Artificial intelligence has created a storm that has hit the American people with full force: pulling in multiple directions. 

The extraordinary potential for increasing the capacity for productivity and innovation is dazzling. The stock market is being driven upward by the vision of what can be achieved.  

At the same time, there is resistance to big energy-guzzling data centers. But more fundamentally, there is the prospect that AI could lead to economic and social instability.

Even some of the key founders of AI are giving dark warnings about the dangerous potential for AI to become smarter than humans and to possibly inflict vast harms on humanity – visions that Americans have been primed to consider by numerous science fiction movies.

Beneath those debates lies a key question: How active a role should the government play in regulating the development of AI?

To find out how Americans answer that question, my colleagues and I at the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC) surveyed them nationally, and in 11 states and 28 House districts that have competitive congressional........

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