China’s public expresses far greater trust in artificial intelligence than respondents in the United States and other Western countries.
The Edelman poll released on Tuesday found that 87 percent of Chinese respondents trust AI.
The survey reported trust levels of 67 percent in Brazil, 32 percent in the United States, 36 percent in the United Kingdom, and 39 percent in Germany.
More than seven in ten Chinese respondents said they believe AI will help address societal challenges such as climate change, mental illness, poverty, and political polarization.
Only one-third of Americans said they expect AI to alleviate poverty and polarization, although half foresee benefits for climate-related issues.
According to the poll, 54 percent of Chinese respondents said they welcome expanded use of AI, compared with just 17 percent of Americans.
Trust is highest among younger adults, though levels in Western countries remain substantially lower.
Eighty-eight percent of Chinese respondents aged 18–34 said they trust the technology, versus 40 percent of Americans in the same age group.
“For businesses and policymakers, this divergence presents a double challenge,” Edelman Senior Vice President Gray Grossman said in the report accompanying the survey.
“In high-trust markets, the task is to sustain optimism through responsible deployment and straightforward evidence of benefit. In low-trust markets, the task is to rebuild confidence in the institutions behind the technology.”
The findings come as the United States and China continue to compete for dominance in advanced technologies, with companies in both countries releasing increasingly sophisticated AI models.
The United States is broadly viewed as maintaining an advantage in developing top-tier AI systems, while Chinese firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek have recently advanced with lower-cost “open” language models.
Last month, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky drew attention when he said the short-term rental platform preferred Alibaba’s Qwen model over OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” Chesky told Bloomberg.