Forget AI ending humanity; what people are really worried about is AI taking their jobs — even if that's not exactly what's happening
Young people have concerns
by https://www.techradar.com/author/lance-ulanoff · TechRadarOpinion By Lance Ulanoff Published 16 September 2026
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The narrative that AI might end humanity in a decade has monopolized public discourse, so much so that we may be ignoring more prosaic, immediate AI concerns like jobs.
I'm neither an AI doomer nor a booster. I believe generative AI has tremendous potential, especially for helping us solve our most difficult problems, like cancer and maybe resources and climate change. I'm also a realist and know that AI development and growth are clearly outstripping our ability to properly manage it.
We should never have a situation where we do not know how or why an AI did something. The Hugging Face incident should be a call to action. In lieu of regulation (which the White House will block), self-regulation with third-party oversight is in order.
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The reality, though, is that AI development is unlikely to slow down or stop. The consequences will keep coming, and people have feelings.
Job worries are so real
Earlier this year, a Pew Research study found that more than half of people under 30 are more concerned than excited about AI. The number hasn't jumped wildly in recent years, but contrast that with the rapidly shrinking number of people who are "More excited than concerned" about AI (down from 11% in 2024 to 9% in 2026). The middle group of those who balance concern with excitement also shrank a bit to 37% of those surveyed. That same survey also found that 71 percent of Americans believe AI will lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years (if doomers are right, this may be less of a worry).
Those sentiments are now echoed by a new Gallup Work and Education survey, which found a sharp rise in the number of college graduates who fear tech job displacement (jumping from 25% to 29% in one year).
Gallup already found rising fears of AI job displacement going back to 2023 when the "concern among college graduates rose sharply, from 8% in 2021 to 20% in 2023, as generative AI tools such as ChatGPT emerged."
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