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.
It has been an exciting week in New York. Yesterday I joined Dani Burger on Bloomberg TV to talk about the issue of the day, AI safety. We had just fielded a snap poll on what Americans want to see from the U.S. and China on AI ahead of President Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping. Key findings include 87% of Americans (across party lines) are concerned about AI safety and wanting action; 67% believe the US and China should work together on AI safety; 51% urge the President to take action on AI safety even if China does not want to cooperate. I was also struck by the fact that 30% said they would switch their vote in the midterms to candidates who share their views on AI. The bottom line? The public is more concerned about AI safety than they are about China.
The results dovetailed with our monthly National AI Monitor, which shows Americans are net positive about AI right now (especially at work), and our fourth quarterly survey of the public, investors, and corporate leaders, which for the first time also captured the small business perspective. Here we also found that AI safety outranks U.S. competitiveness as a top concern for all three audiences. Where the three diverge is their expectations around the level of investment. 64% of the public and 56% of investors want companies to devote over 5% of their AI investments to safety and security. Only 22% of corporate leaders currently report spending at that level, and 65% say they are at 5% or below.
We also joined forces this week with Amalgamated Bank and Worth Media to host a private executive roundtable on AI’s impact on the workforce. The session ran under Chatham House Rule, so I can’t quote participants. But every leader in the room, from every sector, is in dual execution and learning mode. Testing solutions quickly, and measuring whether they work, is the new reality on the ground. This morning I am speaking at Mastercard’s Data for Inclusive Growth Forum to further explore how corporate America can adapt to AI quickly enough to drive innovation and unlock opportunity for all.
The fact is, all stakeholders seem to want speed, value creation (for them) AND safety. This is the challenge being set. Our flagship JUST ETF shows that companies best able to do this will prosper – as of September 23, it has outperformed the Russell 1000 equal-weighted index by an incredible 87.5% since inception in March 2019.
More to come.
Be well,
Martin
53% of corporate leaders believe safety & security is a top concern, exceeding concerns around competition and growth. Explore the data here.
Fortune speaks to the CEO of Hilton, who reveals that AI has only made entry-level hospitality jobs more competitive, with 12,000 applications received for 72 internship slots this year.
Indeed releases a surprising study that shows pay for more AI-exposed jobs is actually rising.
Axios looks at how China and the US might be creating an AI “red phone” – a former cold-war era guardrail to get immediate contact with world leaders in case of a major AI-driven catastrophe.
Politico examines why California voters in particular are turning on AI.
The Charlotte Observer reports that Amazon is investing $1.5 billion to improve wages for U.S. operations workers.
The CEO of Dollar General is seeing shopping behaviours change not only among typical low-income customers, but the middle class as well. Yahoo! Finance has the story.
The Wall Street Journal looks at all the ways the AI build-out is becoming the biggest U.S. construction project in history.
Americans are clear about what they want from AI. Our latest polling shows they prioritize safety over speed, prevention of harm and deception (especially for vulnerable populations), protecting privacy and personal data, and keeping humans in charge. They also hold deployers of AI just as accountable as the developers.
Business is starting to respond.
This week the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure, a CEO-led coalition, added new members to prepare for AI-powered attacks on banking, technology, energy, telecommunications, and transportation. Citigroup‘s Jane Fraser told Axios that capturing AI’s upside means accepting “the responsibility that comes with it.”
Banks are also fighting AI deception where it hurts most: in people’s accounts. Today the American Bankers Association relaunched its #BanksNeverAskThat and #PracticeSafeChecks campaigns. Banks across the country can use the new videos and materials to help customers spot scams. As the ABA’s Paul Benda told the Senate this summer, generative AI “is not replacing traditional scams. It is industrializing them.”
On innovation, Vertex Pharmaceuticals is using AI to speed up its research and development, and is hiring business talent with quantitative training. Zoom has committed $10 million over three years to AI education and opportunity, with $5 million going to K-12 AI literacy through partners including Code.org.
Commitments like these are still rare. In our corporate disclosure analysis, only 9% of Russell 1000 companies report investing in community AI initiatives. Only 10% disclose a policy that explicitly addresses harm, deception, or manipulation, which is the public’s top priority.
Still, these are incredibly positive actions. We need more of them, and our monthly National AI Monitor, which tracks how ordinary Americans are experiencing AI in their lives, will help us gauge the impacts.
Be well,
Martin
14% of companies disclose a policy or set of principles that specifically mentions keeping humans in charge, human oversight, or maintaining human-in-the-loop.
The Wall Street Journal examines a small Pennsylvania town and explores the varied responses to a tactic companies are using to build local data centers – by offering locals cash payouts.
ABC looks at how the construction boom around AI data centers is so large it’s halting progress on other important construction projects.
OpenAI cancels their latest model update, citing major safety concerns. The Washington Post has the story.
At the same time, The New York Times reveals that OpenAI was previously ignoring employees who warned it wasn’t doing enough for security.
Axios reports on The Alliance for Critical Infrastructure, a recently formed CEO-led coalition that aims to protect critical infrastructure from AI risks.
Yahoo! Finance examines research that shows nearly one-third of Americans cannot pay their bills on time.
The Financial Times looks at how Starbucks’ growth plan is rolling back many of their sustainability promises.
The Century Foundation examines how debt payments have grown since 2022 and are eating away at Americans’ pay.
Conversations around AI safety reached a fever pitch this week. AI leaders shared manifestos, and policymakers are set to meet next week behind closed doors. As always, I found myself asking where the American people stand in the debate. How are they experiencing AI? Are they really as negative as some would have you believe? Is it making their lives better, and what if anything are they afraid of?
This week we launched the National AI Monitor, a unique new research initiative that objectively tracks if-and-how people are feeling the effects of AI in their daily lives. Incorporating quantitative and qualitative responses, it captures how Americans truly see AI today – as workers, customers, community members, investors, and stewards of the environment – and their expectations for the future.
So what did we learn? We see a public that is generally positive about the many ways AI can make their lives more fulfilling and more productive – a headline that runs contrary to recent reports. 57% of Americans say AI positively impacts them at work, compared to just 9% who say it affects them negatively. Positive qualitative responses most commonly cite productivity and quality gains (27%), efficiency and time savings (19%), and automating routine tasks (8%).
Conversely, there is very real anxiety around ensuring AI systems are safe and secure, protecting jobs in their communities, and, most notably, mitigating harm to the environment. On the last point, 23% of Americans say AI is positively impacting the environment, compared to 40% who say it is producing a negative impact.
We also learned that many Americans are not aware of any effects of AI on their economic wellbeing – 42% say it has had no effect on them as an investor. This is key. As I wrote in Forbes this week, capitalism does not survive on efficiency alone. It survives thanks to its social license. If people see the benefits of AI flowing to fewer and fewer people, they’re apt to stop believing in the underlying systems of capitalism and democracy on which AI’s future success depends. That is not a good outcome for anyone.
AI leaders and enterprise deployers should see this as a guide for how to build trust in AI’s future. People don’t want promises and pledges. They want concrete improvements in their daily lives. The National AI Monitor will be the benchmark by which that is measured.
Be well, Martin
56% of Americans say AI is having a positive effect on them right now, 21% say the effect is negative. Explore the rest of the findings here.
The Wall Street Journal reveals that many CEOs believe the AI apocalypse threat is a real problem, and are urging Trump to work with China for a global slowdown on development.
The New York Times looks at how AI is affecting the job market – not through job loss – but through stagnant wages and diminished hiring.
Axios reports that OpenAI has disclosed six new AI safety incidents, revealing that the Hugging Face hack was not an isolated incident.
CEO Daily reveals one of the major themes of Fortune’s latest Leaders Forum is CEO’s calling for businesses to avoid falling into the “efficiency trap” – bolting AI onto existing workflows rather than completely redesigning them.
Fortune released a report that the amount of Amazon workers on food stamps has tripled despite its record revenue.
Forbes reveals that America’s 400 richest people have only donated 4% of their wealth to charity.
Gallup reveals that workers’ fears about being replaced by technology in the near future continue to go up, matching our own polling that shows Americans get more pessimistic on AI as they think about the future.
TIME’s cover this week featured the OpenAI co-founders with the headline “Trust Us”. Diane Brady’s CEO Daily yesterday spotlighted Meta’s need to rebuild trust. In a major essay and interview with The New York Times Bill Gates questioned whether leading AI developers are sufficiently communicating the full extent of AI’s potential impacts on society. Trust, it seems, may be a new kind of singularity in the race to develop and deploy AI.
Our latest research sheds light on the public’s perspective on the topic. 72% of Americans support pausing or slowing AI development so each model release can be evaluated more carefully. Among people who use AI every day that number climbs to 78%. Crucially, 72% of daily users say a slowdown would increase their trust in AI models.
What would people want addressed during a slow down or pause? Data privacy and security leads at 21%; AI safety — the risk of losing control, or of AI causing harm — comes in at 20%, followed by the accuracy and reliability of outputs at 16%. Job loss and economic displacement (10%), and broader concerns about societal overreliance on AI (10%) also feature.
One way for companies to build trust is through greater transparency. We analyzed 1,002 of the largest US-based firms across 9 critical AI safety and governance areas selected based on their importance to the American public. Let’s just say we found much room for improvement. Nearly half (498) disclose on none of the key issues. Only 10% of companies have published anything on preventing harm, deception, or manipulation; 14% commit to human oversight. Board oversight of AI is the most common disclosure, at 26%. Salesforce is the only company of the 1,002 to disclose across all 9 criteria. Maybe its partnership with Anthropic announced this week will help build trust for the latter ahead of its expected IPO later this year.
New capabilities released this week within Just Intelligence now enable companies to see where they stand on the public’s AI priorities, how they compare to their peers, and examples of what good really looks like. We’d love your feedback.
Be well,
Martin
71% of adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the United States over the next two decades. Explore the rest of Pew Research’s findings here.
Reuters looks at how Meta’s plan to replace nearly two-thirds of its workers with AI backfired.
Bill Gates released an essay on his worries about AI, and the need to prepare business and society for rapid change.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has moved its “AI responsibility” team out of its DeepMind Labs, with members of the team worrying about the impact this will have on their work.
The New York Times reports that Meta will have to pay $17 billion in a landmark settlement around its role in social media addiction among children.
CBS reports that the functional unemployment rate – which includes people only able to secure part-time work when they are seeking full-time work – stands at 25%, and growing.
Investopedia looks at the viral debate over a $20 burrito to discuss U.S. inflation, employment trends, and the constant feeling Americans have that everything is too expensive.
This chart comes from our newest research, and shows that 72% of power AI-users support pausing or slowing AI development so each model release can be evaluated more carefully. Explore the full findings here.
Is public opposition to data centers as uniformly intense as it seems? Our latest polling suggests perhaps not.
It’s a critical issue. The flow of capital into building AI infrastructure is off the charts right now, and it’s fair to say the future of the US economy hinges to a large extent on there being a strong return on this investment. In May, Gallup put local opposition to data centers at 71%, apparently worse than any nuclear plant has ever polled. At that level, it’s hard to see how the AI build out can ever be successful.
Our most recent polling reveals a different picture: 47% opposed, 39% in favor, 13% undecided. Local ‘not in my backyard’ concerns don’t appear to be the main motivator. When we asked how people feel about a data center ten miles away the numbers barely shifted: 49% opposed, 37% in favor.
Interestingly, only 16% want AI development stopped outright. Forty-three percent want it slowed to only use existing data center capacity and 24% are happy to see it continue at full speed. Thirty-four percent of those opposed cite rising electricity and utility bills; 22% reference environmental impact. Perhaps most important of all, 51% of opponents say they could still change their minds. And the thing most likely to move them is direct participation in the upside.
For all those with a stake in seeing the U.S. lead the global AI race, these data points should be encouraging. Show people how they’ll benefit economically, alleviate electricity and environmental pressures, and tie it to initiatives that help tackle kitchen table affordability, employment, health and education concerns, and the path forward for data center developers becomes clearer.
I explore more of our research — and what a modern version of aligned corporate responsiveness could look like — in my latest piece for Forbes.
Be well,
Martin
This newsletter was written mostly by humans with a bit of help from AI.
69% of college students worry AI will make it harder to find a job, per a recent survey of 2,000 U.S. higher education students by Superhuman (formerly Grammarly). Read the full report here.
The Wall Street Journal explains how tech companies have actually spent $3 trillion more dollars on AI than they’re showing on their balance sheets.
Axios looks at how college students are changing their majors to try and find careers that are more insulated from the growth of AI.
Fortune speaks to Dario Amodei on the “crisis of trust” people are having with AI.
New research by Gallup reveals that only half of CHRO’s trust their managers to guide employees through an AI transition.
Harvard Business Review interviews Just Capital Chairman of the Board and current Verizon CEO Dan Schulman on business, the promises and pitfalls of AI, and more.
The AFL-CIO reveals that CEO pay has reached its highest levels ever while worker pay is falling.
Axios investigated new data on how Gen Z is feeling about the economy, the labor market, and more. Read the full piece here.
