Poll: Job losses, China threats split GOP on Trump's AI agenda (Politico, 5/2)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/02/poll-trump-voters-skeptical-artificial-intelligence-jobs-00902754

THE POLITICO POLL
Poll: Job losses, China threats split GOP on Trump’s AI agenda
About 3 out of 4 Americans who voted for the president support some form of government oversight on artificial intelligence — even as the Trump administration pushes deregulation.

By Katherine Long
05/02/2026 07:00 AM EDT

President Donald Trump is pushing to deregulate the artificial intelligence industry and make it easier for the technology to develop rapidly. His voters are not fully on board.

New results from The POLITICO Poll find that Trump voters are supportive of government oversight of the industry and split over whether the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, as the technology stokes fears of mass job loss, economic disruption and threats from China.

Only 13 percent of people who voted for Trump in 2024 said the federal government should stay out of regulating AI and let the market decide; about 3 out of 4 Trump supporters wanted the government to either impose strict regulations on the industry or set broad principles for companies to work out. They were torn on the necessity of AI development: 42 percent said the benefits outweigh the risks, another 42 percent said the risks outweigh the benefits and 16 percent said they didn’t know.

The threat of AI replacing human workers is also a major source of tension within the GOP: Trump supporters fear AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates, though non-MAGA Trump voters were more likely to say this (51 percent) than MAGA Trump voters were (42 percent).

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Democrats HAVE to use this issue.

Republicans are so wary of AI that a slight majority of them would prefer to have AI be safe and well regulated, even if that means China develops AI faster. 54% of non-MAGA Trump voters feel that way, and MAGA Trump voters are split on this 42% to 42%. Those are astonishing numbers for conservatives.

Dems can't afford to not focus on current and potential harms from AI. They should be focusing on them anyway, because the harm done by AI already - from theft by corporations to wrecking education, causing unemployment, and worsening wealth inequality, disinformation, deepfake porn and environmental damage - are all issues that all liberals should be concerned about.

Being "weak on AI" will hurt Dems. Badly.

And btw, being weak on AI includes being infatuated with AI slop.

I don't care how amusing or convenient it might be to use AI to generate instant fake art. It looks bad. It looks especially bad in a liberal forum where people are supposed to care about workers vs. corporations. Seeing a lot of AI slop here will turn off potential DU members who are creatives or who care that those handy AI tools - the ones that let people with no skills generate images, video and music - were trained on all the work by real creatives that the AI companies could steal. None of our politicians should be posting AI slop, either. Every bit of AI slop is a thumbs-up for the AI bros aligned with Trump...and they don't care if people imagine they're accomplishing something using AI to mock Trump, because (1) they aren't accomplishing anything with AI slop, and (2) the ability to create that AI slop can be shut off at any time by the AI bros - and would have been shut off already if the Trump regime believed anti-Trump AI slop was any kind of threat, instead of a way to keep people playing with AI and wanting AI to be available always so they can play with it. The Trump regime and its allies are much more worried about a single effective anti-Trump late-night host or anti-Trump musician or anti-Trump cartoonist than they are about the millions of pieces of anti-Trump AI slop all over the internet. But that slop will send creatives the message that the people generating the slop don't care about their battle against the AI companies who stole the creatives' work.

Dems need solidarity. And we need rightwingers to be divided...which opposition to AI is already doing for us.