OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a Washington audience on March 11 that artificial intelligence is losing the American public. Speaking at BlackRock's summit, he put it flatly: AI is not popular in the US right now.
He's not wrong. An NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted in late February and early March found that 57% believe the risks of AI outweigh its benefits. Only 26% of voters view AI positively, while 46% hold a negative opinion. To put that in perspective: AI's favorability ranks below ICE, below Donald Trump, below Kamala Harris. The only things less popular are the Democratic Party and Iran.
The scapegoat problem
Altman's diagnosis of why Americans have soured on AI is interesting, mostly because it requires him to argue that his own product is less powerful than people fear. Data centers are getting blamed for electricity price hikes, he said. Companies that lay people off cite AI whether the technology actually caused the cuts or not.
He's been making this argument for weeks. At an India summit in February, Altman used the term "AI washing," which borrows from the corporate greenwashing playbook: companies slapping an AI label on layoffs that were happening for mundane reasons like cost-cutting or restructuring. An NBER study he was indirectly referencing found that roughly 90% of surveyed executives said AI had zero impact on employment at their companies over the past three years. The Yale Budget Lab reached a similar conclusion using Bureau of Labor Statistics data through late 2025: no significant AI-driven changes in the job market.
But here's the tension. Altman needs corporations to believe AI can replace workers. That's the pitch. That's why companies pay for API access and enterprise subscriptions. So when he tells a room of infrastructure investors that AI is being unfairly blamed for job losses, he's simultaneously undercutting his own sales deck. The man selling the most powerful labor-saving technology in a generation is annoyed that people think it saves too much labor.
So what does he actually want?
Faster adoption. Altman warned that political headwinds and public resistance could cost the US its lead over China. Companies, scientists, and government agencies all need to integrate AI more aggressively, he argued, or other countries will build on someone else's tech stack.
"This is a once in many generation opportunity," Altman said, a phrase that's doing a lot of heavy lifting when 57% of voters aren't buying it. He framed AI as a wealth engine that could rewrite social rules for the better, but then acknowledged in the same appearance that the labor-capital balance is fundamentally shifting. The next few years, he conceded, would be "a painful adjustment."
That admission landed differently than the optimism. Altman is simultaneously asking Americans to embrace AI faster and warning them that the economic disruption will hurt. Both things might be true, but packaging them together at an investor conference mostly reads as: absorb the pain so we can build out our infrastructure.
The numbers behind the backlash
The NBC poll's demographic breakdown is worth noting. Voters aged 18 to 34 are the most hostile toward AI, with a net favorability score of minus 44. Women under 50 are close behind at minus 41. The only groups with net positive views: men over 50 and upper-income voters, both barely above zero.
That 56% of Americans use AI tools despite disliking them is the more revealing stat. Usage is up from 48% in late 2024. People are adopting the products and resenting them at the same time, which is a familiar dynamic in tech (see: every social media platform) but a genuinely uncomfortable one for a company pursuing a $110 billion funding round.
Neither political party has figured out how to capitalize. Only 20% of voters trust Republicans on AI policy, 19% trust Democrats, and a third say neither party is equipped to handle it. AI policy is, as one Republican pollster involved in the survey put it, politically up for grabs heading into the 2026 midterms.
Altman's next public appearance on the topic may need a different tone. The infrastructure investor crowd at BlackRock will nod along to warnings about Chinese competition. Voters dealing with higher electricity bills and layoff notices require a harder sell.
