What the UK Thinks About AI: Building Public Trust to Accelerate Adoption
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Type of work: Report
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artificial intelligenceAbstract:
Artificial intelligence is at the heart of the UK government’s plans to improve public services and boost economic growth. In January 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the AI Opportunities Action Plan and outlined a bold vision for making the UK a global leader on AI.
The government is right to emphasise the upside of accelerated AI research and adoption. If carefully designed and deployed, AI systems can help improve efficiency, solve complex challenges from health care to climate change, and protect national security interests. As AI capabilities continue to advance, getting AI policy right matters more than ever.
However, there remains a gap between the government’s opportunities-oriented agenda and public attitudes towards AI. UK adults are more inclined to view AI as a risk for the economy (39 per cent) than an opportunity (20 per cent), according to a new poll conducted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and Ipsos. Moreover, 38 per cent of respondents in the same survey cite lack of trust in AI as a barrier to adoption.
This is a serious problem. Public attitudes shape not only how AI is adopted and governed but also the legitimacy of its use. Just like hype can be dangerous, so low trust in AI can lead to significant opportunity cost by slowing the rollout of well-functioning, socially beneficial use cases. Without broad support, the government will struggle to implement the AI Opportunities Action Plan and deliver on its wider growth agenda. Understanding and improving public attitudes towards AI is thus an urgent task – as is building AI systems worthy of the public’s trust.
This paper examines public attitudes towards AI in the UK, drawing primarily on a new survey of 3,727 UK adults conducted between 30 May and 4 June 2025. The research uses the Ipsos Knowledge Panel, which ensures high-quality sampling and digital inclusion, allowing for detailed analysis across regions, demographics and sectors. We present findings from this new data set, alongside insights from prior research, to explore a simple but pressing question: how can the UK government improve public attitudes towards AI and build justified trust to accelerate the adoption of use cases that improve social outcomes?
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Mökander, J., Puddick, J., Goel, N., Wager, A., Rhydderch, T., Margetts, H., Cameron, D. & Roff, B. (2025). What the UK Thinks About AI: Building Public Trust to Accelerate Adoption. London: Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
