The first monthly AI Sentiment Index shows optimism about growth paired with deep skepticism about employment
Americans think artificial intelligence will make the economy bigger. They just don’t think it will make room for them in it.
That split is the headline finding from the first release of the Axios-CivicScience AI Sentiment Index, published Friday. It puts numbers behind a criticism that has trailed the AI boom for a while: that it looks like a growth story without a hiring story.
What the new index measures
The index is a monthly tracker built by Axios and polling firm CivicScience. It scores American opinion across six separate measures.
Four of them cover AI’s effects on quality of life, society, jobs and economic growth. The other two gauge support for continued AI development and for building new data centers.
Respondents broadly expect the technology to lift economic growth. They are far less convinced it will create jobs along the way.
Axios framed the gap as a possible explanation for something that has puzzled the industry. AI is widely described as transformative, yet public sentiment toward it keeps running negative.
The worry shows up in other CivicScience data
The index lines up with ongoing CivicScience survey work on how workers feel about AI.
In that polling, 25% of employed adults say they are “very” concerned about how AI could affect their careers. Among people in technical roles, that figure climbs to 40%.
Concern also extends beyond individual jobs. More than 75% of respondents in CivicScience surveys say they are at least “somewhat” concerned about the spread of generative AI tools.
The broader economic mood offers little cushion. CivicScience’s separate Economic Sentiment Index has sat in a range from the low-to-mid 20s up to the low 30s during 2026.
Background: who is doing the measuring
CivicScience was founded in 2008 and runs large-scale ongoing polling of US consumers. The partnership with Axios turns some of that data into a recurring public gauge focused specifically on AI.
The launch arrives alongside other polling that shows AI opinion splitting along political lines. An Axios Harris Poll released in late October 2026 found diverging partisan views on AI companies.
That survey pointed to different levels of skepticism among Democrats and Republicans. Fears of job displacement were a major driver of the divide.
Because the new index is monthly, its real value will come over time. A single reading is a snapshot. A dozen readings start to look like a trend line that companies, policymakers and investors can watch move.
