What Young People in 10 Countries Think About AI and Their Future

Young people around the world are approaching AI with a mix of excitement and uncertainty. While many see artificial intelligence creating new opportunities in education, creativity, and careers, they also worry about job displacement, inequality, and whether existing education systems are preparing them for an AI-driven future.

A Global Opinion Survey Breakdown

Polling data on Gen Z attitudes to artificial intelligence is accumulating rapidly as researchers recognise that the generation entering the workforce is navigating AI-transformed labour markets in real time. The findings are not uniform across countries — they vary significantly by economic context, educational system, existing relationship with technology, and cultural attitudes toward change. Here is what the data reveals, with appropriate caveats about its limitations.

The Headline Finding: Anxiety and Optimism Coexist

Across most countries surveyed, young people hold simultaneously anxious and optimistic views about AI — which is not contradictory but reflects the genuine complexity of the situation. They believe AI will change their work significantly (high agreement across most surveys), believe some of those changes will be positive (increased productivity, new opportunities), and believe some will be negative (job displacement, skill devaluation, increased inequality).

The simplifying narrative in either direction — "young people are excited about AI" or "young people are afraid of AI" — misses the nuance that most survey respondents hold both positions simultaneously with respect to different aspects of their lives.

Country-by-Country Variation

United States: US Gen Z surveys consistently show high awareness of AI tools and relatively high personal use (ChatGPT, AI writing tools, coding assistants) alongside significant concern about labour market impacts. College students in particular report using AI tools regularly for academic work while expressing uncertainty about whether this helps or hinders their actual learning.

India: Indian youth AI attitudes are shaped by the specific configuration of the Indian labour market — a large, educated workforce in IT services sectors that is particularly exposed to AI automation of certain task categories (code review, document processing, customer service), combined with high optimism about India's tech sector growth and the new opportunities AI creates. Survey data suggests Indian youth are among the more optimistic about AI's economic implications, though this may partly reflect optimism about economic growth generally rather than specifically AI.

China: Chinese youth AI attitudes are shaped by a different political context — the Chinese government's active promotion of AI development as a national strategic priority creates a policy environment in which concern about AI's societal impacts is less publicly expressed than in Western contexts. Survey data from China should be interpreted with awareness of this context.

South Korea and Japan: Both countries show high AI awareness and significant concern about labour market impacts in specific sectors. South Korea's education system, which produces high rates of STEM graduates, has generated substantial discourse about AI's specific implications for engineering careers. 

Germany and France: European youth AI attitudes are notably more concerned about data privacy and regulatory oversight than US counterparts — a reflection of the broader European political culture around technology governance. The EU AI Act and GDPR have generated significant public discourse that shapes attitudes among young people in EU countries. 

Nigeria and Kenya: African Gen Z AI attitudes are shaped by a context where AI is seen primarily as an opportunity — for economic leap-frogging, for accessing services that physical infrastructure has not delivered, and for entrepreneurship in tech sectors that are growing rapidly. The labour displacement framing that dominates Western discourse is less salient in contexts where formal employment is not the baseline for most young people.

The Skills and Education Gap

Across most countries, young people express concern that their education system is not preparing them adequately for AI-transformed workplaces. This concern is highest among students in countries with rigid, nationally standardised curriculum systems and lowest in contexts where educational institutions have been more responsive to employer feedback about required skills. 

The specific skills young people globally identify as AI-resilient — complex problem-solving, creative work, interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence, judgment in ambiguous situations — are broadly consistent across countries, suggesting a shared intuition about where human value adds persist as AI capabilities expand.

The Trust Dimension

Trust in AI systems — willingness to accept AI-generated information, AI-mediated decisions about employment, or AI in healthcare contexts — varies significantly by context. Young people globally are more comfortable with AI as an information and creativity tool than as a decision-maker in high-stakes contexts. Resistance to AI in hiring, medical diagnosis, and criminal justice is consistent across most surveyed populations, even among those who use AI tools heavily in their personal lives.