What 81,000 People
Want from AI
The largest multilingual qualitative AI study ever conducted
How they did it
Anthropic interviewed 80,508 people across 159 countries using AI-led adaptive conversations in 70 languages. All responses de-identified before analysis.
Nine visions for AI
What AI has actually delivered
Top 13 concerns
People aren't divided into optimists and pessimists. The same individuals experience both hope and fear.
Five tensions: light and shade
Regional patterns
- View AI as an opportunity ladder
- Focus on entrepreneurship and education
- Less worried about jobs (17-18%)
- Highest optimism scores overall
- More cautious overall stance
- Higher governance concerns
- Privacy is a top priority
- Job worry peaks at 24%
- Uniquely personal concerns
- Cognitive atrophy worry at 18%
- Meaning loss concern at 13%
- Focus on individual impact
Meaningful AI deployment means addressing what "AI going well" looks like, grounded in actual user aspirations, not abstract risk discussions.
Self-reported aspirations don't predict actual behaviour. 81,000 people saying they want 'professional excellence' from AI tells us what they think they should want, not what they'll actually do. The gap between stated and revealed preferences is where most AI predictions go wrong.
The most honest finding might be that hope and fear coexist. Everything else is aspiration.
Anthropic asked 81,000 people what they want from AI. Jasmine Bina asked what AI is doing to us. One is the survey. The other is the diagnosis. Read them together and you see the full emotional landscape of the AI transition.
What this means for builders
The people using AI most are also the people most worried about it. The companies that win will be the ones that take both sides seriously. The research is clear: people don't want cheerleading or doom. They want AI that delivers on their actual aspirations while honestly addressing their concerns.
Five things to remember
People want AI to make them better at their jobs, not replace them. Professional excellence is the top aspiration.
Productivity is the killer app. 32% cite it as the primary benefit they already experience.
Hallucinations are concern number one. Reliability is the single biggest barrier to trust.
Hope and fear coexist in the same person. The optimist/pessimist binary is false.
Where opportunity is lowest, optimism is highest. Developing regions see AI as a ladder, not a threat.
Thank you.
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