Many Democrats and Republicans favor establishing retraining programs focused on artificial intelligence for workers and providing ongoing lessons, according to a Northeastern University survey report released Friday on public sentiments about AI.
Sixty-four percent of Republican respondents and 63 percent of Democratic respondents support job retraining designed to help workers gain the skills required to take on AI-heavy jobs. This could apply to both blue collar and white collar jobs, the researchers said.
Many survey respondents also said they supported the creation of tax-advantaged saving accounts that workers could use to pay for job training and educational opportunities. Fifty-seven percent of Republican survey respondents and 56 percent of Democrats said they supported establishing “worker-owned retraining accounts” that people could keep from job to job.
The emergence of AI and its rapidly increasing use worldwide has led to widespread concerns and demonstrations about data centers and other matters.
This week, demonstrators in more than 50 cities and college campuses across the United States gathered to call for a pause on the development of AI technologies, according to media reports.
Opposition to data centers is rising because people are concerned about their impact on the environment and their energy costs. According to ROC Telecom, an IT company that decommissioned data centers, a single large scale AI data center can draw more than 100 megawatts of power a year, an equivalent of powering 800,000 homes.
Similarly, people are worried about AI’s impact on the job market. That’s particularly true for young people who are recent or soon-to-be graduates from college, the Northeastern researchers said.
David Lazer, a distinguished professor of political science and computer sciences at Northeastern University and one of the lead researchers for the Northeastern survey, said the responses show there is growing agreement on the need for worker protections and training.
“It is the single most surprising result,” he said.“We are seeing an increasing partisan divide in terms of trust, but some bipartisan consensus about the need for the government to protect people from the incoming storm that AI will unleash.”
Thirty-eight thousand people from all fifty states were polled from June to August 2026 for the Northeastern University survey, with representation across demographics and political parties.
The survey was conducted as part of the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50), a multiversity research initiative aiming to better understand citizen opinions and behaviors, according to the initiative’s website.
Participants were asked a range of questions related to AI’s impact on education, the workforce, and hiring practices.
The report focused on perceptions of AI by members of the political parties and is the first of several related reports expected from the Northeastern University researchers.
Here are other key details from the report.
Republican men with master’s degrees topped the list of individuals most supportive of data centers, according to the survey.
Seventy percent of Republicans with master’s degrees who responded to the survey are in support of data centers in their communities, while 43% of Democratic men with a master’s degree would do the same, the data showed.
Ata Aydin Usulu, a doctoral researcher who worked on the survey, pointed to other results.
Usulu said men, on average, tended to have a more positive view of AI compared to women. Only 36% of Republican women with master’s degrees supported the development of AI centers in their communities, for example, the survey data shows.
Similarly, the researchers saw a correlation between higher education levels and trust in AI. Twenty-seven percent of Republican men without a high school degree said they would support an AI data center in their community. That number rises to 31% with Republican men with high school degrees, and 47% with Republican men with bachelor’s degrees.
Usulu attributed the findings in part to people with higher levels of education tending to have more exposure to AI tools and having a more favorable view of their uses.
30% of 18 to 24 year olds trust AI companies
Although users between the ages of 18 to 24 make up the largest segment of users who reported they have used AI tools, at 89%, only 30% of them trust AI companies, the survey data shows.
Usulu said these results aren’t surprising. Many young people have a distrust in AI because they fear it will prevent them from landing a position in an already tough job market . Usulu said this is because there is a rising perception that AI is being used to replace entry-level and junior-level jobs.
“The youngest cohort see that there are less and less jobs for them,” he said. “And they are also afraid that if they land a job they won’t have a job in five years.”
66% of independents do not trust AI companies
Independents made up the largest political group in the survey to distrust AI companies, at 66 percent. Sixty-one percent of Democrats also said they distrusted AI companies while Republicans split evenly at 50 percent each on trusting or distrusting AI companies, according to the survey data.
54% of survey respondents would not support a new AI data center in their own community
Given the rising backlash to data centers, Lazer said he wasn’t surprised to find that the majority of survey respondents had negative perceptions of data centers in their communities.
While 22% of survey respondents said they would support an AI data center in their community, 54% said they would not. Twenty-three percent said they had no opinion.
“Generally, the opposition to data centers is vast,” Lazer said. “It’s become a hot button issue in the U.S.”
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