Substance or Spectacle? AI Use and the Personal-Societal Risk Wedge

Public debate over artificial intelligence ranges between visions of mass labor displacement to the technology being overhyped—from substance to spectacle. Using Wave 119 of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, I document a large spread between how workers assess AI’s impact on others and on themselves: nearly three-in-four workers are concerned about workers generally but only one-in-three translate that worry into personal concern, less than half. Yet, heavy AI users translate societal concern into personal concern markedly more than light users, with no change in the level of social concern. The workers best placed to dismiss AI as spectacle instead judge its substance for themselves, suggesting the comfortable gap between social and personal exposure most workers keep today is a lagging indicator, held in place by inexperience rather than by any durable fact about their exposure.