New Hampshire residents are increasingly convinced that artificial intelligence will do the country more harm than good. They are also using it more than ever. That contradiction sits at the heart of the latest Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which surveyed 1,198 residents in late May. As the New Hampshire Bulletin reported Friday, nearly two-thirds of respondents now say AI will have a negative effect on the United States over the next decade, up three percentage points from October 2025, when 61 percent held that view.
The numbers tell a story that should sound familiar to anyone who has watched a new technology embed itself in daily life faster than public opinion can keep up. Granite Staters are not waiting to decide whether they approve of AI before they adopt it. They are adopting it first and worrying about it at the same time.
Workplace adoption is surging
The most dramatic shift in the poll is happening on the job. In October 2025, 44 percent of New Hampshire workers reported using some form of AI at work. By late May, that figure had jumped to 59 percent. The share of respondents working in entirely AI-free jobs collapsed by 15 percentage points over the same stretch, falling from 56 percent to 41 percent.
Most of that workplace use remains sporadic. Only about one in four respondents uses AI professionally multiple times a week or more, a figure that rose three percentage points since October. That suggests the technology is spreading wide before it spreads deep: more workers are touching AI tools, but relatively few have built them into their daily routines.
There is also a notable satisfaction gap. Fewer than half of survey takers who use AI for work, school, or personal life said they had a positive experience with it, down from 55 percent in October. More than half of workplace users said the technology has made little or no difference to their productivity. For all the investment pouring into AI, the average Granite State worker is not yet feeling transformed by it.
Personal use is now the norm
Outside of work, AI has quietly become a mainstream utility. Two-thirds of respondents use AI in their personal lives, and 28 percent use it multiple times a week or more. The most common use is the most predictable one: about half of personal-time users turn to AI for general information, questions, and research, the role that search engines have owned for a quarter century.
The rest of the list shows how far the technology has crept into private life. Twenty-seven percent of personal users have asked AI medical or health questions. One in five uses it for writing, and the same share uses it for cooking. Eighteen percent have used it for home or car repair guidance, 16 percent for entertainment, 9 percent for organization, 8 percent for financial advice, and 7 percent for life advice. Four percent of respondents reported using AI for therapy or companionship, a small number with large implications for how the technology is starting to occupy emotional territory.
Elections are the biggest fear
When the Survey Center asked residents to predict AI’s effect across ten sectors of life in New Hampshire over the next decade, only one category earned majority optimism: medical care, where 53 percent expect a somewhat or very positive effect. Even that number slipped from 57 percent in October. Workplace productivity was the only other category where optimists outnumbered pessimists, 39 percent to 35 percent.
Everywhere else, pessimism won. Education, the economy, arts and entertainment, news, the environment, personal relationships, and utility costs all drew net-negative expectations. But nothing came close to elections. Fifty-five percent of respondents predicted AI would have a very negative effect on elections over the next ten years, and another 19 percent said somewhat negative, a combined 74 percent. In the state that guards the first-in-the-nation primary, three in four residents now expect AI to corrode the democratic process itself.
Jobs anxiety runs nearly as deep. Seventy-two percent of respondents believe AI will reduce the number of jobs available in the future, and roughly one in five believes it is likely they will personally lose their job to the technology within the next decade. Those fears land in a state where, as we have reported, the economy looks strong on paper while workers feel they are losing ground.
Data centers: opposition crosses party lines
The poll also probed the physical side of the AI boom, and the results help explain why data center fights have become some of the most heated local battles in the state. Two-thirds of respondents said they would oppose a data center in their own town. Only about one in five would support one.
That sentiment is not abstract in New Hampshire. Nottingham residents have packed planning board meetings and gathered nearly 15,000 petition signatures against a proposed data center on Route 4, a fight we covered in depth as the town braced for a showdown with developers. At the State House, lawmakers spent much of the session wrestling with whether towns should retain zoning power over the facilities, culminating in the House tabling the “by right” data center zoning bill in a lopsided 304 to 11 vote.
The poll found 45 percent of residents would support a pause on data center development statewide, an idea the Legislature considered this year without reaching consensus, against 34 percent opposed. Support for a pause was remarkably bipartisan: about half of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans. Opposition to data centers was strongest among people under 50, women, and residents of the North Country, Seacoast, and Connecticut Valley. The groups most likely to support data centers were conservatives and residents 65 and older.
What the contradiction means for New Hampshire
The gap between rising AI use and falling AI trust is not necessarily irrational. Residents may be making an accurate read: the technology is useful enough to adopt for specific tasks and consequential enough to fear in aggregate. A worker who uses a chatbot to draft emails can simultaneously believe that the same class of technology threatens her industry, her utility bill, and the integrity of the next election.
For policymakers, the poll sketches a clear set of pressure points. The data center question will return to Concord, because two-thirds local opposition and 45 percent support for a statewide pause do not simply evaporate between sessions. Election integrity concerns will shadow the 2026 cycle and the 2028 primary. And the education system faces growing pressure to prepare students for an AI-saturated economy, an argument already being made by commentators pushing for a futurology course in New Hampshire high schools. The technology is not waiting for public opinion to settle, and based on this poll, neither are Granite Staters.
