AI can do a lot of things, but is 'kill all humans' going to be one of them? A poll shows most Americans think AI will destroy humanity one day, but that's only part of the story

Yes, another online article about AI! We can't stop writing them, and you can't stop reading them, because it's one of those things that moves so fast it's different every morning. Whether you love it or hate it, it's in everyone's face and isn't about to go away.

This one's a little different, though, because Yahoo and YouGov recently released the results of a survey in which most Americans responded that AI will surpass the ability of normal folks and maybe even one day destroy us all.

Oh boy. Now we're talking!

The poll responses say it all

Yahoo tells us this survey "was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,770 U.S. adults interviewed online from Oct. 23 to Oct. 27, 2025." So it's new and current. Unfortunately, I wasn't surveyed and couldn't find any credible claims from anyone who was. Maybe AI hallucinated the poll? Probably not. In any case, the poll responses are informative and downright amazing:

• According to the poll, 61% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that “AI will continue to improve, but it will never surpass human intelligence.”
• Additionally, 64% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that “AI will be able to perform any intellectual task a human can.”
• Of those surveyed, 60% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that “AI will become so intellectually advanced that it will help us solve complex problems like curing cancer and stopping climate change.”
• Additionally, 63% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that “AI will become so intellectually advanced that humans won’t be able to control it anymore.”
• Finally, 53% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that “AI will destroy humanity.”

My takeaways from all of this might not be as enlightening. The first thing that comes to mind is a significant aspect of the broader "AI problem": regular people don't fully understand it, and the companies presenting it to us want to make us believe it's magical.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: machinery is not intelligent. People who make it look that way are, though. It's all code, and the only thinking and learning being done is by the folks programming it. When my Nvidia processor can truly learn, maybe I'll get better at playing Rainbow 6.

Having said all that, I would have responded mostly the same way as the majority here, though. 😲AI will keep advancing and eventually be a help with things like the fight against cancer. It will also become something even more terrible than it is now and could potentially lead humanity down the path of extinction, just like the Dodo, and it's all because of us.

People seem to have a knack for wrecking everything. AI is already making a lot of that easier because everyone has access to it, including scammers, thieves, and other types of human pond scum that will do anything and not care how it affects others. This is what's going to bite us in the ass, and if it doesn't kill us all, it will change everything.

Part of the reason is that we want to believe what we see, hear, or read. Maybe there is no Jerry, and I'm just an AI written by a middle-aged woman in a Boston apartment. That sounds like a drug-induced dream, but unless you are right here and can physically interact with me, you can't be sure. (I swear I'm a real boy.)

Don't believe me? You should because you have believed nonsense churned out by AI at least once. So have I, so has everyone. I don't mean AI like Chrome's spellchecker, which makes you think I have a mastery of the English language, but rather 100% inauthentic nonsense on the web designed to provoke a specific response.

If you have an agenda, you can let AI push push push it for you without much effort, thanks to social media and other online interaction. It only needs to work a little bit to sway public opinion or trick you into spending money.

This is how AI has the potential to bring about the fall of humanity. There won't be any T-9000 Terminator-class killbots rampaging across the landscape (or maybe they will?). Instead, society could turn into a dystopian nightmare where the only folks who seem sane are like your Luddite uncle who thinks all this is just hogwash.

And we will welcome it, under the guise of curing cancer or making our lives easier. What do you think? AI-Bot Jerry requests your input.