AI optimism is highest where adoption is lowest — except in the worried West
Gallup and Microsoft asked 37 countries about AI. Optimism runs highest where adoption is lowest, trust is thin nearly everywhere, and the West worries most.
Vlad Makarovreviewed and published
Ask adults in China whether AI will mostly help their country and 93% say yes. In Vietnam, 91% agree. In the United States the same question returns 36% — below Egypt, one point above Bangladesh. Those are the headline numbers from the first results of the Gallup study on AI run with Microsoft, and they measure expectations rather than experience. The pattern underneath them is the part the news cycle flattened: optimism is highest where adoption is thinnest, trust in what AI actually says is thin almost everywhere, and the countries that use it most are the ones that worry most.
What the survey actually measures
The study, Gallup's first global read on public engagement with AI, published on Sept 22, will eventually cover 140 countries and territories; these are the first 37 to complete fieldwork in 2026. Gallup's samples are nationally representative and probability-based, roughly 1,000 people aged 15 and older per country, surveyed between April and July by telephone, face to face or online, with a margin of sampling error of 2.2 to 4.9 percentage points. Five dimensions are tracked — awareness, frequency of use, expected impact, trust and emotional response — and most attitude questions went only to adults who are aware of AI. That filter is load-bearing: every optimism, trust and worry figure below is conditional on awareness, and awareness itself runs from 12% of adults in Malawi to 96% in Singapore. The poll cannot report what the unaware think, because it did not ask them.
The optimism map runs opposite to the adoption map
Gallup reports a median AI awareness of 81% across the 37 countries, a median 43% who have ever used AI, and a median 57% who have never used it — an adoption ladder that thins at every rung. Singapore sits at the top: 96% aware, 79% have used it, 46% use it daily. Malawi sits at the bottom, on 12%, 3% and 1%.
On the country-impact question, Gallup asked AI-aware adults whether AI would mostly help or harm people in their country. Optimists outnumber pessimists in 29 countries but hold an absolute majority in only 18. Expectations do not track usage: 91% of AI-aware Vietnamese expect help, against 43% who have ever used AI, and 68% of Nigerians expect it against 20% who have used it.
| Country | AI will mostly help their country |
|---|---|
| China | 93% |
| Vietnam | 91% |
| Singapore | 77% |
| Israel | 69% |
| Nigeria | 68% |
| United States | 36% |
| Egypt | 35% |
| Bangladesh | 34% |
A 57-point gap separates China's 93% from the American 36%. Whether that gap is a judgment about the technology or a statement about the country asking is the question the study keeps separate from both.
Optimism is not trust
Trust is its own measurement, and it is the one that should worry anyone shipping an AI product. Across the 37 countries, the median share of AI-aware adults who trust AI completely or a lot to provide accurate information is 36%, Gallup reports, and majorities clear that bar in only four: Israel at 67%, Vietnam at 59%, China at 58% and Nigeria at 52%. In 35 of the 37 countries, more people expect AI to help their country than trust it to be accurate. Gallup's own reading is that people "see considerable potential in AI even while remaining uncertain about whether they can rely on the information it provides."
Experience tracks trust and calm — in one direction only
Trust rises sharply along the adoption ladder. In the United States, Gallup found that 45% of daily AI users trust it completely or a lot, against 26% of weekly users, 15% of those who use it less than weekly and just 8% of people who have never used it. Worry runs the other way. What Gallup refuses to claim is the direction of the arrow: "The survey cannot establish whether greater trust leads people to use AI more often, whether experience with AI builds trust, or both," it says, adding only that the strength and consistency of the relationship suggest trust and adoption are connected. Read a single cross-section as a trajectory and a snapshot looks like a forecast.
The paradox of the worried West
Gallup's label for the next finding is the paradox of the worried West. Seven high-income Western countries occupy ranks 1 through 6 and 8 on worry: the United States at 74% of AI-aware adults saying AI makes them feel worried, the Netherlands at 67%, Canada at 64%, the United Kingdom at 63%, New Zealand at 61%, Ireland at 60% and Malta at 57%. Those same countries are among the study's heaviest users, a median 29% of adults using AI daily against 17% across the other 30. It is the mood that has already stalled data centers across America, the backlash this site traced through the Annenberg polling and the local moratoriums that followed it.
Gallup's global contrast is stark: worry is the most common negative emotion in 35 of its 37 countries, at a median 32%, while the median share reporting at least one positive emotion is 72%. Inside the worried countries, doubt concentrates among the least experienced. In the United States, 68% of daily users report worry against 80% of less frequent users and 74% of people who have never used AI. Canada runs 54%, 72% and 69% across the same three groups.
A separate Public First poll for POLITICO, published the same week and covered by Gizmodo, found roughly half of adults in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany think AI is already good enough and support pausing further development.
The American outlier
The United States is where the three readings collide: third from bottom on expectations of national benefit at 36%, one of only three countries — with Egypt and the State of Palestine — where negative emotions toward AI outweigh positive ones, and first on worry at 74%. Gallup's senior scientist Pablo Diego-Rosell, who oversaw the poll, told US News that the US is "the most worried for sure," and that he was somewhat surprised it was not among the top daily users: at 14th of 37, it trails Singapore, China, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Two distinctions are easy to lose. The country question is not the personal one: in 25 of the 37 countries, majorities of AI-aware adults expect AI to improve their own daily lives, and in 32 countries optimists outnumber pessimists on that question. A nation can be gloomy about its trajectory and still adopt the tool. The second is that nothing in the poll explains the mood it documents. In the English-language AI feed the story arrived as a single image post on r/singularity, titled "China ranks #1 for AI optimism in new poll while the US ranks amongst bottom 5 countries in pessimism," posted by u/Cagnazzo82 — the subreddit's compression of a survey of awareness, use, expectations, trust and emotion into a ranking.
What would settle it
Three things would settle what a cross-section cannot. Panel data, following the same respondents over years, would show whether use builds trust or trust drives use — the question Gallup explicitly leaves open. Country-level usage statistics independent of self-report would test the awareness filter, since every attitude number here is conditional on a self-reported state that ranges from 12% in Malawi to 96% in Singapore. And a repeat of the study after a few years of real deployment would show whether optimism at low adoption is a reading of the technology or a general hope about the future. The study is due to reach 140 countries; the wave that matters is the one that asks the same questions again.
For now the honest summary is double-edged. The world is more optimistic about AI than America is, and most of the world is not yet using it. The countries with the most experience hold the most doubt — and inside those countries, the doubt is heaviest among the people with the least experience.
