Just 8% of Americans aged 50 to 64 told Pew Research they feel more excited than concerned about AI. That 8% is the closest thing this cohort has to optimists — which says plenty about where the rest of the country has landed.
Pew has put the same question to respondents since 2021, an era before ChatGPT existed, when AI mostly meant the thing suggesting what to watch next. The question forces a choice between excitement and concern. Six years on, the latest wave finds Americans at their lowest excitement level yet and tied with their previous high-water mark for concern.
The one group moving the other way
Look at the full sample and 52% now say concern outweighs excitement. That same question drew 37% in 2021.
Pew singles out young adults as the headline result. Among under-30s, 55% land on the more-concerned side — a first for the youngest bracket in this survey, even if other recent polling of young people has pointed in much the same direction.
Still, the 50-to-64 bracket is the one worth dwelling on. It was the only age group in which a majority did not select “more concerned than excited.” And its numbers have fallen, not climbed, across four consecutive surveys: 59% in 2023 — second highest of any group at that point — followed by 56% in 2024 and 52% in 2025.
Don’t mistake this for enthusiasm
An 8% “more excited than concerned” share does not describe a demographic eager to kiss a chatbot. It describes something much closer to a collective shrug. Most of them park themselves in the middle option — not thrilled, not alarmed — while the brackets above and below them edge toward worry.
The bracket lines up roughly, though imperfectly, with Generation X. By my reckoning Gen X spans ages 46 to 61, so Pew’s bucket scoops up some people on either side of that boundary.
They’re calmer and more pessimistic at the same time
Now for the part that refuses to fit a tidy narrative. Pew notes that 69% of 50- to 64-year-old respondents said in 2024 that the next 20 years would bring “fewer jobs.” By 2026 that figure had risen to 72%.
Which means the age group least inclined to describe itself as concerned about AI is also, more and more, the group convinced AI will devour the job market. Both readings live inside one demographic, produced by one polling operation running one methodology.
The methodology caveat that matters
Anyone tempted to spin a theory about Gen X mellowing with age should first read Pew’s fine print. This is not a panel of identical respondents fielding identical questions year after year — fresh recruits enter with each round.
Even if the roster were fixed, Pew classifies people by however old they are when surveyed. A respondent counted in the 30-to-49 group one year can turn up in the 50-to-64 group the next. The bucket itself moves beneath the trend line.
What the gap is actually worth
Viewed on the whole, this group’s answers don’t stray far from everybody else’s. It’s the direction of travel that’s off-beat, not the destination. A 52% concern rate inside a 52% country is textbook average.
The trajectory is what earns a second look. Every other age bracket has been marching toward worry since 2021. This one has spent three straight surveys marching away from it — all while telling pollsters the jobs are headed for the exit. Calm and fatalistic in equal measure. If one number sums up how strange American opinion on AI has become, it’s that 72%.