48% of Americans hope AI cures cancer or Alzheimer's — but only 15% trust the companies building it. Is that optimism justified?
A nationwide survey by AI company Anthropic (nearly 52,000 U.S. respondents) found real hope alongside real distrust: 48% of Americans hope AI helps cure diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's, and 36% think it'll help people with disabilities. But only 15% trust the AI companies actually building this tech to make good decisions about how it's developed and used, and 64% still fear AI-driven job losses. It's a strange split — people want the outcome but don't trust who's delivering it. It comes as real progress keeps landing: this month Merck and Moderna reported a "clinically meaningful" mRNA cancer vaccine result, and AI-assisted drug discovery tools are increasingly credited with speeding up how new treatments get found. Separately, Pew Research's latest survey found scientists remain America's most trusted profession, with 77% of people trusting science overall — suggesting the distrust is aimed at tech companies specifically, not science itself.
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AI was cited in 112,713 U.S. layoffs this year (24% of all cuts) — Oracle alone cut 21,000 jobs and blamed AI directly in an SEC filing. Real workforce replacement, or a convenient excuse?
Challenger, Gray & Christmas (the standard U.S. outplacement firm that tracks layoffs monthly) says AI has now been the leading cited reason for job cuts for five straight months. In July 2026 alone it accounted for 33% of all announced cuts, and year-to-date AI has been cited in 112,713 job cut announcements — about 24% of everything. Oracle is the clearest single case: its own SEC filing says a 21,000-person reduction (13% of its workforce, dropping from 162,000 to 141,000 employees over 12 months) came from "adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations," and warned more cuts "may" follow. But it's not that simple everywhere. Visa cited a 7% cut as an "efficiency push in which AI would reshape work," while at a Bronx hospital system, leaders disputed that 12 nursing cuts were really about AI replacement despite headlines saying so. Challenger's own chief analyst put it bluntly: "Naming AI in a layoff announcement can win over investors while pushing current and prospective employees away" — meaning some of these announcements may be using AI as a flattering label for cuts that would have happened anyway.
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Tech giant Oracle revealed that it has cut tens of thousands of jobs because of artificial intelligence. cut 21,000 workers over the past year.