A ‘Sputnik Moment’? Majority Fear Losing AI Lead To China, Back More Gov’t Investment: I&I/TIPP Poll
Americans mostly want smaller, more effective government that spends less of their money while still doing essential things that only governments can do. But, in the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, there’s one area where people see a definite role for government: The ongoing U.S.-China battle to dominate the global artificial intelligence (AI) market, estimated to be worth trillions of dollars.
America had a kind of “Sputnik moment” recently, as tech author Charles Hugh Smith put it, after claims were made that China’s “DeepSeek” R1 AI software had leapfrogged other global AI versions and that it did so with an unbelievably parsimonious development cost of only $6 million.
That seemingly innocuous announcement sent stock markets plunging around the world, leading to such headlines as Chinese AI threat triggers $1 trillion market crash, DeepSeek sends a shockwave through markets, and Did China’s DeepSeek Just Pop The AI Stock Bubble?, among many, many others.
Does this bother average Americans? Quite a bit, it seems. In February’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken Jan. 29-31 from a sample of 1,478 adults, survey participants were asked three questions about the booming field of artificial intelligence.
The first question: “How concerned are you about China potentially surpassing the U.S. in artificial intelligence development?”
Among all respondents, a hefty 60% answered either “Very concerned” (28%) or “Somewhat concerned” (32%), while only 28% responded “Not very concerned” (18%) or “Not at all concerned” (10%).
Often topics in polls show sharp political differences. Not on AI. Indeed, there’s a broad and large consensus among Democrats, Republicans and independent voters on the issues.
Democrats, for instance, responded 58% “Concerned” to just 31% “Not concerned,” while Republicans came in a bit higher at 68% concerned to 23% not concerned. Indie voters were in accord at 55% calling themselves concerned, vs. just 31% not concerned.
This pattern of ideological consensus continued with the second question: “Do you think the U.S. government should invest more in artificial intelligence to stay competitive with China?”
Among all respondents, 54% answered either “Yes, significantly more” (26%) or “Yes, but only moderately more” (28%). Meanwhile, just 30% answered no, either saying “No, current investments are sufficient” (18%) or “No, the government should stay out of AI development” (12%).
And once again, all three major political affiliations showed broad agreement on this question. Dems (53% yes, 31% no), Republicans (61% yes, 27% no) and indie voters (49% yes, 32% no) were all in the same ballpark.
Finally, I&I/TIPP asked: “Which aspect of artificial intelligence development concerns you the most?”
In descending order, respondents replied: “Misinformation and AI-generated content” (24%); “National security risks” (22%); “Job displacement and economic impact” (21%); “Privacy and data security” (16%); “I am not concerned about AI development” (6%); and “Not sure” (11%).
And again, all three major political groupings found broad agreement (with a few minor differences), but none of the political parties responses to “I am not concerned” about AI exceeded 8%. Nearly everyone is concerned.
This might help explain why President Donald Trump announced from the White House a plan to invest $500 billion in the coming years on “Stargate,” an AI and AI infrastructure project led by Oracle Board Chair and Chief Tech Officer Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Despite the project’s clear ties to Trump, it received surprisingly little hard criticism in the media or even Trump’s Democratic Party opponents. Why? People are plainly worried about AI, in particular about China’s role in boosting AI and the possibility it might win control of what’s expected to be a nearly $2 trillion market by 2030 (up from about $200 billion in 2023).
Americans also fret about a world in which AI might take over many formerly well-paying white-collar desk jobs, leaving an entire generation of college-educated working Americans potentially stranded without meaningful work.
Meanwhile, even some involved in AI warn darkly of out-of-control AI systems making disastrous decisions that wreak havoc on families, communities and even nations, without direct input from either democratic institutions or individuals.
“I’m pretty terrified by the pace of AI development these days,” said Steven Adler, a former safety researcher at OpenAI. “When I think about where I’ll raise a future family, or how much to save for retirement, I can’t help but wonder: will humanity even make it to that point?”
Geoffrey Hinton, one of the computer scientists credited as a pioneer of AI and who won last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, says AI developments are coming “much faster” than he thought, and there’s a “10% to 20%” chance that AI “will lead to human extinction in the next 30 years.”
Scary stuff, to be sure. But most experts see something far different. An exploding market for AI services growing over 30% a year, with strong gains in global productivity.
As the I&I/TIPP Poll results show, Americans of all political stripes are skeptical and don’t like the idea of a world-leading artificial intelligence program receiving its political input from a communist regime, in this case China.
As such, China’s DeepSeek might indeed serve the same function today as the launch of Russia’s Sputnik satellite did back in 1957. That year, Sputnik, a tiny metal globe no bigger than a basketball and bristling with radio antennae, circled the earth for three weeks. It surprised the U.S. government and set off a panic about the U.S. falling behind in space technology. Sputnik started the space race.
Similarly, is DeepSeek a wakeup call in AI? It sure looks that way. And not just for the U.S. government, but for Google, Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI and the growing number of AI startups that will compete with China.
However, It’s also a wakeup call for average Americans. As the I&I/TIPP Poll shows, they have very real concerns about AI and jobs, national security, misinformation and a number of other issues. AI developers, in a race to lead the AI pack, would be wise to take heed.
I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past six presidential elections.
Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.
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