I think Monmouth’s question is not exactly about whether the public believe AI to be an existential threat. They asked: ”How worried are you that machines with artificial intelligence could eventually pose a threat to the existence of the human race – very, somewhat, not too, or not at all worried?” The 55% you cite is those who said they were “Very worried” or “somewhat worried.”
Like the earlier YouGov poll, this conflates an affective question (how worried are you) with a cognitive question (what do you believe will happen). That’s why we deliberately split these in our own polling, which cited Monmouth’s results, and also asked about explicit probability estimates in our later polling which we cited above.
In 2015, one survey found 44% of the American public would consider AI an existential threat. In February 2023 it was 55%.
I think Monmouth’s question is not exactly about whether the public believe AI to be an existential threat. They asked:
”How worried are you that machines with artificial intelligence could eventually pose a
threat to the existence of the human race – very, somewhat, not too, or not at all worried?” The 55% you cite is those who said they were “Very worried” or “somewhat worried.”
Like the earlier YouGov poll, this conflates an affective question (how worried are you) with a cognitive question (what do you believe will happen). That’s why we deliberately split these in our own polling, which cited Monmouth’s results, and also asked about explicit probability estimates in our later polling which we cited above.