Americans regard the growth and development of AI technology with far more fear and concern than hope and excitement, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with broad partisan agreement that the federal government ought to do more to regulate it.

The study was conducted for CNN via web and telephone on the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel of U.S. adults ages 18 or older recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Surveys were obtained September 16-17, 2026, with a representative sample of n=1,206 respondents. The margin of sampling error for total respondents is +/-3.5 at the 95% confidence level. The design effect is 1.6.