Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
CEOs, do you know what the public is saying about AI? New polling shared exclusively with Modern CEO by Just Capital, the nonprofit that tracks what the American public expects from business, finds that 66% expect AI will be a net positive for society within the next five years. That’s up eight points from Just Capital’s polling in the fall of 2025 but shows far more caution than the business class. Nine out of 10 (90%) corporate leaders and 94% of investors surveyed are bullish on AI’s societal impact.
Attitudes about job losses amplify the public-corporate gap: About a third of Americans surveyed expect AI to usher in large-scale job losses across industries over the next two to three years, whereas only 13% of corporate leaders and 10% of investors see layoffs as the most likely outcome of AI on the workforce. Instead, 68% of investors and 55% of executives say AI will mean fewer entry-level positions and “higher skill requirements” for those who stay employed.
Martin Whittaker, CEO of Just Capital, says the organization’s surveys can provide corporate leaders with another layer of data that can inform AI strategy and investment. “If you’re a CEO, you’re asking: ‘How do we pursue those opportunities, knowing that the pace of change is so rapid, and how are we managing some of the risks?’” he says. “That’s where this polling can come in as a starting point for an AI playbook.”
Attitudes about AI
What else is the public saying? The recent Just Capital poll shows large swaths of Americans want companies to provide advance notice and transparency about AI-driven workforce changes (66%), help employees transition after AI-driven layoffs (57%), and even contribute to a new fund to support or train workers displaced by AI (51%).
The public, investors, and corporate leaders are aligned on AI safety risks, with misinformation and malicious use by bad actors topping the list of concerns. The public also ranks protecting personal data and privacy as priorities.
Whittaker notes that companies have work to do on this front. A separate Just Capital analysis of 933 public American companies finds that 234 companies in 2025 said they won’t sell user data in any context, down 3.5% from 2024; 62 companies say they will not use data for advertising, down 3% from 2024.
Whittaker says that companies that fail to listen to Main Street do so at their peril. When Just Capital started in 2014, Whittaker says he had leaders privately dismiss the idea of asking the public what they expect of companies. “They’d pull me aside and say, ‘They don’t know anything; they can’t agree on anything.’” But the polling, which consistently showed the public prioritizing wages and benefits over boardroom issues such as climate change, has proven prescient.
His advice to CEOs? “I think our polling can [show] what your stakeholders care about,” he says. “If you’re looking for some kind of a pulse on ‘What should I prioritize?’ it’s investing in [your] workforce.”
Your AI questions answered
Next month, Modern CEO subscribers will have an opportunity to join me in conversation with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies, discussing the most urgent AI issues of the day. Register here and submit your burning questions to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and we’ll try to tackle as many as possible in the live session on May 18 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.
Read more: AI and jobs
- Meta plans “sweeping layoffs” as AI woes mount
- AI is displacing workers without college degrees
- These four graphs show where AI is already impacting jobs
- This tool helps you understand if your job is AI-proof