Nearly nine in 10 Americans said they think foreign governments will use artificial intelligence (AI) to attack the U.S. in the next two decades, according to a new Gallup poll.
Some 87 percent of U.S. adults said it is somewhat or very likely that the technology will be used to target the country, the Monday poll found.
Despite this, Americans have mixed views on what AI means for national security, with 41 percent saying the technology will leave the county worse off, while another 37 percent believe it will be better for national security.
Older adults skew more positive, with half of those 65 and up saying U.S. national security would be better off with AI, according to the poll.
Those between the ages of 40 and 64 are less optimistic. Some 42 percent said the U.S. would be worse off, while 37 percent were of the opposite mindset.
The youngest age groups were the most critical of the technology, with 46 percent of both 18- to 29-year-olds and 30- to 39-year-olds saying it would be worse for national security. Just 26 percent and 30 percent of those two segments, respectively, said it would be better off.
Women, Democrats and non-AI users were also more likely to rate its impact negatively. Forty-four percent of women in the Gallup poll said U.S. national security would be worse off, as did 48 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of those who do not use the technology.
When it comes to the U.S. military’s use of AI weapons, Americans across the board are slightly more skeptical. Some 48 percent said they somewhat or strongly oppose the development of AI-enabled autonomous weapons, while 39 percent said they support it to varying degrees.
However, this dynamic shifts if other countries develop such weapons first, in which case 53 percent back U.S. development.
In other use cases, Americans are more likely to believe AI will be helpful for the military, with 41 percent saying it will mostly improve the ability to detect targets, 38 percent saying it will boost the quality of intelligence analyses and 33 percent saying it will help with the safe and efficient use of weapons.
U.S. adults just barely skew positive on whether AI will improve the quality of the country’s military strategy. Some 28 percent said it would, while 25 percent said it would reduce the quality.
Just under a quarter of Americans said AI would do both equally, while another quarter answered that they didn’t know. This last option was the most popular answer on how AI would impact the quality of military personnel, with 32 percent saying they were unsure.
President Trump has pushed for the U.S. military to speed up its adoption of AI, calling for the country to “aggressively adopt AI within its Armed Forces” in his AI Action Plan.
Several major AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI, received contracts with the Defense Department for up to $200 million in July to boost the agency’s use of the technology.
The Gallup poll was conducted between April 25 and May 5 with 3,128 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
