February 17, 2026
Date: February 17, 2026
A YouGov poll conducted for The Economist, using a representative sample of Americans, found that 63% of respondents believe AI will decrease the number of jobs available in the United States. Only 7% believe AI will increase jobs. Twelve percent expect no effect. On trust, 58% say they do not trust AI much at all; 35% trust it a fair amount or a great deal. On economic impact, 45% believe AI will have a mostly negative effect on the economy overall, against 16% who say mostly positive. On investment, 54% think companies are currently investing too much in AI. On usage, 63% of Americans report having used AI at least once, but only 23% say they use it regularly. The numbers have been stable since the end of summer 2025 — they do not reflect a panic response to the 2026 model releases or the software sector selloff. The anxiety is settled opinion, distributed across age groups and political affiliations, though younger adults are more likely to use and trust AI and Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to trust it. In all groups, pessimism dominates.
For civic leaders, workforce developers, business owners, and educators in the Coachella Valley: the 63% figure is not a headline to dismiss. It represents the operating environment for every AI adoption initiative, workforce training program, and technology investment in the valley. More than six in ten residents, employees, customers, and voters in this market enter any AI conversation from a position of job-loss anxiety rather than opportunity framing. The 23% regular usage rate — which includes passive AI exposure through Gmail autocomplete and Instagram filters — means that fewer than one in four residents has experienced AI as a genuine productivity tool. That gap between anxiety and familiarity is the core challenge for local AI literacy initiatives. The AICV and SunshineFM thesis — that building AI fluency before displacement pressure arrives is the valley’s primary strategic window — is validated by this data. The valley’s institutional leadership class trends toward the 7% who believe AI will create jobs. That belief, if not paired with active workforce preparation, is not optimism. It is exposure.
The poll’s stability since summer 2025 is the most important methodological note. These numbers did not spike after the February model releases, the software sector selloff, or the viral spread of the Something Big Is Happening essay documented in the February 11 brief. The anxiety predates 2026 and reflects sustained exposure to AI news over 18 to 24 months without a corresponding increase in personal AI experience that would contextualize the threat. The disconnect the poll documents — AI is a toy for most people yet they believe it will eliminate their jobs — maps precisely to the pattern SunshineFM has observed across its 2025 workshop cohorts: workshop participants who had not used paid AI tools defaulted to fear framing regardless of their industry or education level, while those with hands-on experience at depth moved toward agency framing within a single session. The implication for the valley’s workforce development institutions is that the intervention that moves people from the 63% to the 7% is not information — it is structured experience.