This week, Idealab founder Bill Gross launched Idealab.ai, a free platform that makes more than 1.2 million AI-generated business ideas searchable, with tools to test and build them. His aim is to help create a million new businesses and 100 million jobs, offsetting those AI may displace.
It’s great timing for those just starting out. In our August survey of 1,007 Americans aged 18 to 25, 47% worried that AI would make it harder to land an entry-level job in their field. Nearly one in four (24%) are starting or considering starting their own business because of concerns about AI, and 36% would use time freed up by AI to build a side hustle. With 52% of corporate leaders and 58% of investors expecting fewer entry-level roles in the next few years, I expect these numbers will only increase going forward.
It may also produce better businesses. Gen Z has long said it wants more than a paycheck: in Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, about 40% of respondents have turned down a potential employer that didn’t match their personal ethics or beliefs, and 68% of Gen Zs say their current job allows them to make a meaningful contribution to society. Combine that motivation with a platform built around real-world problem solving, and you get entrepreneurship aimed at what Americans really want from AI; pathways to a better future.
Business and academia are already lining up behind it. Cloudflare is offering $100,000 in credits to every startup built on the platform. Mercury is providing the financial infrastructure founders need to take investment and invoice clients. Arizona State University will give all its students access and showcase the top ten businesses they build. And RAISE US, led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, will work with states and community business leaders to bring these tools to workers adapting to the AI economy.
I’m hoping Just Capital and Idealab.ai will soon find ways to partner. In the meantime, see my latest Forbes piece for more on entry-level roles and other AI risks leaders should watch.
Be well,
Martin
34% of those earning under $50,000 expected AI to improve their lives, compared with 44% to 48% in higher brackets. Explore the data here.
Charter released the results of their new AI Pulse survey on how AI is redefining work. The most surprising stat? Executives are two times as likely to trust AI over a knowledgeable colleague, and nearly twice as likely as their employees to trust AI output.
The Wall Street Journal breaks the news that AI found a bug that could threaten up to 70% of the world’s websites, and now there is a race to patch it before hackers can take advantage of it.
Politico reported on Anthropic’s proposed federal AI safety legislation, which has sparked debate over the future of AI regulation. Critics argue the proposal could weaken existing safeguards and limit states ability to regulate AI risks.
Axios reports that leading AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, are increasingly taking AI regulation and wealth redistribution into their own hands amid limited federal oversight.
Gallup reveals that 8 in 10 employers still prefer hiring employees with a college degree to those without.
The Wall Street Journal looks at how – despite being in high-demand – nurses are quitting their positions in droves across the U.S.
Bloomberg speaks to the head of Groundwork Collective, a non-profit tracking when CEOs brag about price hikes and using that data to run experiments that “out” companies, like revealing Instacart was using dynamic pricing against U.S. customers.
The Washington Post reports that Meta will have to pay $25 billion to New Mexico for misleading users on privacy, the largest payout of its kind.
Elon University’s latest poll shows that LLM users are worried about AI hollowing out the meaning of work in various fronts. Read the full paper here.
Just Capital released the second edition of its monthly National AI Monitor, which asks Americans how they are experiencing AI in their daily lives and what drives positive and negative experiences.
The results show that despite the heightened national dialogue around AI safety, Americans are positive about their experiences with AI on a day-to-day basis, with productivity at work cited as a primary driver. Worries about environmental impacts, the trustworthiness of models, and threats to employment weigh heavily on their outlook for the future, especially among women, lower-income Americans, and older adults.
“There’s an assumption that Americans are against AI, but the people we’re hearing from continue to tell a more hopeful story,” said Just Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “Americans’ optimism may be one of the most underappreciated signals in the AI conversation today. Leaders who listen closely have a real chance to build public trust.”
Scores are calculated as the percentage of positive responses minus the percentage of negative responses, producing a range from -100 to +100. Changes between September and August were not statistically significant.
Productivity at work
“AI takes care of the structured and logical work; this allows me time for bringing human expertise to bear.” – Male, 59, middle income, very positive respondent on AI at work
“I can do 10x the work I used to do, and can more confidently work in areas I dont have as much experience in.” – Male, 39, upper income, very positive respondent on AI at work
Speed, convenience, and personalization
“As a customer, I think companies’ use of AI makes products and services more convenient and personalised. It helps me get faster customer support, better recommendations, and quicker answers to my questions. At the same time, I am concerned about privacy and want companies to use my personal information responsibly.” – Female, 42, middle income, very positive respondent on AI as a customer
Exposure as an investor
“My 401k is doing pretty well and AI is driving the market.” – Male, 34, lower income, very positive about AI as an investor
Environmental impacts including data centers, water use, electricity use, and grid strain
“Water waste, water pollution, energy waste, the drain on resources of communities too poor to fight back against them.” – Male, 50, upper income, very negative respondent on AI and the environment
Distrust
“I do not trust AI or the makers. I don’t think it can be controlled.” – Female, 65, lower income, very negative respondent on AI overall
Job loss
“It’s very sad to see that AI is quite literally taking people’s jobs and copying people’s content and reusing their face and videos without their knowledge of consent.” – Female, 19, lower income, very negative respondent on AI at work
Attitudes vary considerably by respondent demographics:
The survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Just Capital from September 30 – October 2, 2026 among 1,010 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within +/- 3.6 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest.
Respondents were asked seven questions: one on AI’s overall effect on the respondent to date, one for each of the five stakeholder groups in Just Capital’s framework (workers, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders), and one forward-looking question on how optimistic respondents are about where AI is headed and how it may affect them. All questions use a five-point scale ranging from “very negative” to “very positive,” with “I don’t know” offered as an additional, non-forced option so that uncertainty is not recorded as a neutral rating. Every question except the final one is followed by an open-ended “why,” which is synthesized to identify what drives responses and to serve as a diagnostic on how effectively companies are deploying AI. Scores are calculated as the percentage of positive responses (“somewhat positive” and “very positive”) minus the percentage of negative responses (“somewhat negative” and “very negative”), producing a range from -100 to +100. “I don’t know” responses are excluded from the calculation rather than counted as neutral.
For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact Just Capital.
Just Capital released its fourth quarterly survey of the American public, investors, and corporate leaders, an ongoing research initiative to track each audience’s expectations around AI development and deployment. Over the past year, the survey has identified declining predictions of large-scale job losses and increased concern about environmental impact. One area of consistency among all three audiences is the persistent prioritization of AI safety and security.
“The American public sees clear benefits of an AI-powered future, and they also have very real anxieties,” said Just Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “Frontier labs and government both have immense responsibility to facilitate broader access to opportunity and to protect against the greatest harm. Yet, there’s a role for other CEOs and corporate leaders to help the public understand how AI is adding value while explicitly addressing key issues like model safety, data protection, and human oversight. Concrete actions and transparency are how trust is built.”
By measuring how perceptions and priorities shift across the American public, investors, and corporate leaders over time, Just Capital aims to help business leaders make fully informed decisions as the AI landscape evolves. The inaugural wave was conducted in Fall 2025, the Spring wave was released in April 2026, and the summer wave was released in June 2026.
This quarterly survey of the American public, investors, and corporate leaders was designed by Just Capital as part of its broader polling and public-opinion research program. We received responses from 128 institutional investors in collaboration with NewtonX, 104 corporate executives in collaboration with Gerson Lehrman Group (66 C-suite executives and 38 board members or senior level executives), and 1,000 US adults aligned to population benchmarks in collaboration with The Harris Poll. Data were collected July 20–27, 2026.
The survey tracking perceptions on AI safety and China was conducted online among 2,000 U.S. adults using Harris Quest DIY. The survey was conducted on September 14-15, 2026. Respondents were recruited from opt-in online survey panels. Quotas were set on gender, age, region, income, and race to ensure proper balance. To adjust for nonresponse, data are weighted to American Community Survey estimates for gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, and region. Party identification is weighted using Gallup’s 2026 party identification estimates. This online survey is not based on a probability sample, and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
Disclosure data was collected in August 2026 for 1,002 of the largest US-based companies, including hyperscalers, across nine AI-related disclosure areas that were selected based on the priorities of the American public: Board oversight of AI, C-suite AI leadership, AI data protection, AI human oversight, AI harm prevention, employee AI upskilling, AI impact on jobs, community AI investments, and anti-surveillance and personal data protection commitment.
As colleges and universities kick off their fall semesters, Just Capital surveyed current students and recent graduates on their experiences and expectations related to AI. The findings reveal both economic anxiety and opportunity, particularly as it relates to readiness for the job market they’re entering or soon to enter.
This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Just Capital from August 24–28, 2026 among 1,007 U.S. adults ages 18 to 25. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within +/- 3.1 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest. Complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, is available upon request.
Our latest research reveals a wide gap between the public’s concerns about critical AI safety, oversight, and governance issues and the level of public disclosure among 1,002 of the largest US-based companies on how these issues are being addressed. A large majority of AI users support a slowdown on AI development, but say it will help build trust in the models.
“AI developers and their enterprise customers are becoming increasingly aware that earning the public’s trust on AI is the key to success,” said Just Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “This study adds to the body of research we’ve been building to help business leaders understand how to go about doing that.”
Corporate leaders can now explore where they stand and take action to build trust. Through Just Capital’s flagship Just Intelligence product, Russell 1000 companies can now see how their public reporting meet the expectations of the American public, compare to industry peers, and stack up against leading practice.
This study is part of the organization’s ongoing research on how companies can build trust with the American public as they develop and deploy AI.
The survey was conducted online on August 18, 2026 among a national sample of 1,000 US adults age 18 and older, weighted to align with population benchmarks. Because this is an online survey based on a non-probability sample, no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
Disclosure data was collected in August 2026 for 1,002 of the largest US-based companies, including nine hyperscalers (Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle), across nine AI-related disclosure areas that were selected based on the priorities of the American public: Board oversight of AI, C-suite AI leadership, AI data protection, AI human oversight, AI harm prevention, employee AI upskilling, AI impact on jobs, community AI investments, and anti-surveillance and personal data protection commitment.
Additional details on methodology are available upon request.
The ROI of frontier AI models is a topic of hot debate in corporate America right now, primarily centered on the cost of compute. To understand what other dynamics might be at play, we did what we do best: we asked the American public.
In a poll fielded this week, 34% of workers say their workload has increased since their company started using AI, including 10% who say it’s increased significantly.
There are many factors that could be driving this. It could be that AI is not yet generating meaningful productivity gains on the individual level, or that the time saved by AI is used to complete even more work. Perhaps workers are taking on more work if their teams have reduced headcount. Respondents said the added workload comes mostly from managing and checking AI output – reviewing drafts, catching errors, and re-doing work the model got wrong. It’s the unglamorous labor of quality control, and right now, it appears to be landing squarely on employees’ shoulders.
Interestingly, it’s not a story of frustration or distrust. Among workers who say AI has changed their job, 88% call that change positive. Put together, the data suggests companies may be in an early training period, where the labor costs required to teach AI are currently more significant than the costs saved by the technology. What’s more, workers seem to sense that the tradeoff is worth it.
As business leaders race to deploy AI, they may want to consider how they’re rewarding workers for the extra elbow grease that’s making that transformation possible.
Be well,
Martin
57% of institutional investors and analysts believe AI will have a negative impact on the environment.
Axios reports that Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is calling on the U.S. to establish an AI watchdog group comprising world-class technical experts.
Meanwhile, Common Sense Media finds Google’s AI search failed safety tests and scored poorly on seven of the organization’s eight AI safety principles.
CNBC investigates former Meta employees’ accusations that the company unfairly used AI in recent layoffs.
New York became the first state to put a temporary ban on data centers until standards are created that address environmental impacts, energy demands, water usage, and other factors. NBC News has the story.
A group of economists from Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab released a statement calling for urgent preparation for the economic impacts of powerful AI models. The statement has been signed by over 200 economists including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Covista and the Covista Foundation committed $10 million and 50,000 volunteer hours to build and sustain the healthcare workforce over the next five years.
Gallup finds that confidence in U.S. institutions remains near all-time lows.
Fortune reports that the growing national debt may result in a smaller job market with lower wages for Gen Z in particular.
This chart comes from Gallup and looks at Americans’ confidence in large technology companies. Among the institutions rated this year, large technology companies experienced a surge in Americans expressing very little or no confidence.
