Most Americans are skeptical and fearful of artificial intelligence, with public concern rising even faster than chatbot adoption. According to the Pew Research Center, 37 percent of Americans were more concerned than excited about AI in 2021; by 2023, that figure had risen to 52 percent. Today, more US adults believe AI will have a negative rather than a positive impact on their own lives and on society.

For companies betting hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, this is not merely a public relations problem. Despite their eye-popping valuations, OpenAI and Anthropic remain cash-flow negative. To justify those valuations — close to $1 trillion — they will need to expand their user bases, increase revenues, persuade businesses and government agencies to adopt their products, and secure permits for the data centers required to scale them. As AI becomes more integrated into the economy and everyday life, public attitudes will become increasingly important.

The policy implications could be far-reaching. High levels of distrust tend to generate demands for more restrictive regulation, as banks discovered in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. And when a crisis erupts, public distrust can derail an entire technology. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, for example, widespread public opposition led the German government to shut down all of the country’s nuclear power plants.

What causes the public to lose trust? Other technologies provide some clues. Biotechnology enjoyed high levels of public confidence in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, however, European countries were considering bans on........

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