Nearly everyone has experienced frustration when dealing with AI or an automated system used for customer service.
Now, a new survey shows that over 70 percent of Americans say they would appreciate at least having the option to talk to a human representative across multiple fields. More than 73 percent of 2,122 U.S. adults told Johns Hopkins University researchers that they want the legal right to interact with a real person in medicine, court, schools and benefits offices.
The demand was true across political party lines and people who view AI the most positively, the school said Monday.
“What was surprising to us in this new poll was that daily users of AI, and people who view AI positively, also want regulation,” Christopher Honey, a computational cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, explained in a statement.
Around 73 percent said they hoped for legal restrictions in government. While 74 percent said they want to see it in education and essential services, 76 percent in legal proceedings and 79 percent in medical and mental health care and when an AI “decides against you.”
“People want the legal right to interact with another person, rather than an algorithm, in medicine, in court, in schools, and in benefits offices,” the survey’s results say.
Those polled also want more rules for transparency and privacy, including being told when they’re speaking with an algorithm, to label any media that’s been generated using AI and ban deep fakes: impersonations of peoples’ voices and faces.
The survey found that 68 percent said they wanted labels on AI images and video, 73 percent wanted to ban AI from using peoples’ faces and voices and 75 percent want to be told when they’re interacting with AI.
The White House has released national policy framework for AI — but few guardrails exist.
Deepfakes that include a false image of a sexually explicit nature are illegal under the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act which was signed by the president in May 2025.
Still, AI continues to advance and become entrenched throughout major U.S. industries.
While respondents’ overall opinion about AI was split into thirds – it’s good, bad or a mixture – about 60 percent of adults expect the tech to widen inequality over the next decade, with large tech companies gaining power.
There was broad support for a tax on AI companies that would give a small monthly payment to every American adult.
That was supported by 52 percent of Republicans and Independents and 60 percent of Democrats.
“We were interested to hear the national voice as the public tries to understand these problems. What are people thinking and feeling?” Rolando Masís-Obando, a computational neuroscientist who uses AI, said. “We are taking the pulse of the nation with this poll and we want to run this every year to see how opinions change over time.”
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