Young people increasingly don't trust AI - or the billionaires that keep telling us we should all love AI, survey finds

What happened

A new survey covered by TechRadar finds that younger Americans are growing increasingly wary of artificial intelligence — and of the executives and investors who champion it. The research points to a widening gap between the optimism voiced by AI's most prominent backers and the scepticism felt by the generation expected to use these tools daily.

According to the reporting, this distrust extends beyond the technology itself to the people steering it: survey respondents expressed doubt not just about AI's reliability or safety, but about the motives of the billionaires and tech leaders publicly urging broader adoption. The findings suggest a credibility problem that sits alongside, and may be compounding, existing concerns about AI's accuracy and trustworthiness.

Why it matters

Trust is the currency that determines whether a customer-facing AI tool gets used, ignored, or actively resisted. When the people promoting a technology are viewed with suspicion, that scepticism transfers to the technology itself — regardless of how capable it actually is. For brands rolling out AI-powered service, this is a warning that adoption isn't just a product or accuracy problem; it's a messaging and messenger problem.

From a behavioural-economics standpoint, this is a textbook case of source credibility shaping perceived risk. Younger consumers, who will make up an increasing share of any brand's customer base, appear to be applying a discount to AI claims made by figures they associate with self-interest. Service and CX leaders who assume enthusiasm from senior leadership will translate into customer enthusiasm may be misreading the room entirely.

The Renascence take

Most coverage of AI trust surveys focuses on the technology's flaws — hallucinations, errors, bias. That's the easy story. The harder, more useful story is about who is delivering the message and why the audience doesn't believe them.

The real signal here isn't that young people distrust AI — it's that they distrust the messengers, and brands are inheriting that scepticism by association every time a CEO or founder fronts an AI announcement instead of letting the experience speak for itself. Trust in service technology is earned through transparent, low-stakes, opt-in encounters, not through top-down proclamations from people the audience already suspects of self-interest. Operators serious about AI adoption should let customers discover the value quietly — through consistently better, faster, more accurate service — rather than through campaigns that ask people to trust the technology because a billionaire says they should.