China is increasingly being viewed as the world's leading artificial intelligence power over the United States despite Silicon Valley's dominance in developing intelligence models, according to a new poll.
Conducted by London-based research firm Public First, the study surveyed more than 18,000 people across 15 countries and found that respondents in 11 of them see China as the dominant AI superpower.
The findings come as Washington debates how aggressively to regulate the rapidly evolving technology while maintaining its competitive edge against Beijing. Only respondents in the United States, Japan, India, and Vietnam continued to view America as the leading force in AI.
In major U.S. allies, including France, Canada, and the United Kingdom, however, China was perceived as being ahead. In Germany, only 23 percent of respondents identifying the United States as the dominant AI power.
The survey's findings come at a critical moment for the Trump administration, which has repeatedly framed artificial intelligence as a strategic competition that could shape global influence for decades. "We are leading China by a lot," President Donald Trump said last Wednesday. "Whoever leads that is going to really lead the world, to a large extent."
While American companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta remain at the forefront of advanced AI development, Chinese firms have rapidly expanded their capabilities and market reach, particularly after the emergence of competitive models from companies such as DeepSeek.
Public attitudes about AI in the United States have shifted noticeably over the past two years. In 2024, 39 percent of U.S. respondents said AI would make society better, compared with 34 percent who believed it would make things worse. By 2026, optimism had declined sharply. Only 31 percent believed AI would improve society, while 40 percent said it would have a negative impact.
Confidence in AI's benefits on a personal level also weakened. Public First found that net optimism about how AI would affect respondents' own lives dropped from 15 percentage points in 2024 to just 5 points in 2026. Expectations for future generations deteriorated even more.
The most significant shift occurred among young Americans between the ages of 18 and 24. A year ago, that demographic believed AI would improve society by a modest margin. In the latest survey, however, young adults expressed a strongly negative outlook, believing AI would make society worse by a 13-point margin. Researchers found a similar trend among young people in the United Kingdom.
Not all countries shared those concerns. Respondents in nations including Singapore and India continued to express strong confidence that AI would bring broad societal benefits. Much of the anxiety in the United States appears tied to concerns over employment and information integrity.
The rise of generative AI has fueled fears that white-collar and entry-level jobs could be automated. Those worries have been amplified by warnings from industry leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently predicted that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next one to five years.
Americans are also increasingly concerned about the infrastructure required to power AI systems. The percentage of respondents worried about AI's energy and resource consumption climbed from 52 percent in 2024 to roughly two-thirds in 2026.
Those concerns have translated into growing resistance to data center projects across the country. Communities in several states have pushed back against large-scale developments because of concerns about electricity use, water consumption, and environmental impacts.
The issue has become significant enough that Trump earlier this year announced a "ratepayer protection pledge," urging technology companies to secure or finance their own power supplies as they expand AI computing operations.
