money upward."— Man, 39, Democrat, white, CA
“I've already noticed AI taking over paying jobs as is, never mind years from now—right this minute. So it's definitely one of the reasons I haven't been amused by AI from day one.” — Woman, 38, Republican, white, NJ