OpenAI recently announced that its latest artificial intelligence model had solved, in a matter of weeks, more than 100 math problems that humans had worked on for years. The news sparked what seemed like an existential crisis among mathematicians, leaving some to wonder what role humans would have in the future of their field. It’s not just academics who are worried. In a new national survey, we found that Americans are more likely to see AI as a threat to meaning than as a resource that supports it. But that view depends on whether people think of AI as a tool that will remain under human control or as something that will become autonomous.
Discussions about AI tend to focus on its practical costs and benefits, from job loss and cyberattacks to scientific and medical breakthroughs. Far less attention has been paid to its potential psychological effects, especially on our sense of meaning.
Humans are a distinctly existential species. We don’t just strive for survival but also for significance, and people who perceive their lives as meaningful tend to be more psychologically healthy and resilient. A strong sense of meaning also promotes physical health and longevity, goal achievement, financial success, and prosocial behavior.
This is because meaning is ultimately a self-regulatory and motivational resource. When we believe our lives matter, we have a reason to make the daily decisions and pursue the long-term ambitions that keep us healthy, productive, and connected to others.
Much of what makes life meaningful comes from our relationships, work, and creative pursuits. AI is increasingly involved in all of these human endeavors. It writes code, creates art, and solves complex intellectual problems. People are even turning to it for the kind of conversation and counsel they once sought from other humans. As AI takes on a bigger role in these parts of life, how will it affect our sense of meaning?
Others, including some of the people building AI, believe it is a fundamentally different technology — one on a path to becoming self-directed or autonomous.
As part of a new research initiative on AI and the good life, our team at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab surveyed over 2,000 Americans to explore this question. Specifically, we presented them with two views on how AI will affect meaning and asked which one they agree with most. In one, AI supports meaning by helping individuals put more of themselves into their relationships, work, and other purpose-driven pursuits. In the other, AI undermines meaning by doing more of people’s thinking and deciding for them, leading them to put less of themselves into these pursuits. In other words, we wanted to determine whether Americans are more inclined to view AI as supporting or undermining human meaning-making.
Americans are more likely to view AI as undermining meaning (56%) than supporting it (44%). Women and older adults were especially likely to hold this view of AI as a threat to meaning. Meanwhile, men and younger Americans were more evenly divided.
We also suspected that people’s attitudes about how AI will affect meaning would be connected to how they conceptualize AI. There is an active debate about what kind of technology AI is. Some think of it as a powerful but normal technology, like electricity or the internet, that will remain a tool humans direct and control. Others, including some of the people building AI, believe it is a fundamentally different technology — one on a path to becoming self-directed or autonomous.
We asked Americans which view they agree with most, and they are almost evenly split. Forty-eight percent see AI as a normal, human-directed technology, while 52% see it as a fundamentally new technology that will become autonomous.
Why would these views be connected to meaning? Ultimately, people find their lives most meaningful when they believe that they matter, that their efforts make a difference in the world. If people think of AI as a tool that humans control, like past technologies, they may view it as something that can help them make a difference, even if it disrupts how they live and work. But if they imagine it as fundamentally new because it could become autonomous, they may worry that humans will no longer be the primary agents in the world, making their contributions less significant
As predicted, how people conceptualize AI is strongly related to how they think it will affect meaning. Among Americans who envision AI as human-directed, 63% believe it will support people’s ability to live meaningful lives, and 37% believe it will undermine it. Among those who expect AI to be autonomous, the pattern flips. Just 27% believe AI will support meaning, and 73% believe it will undermine it. This relationship held across every demographic group we examined, and it was larger than any of the demographic differences we observed.
As we grapple with existential concerns about AI, it is worth remembering that technological innovation has always disrupted economic and cultural life, and it has likely challenged people’s sense of meaning along the way. But humans adapted. We are an agentic, creative, and resilient species. The same ingenuity that made AI possible can help us find new ways to make significant contributions to the world. And regardless of what this technology becomes, we will still decide how much of ourselves we put into the people, projects, and pursuits that make life meaningful.
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