According to the Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index report, drawing on a 2024 Pew Research Centre survey of 5,410 US adults and 1,013 AI experts, a gap exists between public and expert optimism about AI's societal impact across nearly every domain measured.
The divergence is most pronounced in medical care, K–12 education, jobs (30% gap), and the economy. In arts and entertainment, the gap is around 28 percentage points while when the environment and the criminal justice system are taken in consideration the data show smaller but consistent differences.
Narrow gaps are prevalent on the other hand in domains tied to trust and social cohesion. Low levels of optimism are shared both by experts and the public. For elections, 9% of adults and 11% of experts anticipate positive effects, while optimism on AI effects on the news are 10% and 18% respectively.
Large gaps in expectation in the first mentioned topics invite two readings. Experts and the public may be operating from incompatible priors, or both groups share biases informing their position. Either way, the data make a case for structured dialogue between the two.
Mutual legibility should be here the end goal, making disagreement productive rather than inert. Without it, expert optimism and public scepticism will continue to develop in parallel, informed by separate reference points and with limited capacity to correct each other.
Source: Stanford HAI, AI Index Report 2026, Figure 9.2.1. Survey data: Pew Research Centre (2025).