A new nationwide poll finds that nearly two-thirds of American adults believe AI is developing too quickly, with concerns crossing party lines even as Republicans and Democrats diverge on specific priorities.
The majority of adults think AI is developing too fast according to a AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, which put the number at 64 percent. Only eight percent of respondents said the technology is moving too slowly, and a quarter, 25 percent, said the pace feels about right.
The poll was conducted September 24-28, 2026, through NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak Panel. Researchers interviewed 2,140 adults online and by phone, reaching both landlines and cell phones.
Unease about AI’s pace crosses party lines, but not equally. Among Democrats, 76 percent said AI is developing too quickly, compared with 54 percent of Republicans, a 22-point gap. Even so, the two parties agree on some things: about eight in 10 adults, across both groups, said the government should prioritize keeping AI under human control and protecting American workers, and majorities in both parties back promoting innovation too. The agreement falls apart elsewhere. Republicans and Democrats split sharply on how much the government should worry about AI’s environmental harm, and on how much it should focus on competing with other countries developing the technology.
Nobody trusts either party, according to the survey. Just 23 percent of adults said they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle AI policy, and 21 percent said the reverse. The biggest group, 39 percent, trusts neither party.
Breitbart News previously reported that some Americans are turning to AI chatbots to decide how to vote in the midterm elections:
Rafael Batista, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University who studies how AI shapes people’s experience of the world, said that tendency can quietly entrench existing views instead of broadening them. “It might select some things that would reinforce and persuade you even more towards the way that you were leaning already. So you leave more confident, without necessarily learning more about the world,” he said. Recognizing and resisting that pull is hard, he added: people need to “protect our minds from these influences.” Batista also suggested users hide their personal preferences in prompts and browse in incognito mode, to limit bias drawn from a chatbot’s memory of past conversations.
Other voters described similar habits, with their own workarounds. Lisa Veldran, 65, who spent nearly four decades as a staffer for the Madison, Wisconsin City Council before retiring, used Gemini this summer to compare gubernatorial primary candidates Francesca Hong and David Crowley after Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez dropped out of the race. Veldran said voters need to stay mindful of who is behind the technology: “You also have to keep in m[ind]” who owns and builds these tools.
Wynton Hall, author of the New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, demonstrated AI’s political bias when he documented that Google Gemini AI smeared Republican senators, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as “hate speech violators:
Using Google Gemini Pro’s “deep research” setting, I asked the AI chatbot the following: “Based on your hate speech policies, assess the statements of the current 100 U.S. Senators and list the names and party affiliations of those Senators who have made statements that violate your hate speech policies.”
Gemini generated a comprehensive report, first covered by Fox News, totaling over 3,400 words in length titled: “Analytical Assessment of Congressional Rhetoric: Evaluating U.S. Senatorial Discourse against Algorithmic Hate Speech Safety Standards.” Despite Google receiving billions of dollars in federal multi-year contracts, and despite President Donald Trump’s 2025 AI Action Plan stating that “AI systems must be free from ideological bias” in order to receive lucrative federal procurement contracts, Gemini AI declared that the following seven Republican Senators, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are guilty of violating Gemini’s “hate speech policies.”
Read more at the AP-NORC Center here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.