# AI companies need visible benefits to regain public trust

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-companies-need-visible-benefits-to-regain-public-trust/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Jasmine Sun](https://realalpha.app/people/jasmine-sun/) · Jasmine Sun is a writer and journalist covering AI. · Documents the cultures and beliefs shaping frontier AI through her “anthropology of disruption” reporting.
- Host: Zershaaneh Qureshi
- Show: 80,000 Hours Podcast
- Episode: [What AI insiders say off the record | Jasmine Sun](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/), Jul 21, 2026
- Moment: 44:02 to 52:13 of the episode (8 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-companies-need-visible-benefits-to-regain-public-trust/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2642

## Quote

> “When you test UBI with the public, **it's extremely unpopular** because most Americans really want to work.”
> — [Jasmine Sun](https://realalpha.app/people/jasmine-sun/) at [47:33](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2853) · 80,000 Hours Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Many people encounter AI as job friction, slop, or homework cheating.
2. UBI and infinite leisure are less appealing to many Americans than insiders assume.
3. Visible sharing of economic gains may matter more than promises.

## About this segment

Jasmine Sun argues that PR cannot offset mediocre everyday experiences or a utopia many Americans don't want. Trust will require tangible gains and legible economic sharing.

From “What AI insiders say off the record | Jasmine Sun”, Jul 21, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[44:06](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2646) Yeah. I think another dynamic that we're seeing with AI populism that seems worth unpacking a little bit is that AI companies are just spending like lots and lots of money on things like PR, And yet, somehow, public hostility about AI, populist ideas and so forth are still very much rising. Yeah, what do you think is going wrong here? Is the AI community misunderstanding something fundamentally about its audience?

[44:43](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2683) Yeah. I had a conversation about this recently at a roundtable with some of the AI executives. And it seems to me that we are past the point where marketing and nice ads and AI for good stuff can get the public back on board. I mean, a huge part of it is just that so much of the messaging coming out of the AI industry for the past five years has been focused on the risks. And so even if we turn around now and say, Sam Altman says, actually, I don't want AI to replace you. I want AI to be a tool.

[45:19](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2719) And, like, you know, there are still videos and, like, on-the-record statements from all of these executives about the risks that AI poses. And so people see it as a sort of flip-flopping. And I think the other issue is just that, like, most people are not seeing tremendous benefits from AI in their personal lives. Yes, again, they may be able to write emails faster. They may get something that they consider 50% better than having access to Google in terms of, like, looking up little things here and there.

[45:49](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2749) But the way that AI shows up in most people's day-to-day lives is also equivalently slop, finding it hard to apply for jobs, finding it hard to review job applications, their kid cheating on all of their homework or maybe having an AI companion that they talk to 24-7. The way that AI shows up in people's day-to-day lives is the median experience is not necessarily that good. And again, most people aren't yet getting the tremendous benefits from something like Cloud Code for software engineers, where they're actually seeing in their own productivity their job get easier, faster, being able to output more.

[46:24](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2784) And so I think in a world where AI actually has diffused quite a lot, like most people encounter AI quite regularly in their lives, then there's only so much that your marketing can do. Because again, if your marketing's like, we're going to cure cancer eventually, or we're going to go to the moon eventually, and people are just looking at their lives and the way that they use AI in the present, I just don't think that the marketing is that persuasive yet.

[46:47](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2807) Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, this does seem like one way in which the insularity of the AI community is like having an effect. Right. So, I mean, this is not true across the board, but in lots of cases, we've got sort of people who are living together, reading the same books, going to all the same parties, using all the same jargon. Um, and I wonder how much you think that's kind of creating a divide with the public or like, yeah, how much that's sort of reinforcing this, this gap that you're observing.

[47:20](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2840) I think it's a big part of it. I mean, um, even when you ask people, like, what do they look forward to in the, when AI goes well, what do you look forward to in the post-AGI utopia, right? A lot of folks who I know in San Francisco in the AI research community, they're really excited about UBI and they're really excited about this sort of infinite leisure point of view. When you test UBI with the public, it's extremely unpopular because most Americans really want to work. They really want to have a job. Maybe they don't want the job to be 40 hours a week. Maybe they don't want the job to be this or that. But like fundamentally, people really want to work. Or when you ask people, do you want to live forever? I think it like is actually quite a controversial poll. Like a lot of people don't want to live forever.

[47:55](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2875) And so when there's a very, the utopia, that sort of Silicon Valley and they industry is outlining is not actually a very compelling utopia to a lot of the other people in society. And they don't realize that because they are in these very insular communities. Then like even your attempts at positive storytelling don't really land. The other thing that I think about sometimes is that, especially as the companies are going to go public soon, like for the first, you know, five years of these AI labs existence, all the messaging is really focused on recruiting and investors, right? Like you want to get the best technical talent to join your lab, and you want investors to give you a lot of money and take you really seriously. And so you're actually marketing to the end group, right? Even somebody who may not

[48:36](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2916) actually, say, care very much about AI safety, an executive might pretend to really care a lot about AI safety because they know that a lot of the researchers do, and they're not going to get the best researchers if they don't pretend to care about safety. We saw this with the acquisition of DeepMind into Google. Google made a bunch of promises about an ethics board and AI use in the military. I think arguably a lot of Sam Ullman's communications about safety have this flavor where he knows a lot of the people who are very important to him care about it. And so he's happy to say the words. But when you have people saying words in order to recruit more in-group people, and these words are on the record and they're on Twitter and they're on video, and then they get shared out to the broad public. And it's like, oh man, Sam Ullman says that most people are

[49:19](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2959) probably going to be worse off. Or like she says that like there might be like an X percentage a chance that we all die. Then they're like, whoa, what the hell are these guys doing? Like, we're not into that. And so I think that the insularity is also reinforced by some of the market incentives of the first five years of their existence. And so now that the companies are trying to pivot into messaging to the public, it's a much harder task.

[49:39](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=2979) Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious what you think needs to happen to get these groups, i.e. the AI community and the public to, I don't want to say reconcile because they may never get on, may never like sort of agree, but, you know, at least start sort of speaking the same language. I frankly think that at this point, in order to get the public back on board, you're going to need to start giving people real material benefits.

[50:01](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=3001) Or maybe it does look like the long-awaited cancer cure. I think if people see medical breakthroughs that are actually happening as a result of AI, then they are going to have a much more positive view on things. When you look at David Shore's Blue Rose polling, health advances and scientific advances as a result of AI are some of the highest polling things among the public. And so if it also looks like more investment is shifting towards domains that people are really excited about AI being a part of, and those are visible, those are well marketed, then I think that that could also really work.

[50:36](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=3036) But again, when we talk about scientific and health advances, it can't be these advertisements about plausible future things. I think we actually have to show that we are able to access cheaper or better or whatever it is, whatever cures, treatments, et cetera, as a direct result of the AI companies and their wealth. Yeah, I'm wondering how that view squares up with the phenomenon that you've noted where people, like at least in the sort of AI populist category that you've sketched out, people are so fundamentally mistrustful of the elite groups who are building these things that it kind of doesn't matter to them how useful the tools are.

[51:18](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=3078) Like what needs to happen? Like how did getting these sort of material benefits sort of change their psychology around the mistrust of the elite? In this case, I think that's where like I'm, I think the economic redistribution stuff is actually really important. Like I'm actually not sure that say the health advances alone would do something here because I think the mistrust of the elite is fundamentally based in rising levels of wealth inequality and concerns over affordability and corporate concentration of power in the U.S. in the sense that wage growth hasn't kept up with corporate growth and labor share of income is declining and all of that kind of stuff. And so I think because so many of the populist concerns are wrapped up in economic inequality.

[52:00](https://realalpha.app/v/kLAawZ9x1nQ/?t=3120) Unless there is a clear sort of economic benefit, the sharing of the pie in a highly legible way, we're not going to sort of smooth over that set of concerns.