Artificial intelligence tools that can give human-like answers have suddenly become the hottest part of the tech industry, like Google and Microsoft, for example. Billion-dollar companies are racing to release early versions of search engines and productivity tools using the new technology.

The companies developing this software claim it will save hours of time and increase human creativity. But American society doesn’t think so. A new Monmouth University poll shows that only 9% of Americans believe the impact of artificial intelligence on society will do more good than harm, CNBC reports.

About 5 in 10 respondents — or 46% — think that AI development will do about the same amount of good and harm, and 41% of people in the sample believe that the technology will ultimately do harm to society overall.

More than half of Americans — 55% — are very or somewhat worried that AI could one day pose a risk to the human race, according to the poll.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used in generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. Related models can create drawings or audio that resemble human works.

But problems arise with large language models that can simply make up information – a phenomenon known as “hallucination”. Both Google and Microsoft have shown that their software makes factual errors.

Other concerns include that advanced AI could take away people’s jobs or make some professions unnecessary. Furthermore, AI and chatbots based on it can convince people that the tools actually think and feel.

For example, 72% of people in the survey sample think AI will eventually write entire news articles, and 78% of respondents think this is a bad thing. Some AI algorithms can be used for facial recognition, for example to identify people attending sporting events. Although this practice has been criticized, a small proportion of respondents – 54% – support this type of use.