By MATT O’BRIEN and LINLEY SANDERS

Most U.S. adults say they use artificial intelligence to search for information, but fewer are using it for work, drafting email or shopping.

Younger adults are most likely to be leaning into AI, with many using it for brainstorming and work tasks.

The new findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that 60% of Americans overall — and 74% of those under 30 — use AI to find information at least some of the time.

The poll highlights the ubiquity of AI in some areas — as well as its limits in others. Only about 4 in 10 Americans say they have used AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, a sign that the tech industry’s promises of highly productive AI assistants still haven’t touched most livelihoods after years of promotion and investment.

At the same time, wider AI adoption by younger Americans shows that could change.

There’s a particularly large age divide on brainstorming: About 6 in 10 adults under age 30 have used AI for coming up with ideas, compared with only 2 in 10 of those age 60 or older. Young adults are also more likely to use AI to come up with ideas at least “daily.”

Young adults are most likely to use AI

Bridging the generations are people like Courtney Thayer, 34, who’s embracing AI in some parts of her life and avoiding it in others.

Thayer said she is regularly using ChatGPT to come up with ideas about planning what to eat, while also having it calculate the nutritional value of the pumpkin-banana-oat bread she’s been baking for years.

“I asked it to make a meal prep for the week, then to add an Asian flair,” said Thayer, of Des Moines, Iowa. “It wasn’t the most flavorful thing I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s a nice stepping off point. More importantly, I use it for the amount so that I’m not over-serving myself and ending up with wasted food.”

The audiologist has embraced AI at work, too, in part because AI technology is imbued in the hearing aids she recommends to patients but also because it makes it easier and faster to draft professional emails.

She avoids it for important information, particularly medical advice, after witnessing chatbots “hallucinate” false information about topics she spent years studying.

Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they use AI for work tasks at least sometimes, while about one-third say they use it for helping to write emails, create or edit images, or for entertainment, according to the poll. About one-quarter say they use it to shop.

Younger adults are more likely than older ones to say they have used artificial intelligence to help with various tasks, the poll shows.

Searching for information is AI’s most common use

Of the eight options offered in the poll questions, searching for information is the most common way Americans have interacted with AI. And even that may be an undercount, since it’s not always apparent how AI is surfacing what information people see online.

For more than a year, the dominant search engine, Google, has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person’s search query, appearing at the top of results.

Perhaps defying emerging media consumption trends, 28-year-old Sanaa Wilson usually skips right past those AI-generated summaries.

“It has to be a basic question like, ‘What day does Christmas land on in 2025?’” said the Los Angeles-area resident. “I’ll be like, ‘That makes sense. I trust it.’ But when it gets to specific news, related to what’s happening in California or what’s happening to the education system and stuff like that, I will scroll down a little bit further.”

Wilson, a freelance data scientist, does use AI heavily at work to help with coding, which she said has saved her hundreds of dollars she would have had to pay for training. She also occasionally uses it to come up with work-related ideas, an attempt to bring back a little of the collaborative brainstorming experience she remembers from college life but doesn’t have now.

When it first came out, Wilson said she also used ChatGPT to help write emails, until she learned more about its environmental impact and the possibility it would erode her own writing and thinking skills over time.

“It’s just an email. I can work it out,” she said. “However many minutes it takes, or seconds it takes, I can still type it myself.”

Most don’t use AI for companionship — but it’s more common for young adults

The least common of the eight AI uses was AI companionship, though even that showed an age divide.

Just under 2 in 10 of all adults and about a quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship.

Wilson has no interest in AI companions, though she isn’t surprised that others do because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her generation’s social experiences.

“I totally understand and sympathize behind why people in my age group are leveraging it in that way,” Wilson said.

Thayer, the audiologist, also has no interest in AI companionship, though she tries to be polite with chatbots, just in case they’re keeping track.

“I mean, I am nice to it, just because I’ve watched movies, right?” Thayer said, laughing. “So I’ll say, ‘Can you make me a meal plan, please?’ And, ‘Can you modify this, please?’ And then I’ll say, ‘Thank you.’”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Minnesota United vs. Queretaro FC

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Allianz Field
Stream: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV
Weather: 75 degrees, party sunny, 9 mph south wind

What: The third annual Leagues Cup has all 18 teams in Mexico’s Liga MX and 18 MLS teams that qualified for the tournament based in making the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs.

MNUFC will play three Mexican teams in “Phase One.” After Queretaro, the Loons will play Club America in Houston on Saturday and host Atletico de San Luis in St. Paul next Wednesday.

How: The four teams with the most points in both Liga MX and MLS will move on to the knockout quarterfinal round. Three points awarded for regulation wins. If it’s a draw after 90 minutes, each team receives one point and the winner of a shootout gets an additional point.

Context: The Loons are ranked 17th out of the 36 clubs in the tournament. Queretaro is 31st, America is ninth and San Luis is 23rd.

View: Minnesota should prioritize its two home games, with a daunting match against America — the reigning Liga MX champions — coming at in a muggy Houston at the weekend. Fans of the Mexican giants will certainly make that a hostile environment.

Six points in wins over Queretaro and San Luis might not be enough to get through, but trying to go for it against America will spread a smaller squat too thin and jeopardize energy levels against San Luis.

Quote: “We will, for sure, approach every game with a real seriousness,” head coach Eric Ramsay said. “I think the fact that we were able to go and win (Saturday) was really helpful in that sense because I feel like we’re able to put to one side (MLS) play, really try and take the team a step further over the course of the coming days.”

Form: MNUFC is 1-1-1 in its last three matches but is on the upswing after a 2-1 comeback win at St. Louis on Saturday. Queretaro has lost all three of its games to start the Liga MX Apertura season, with a minus-five goal differential.

Update: New this year: Each club will play three matches against opponents from the other league. This was needed because it was odd for MNUFC to play MLS teams in previous Leagues Cups.

Look-back: Loons are 2-0-1 against Liga MX since the tournament started in 2023. Minnesota beat Necaza on the back of Dayne St. Clair’s 16 saves last season; it was a Leagues Cup record. But United failed to get out of its group with a loss to Seattle. In 2023, MNUFC advanced to the next round and topped Toluca in a shootout in the round of 16 but got smoked 5-0 to Nashville in the quarterfinals.

Stats: With two penalty kicks in the win at St. Louis, striker Kelvin Yeboah has five goals in six matches across all competitions in July.

“As always, I try not to ride the highs too high and the lows too low,” Yeboah said about his surge. “I try to stay at that center in my roach to the games, and that keeps my head cool.”

Prediction: Queretaro has an added day of rest after a 2-0 loss to Pumas on Friday, but travel to the U.S., their poor start to Liga MX play and an away match in Minnesota will mean a Loons victory: 1-0.

By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

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The “endangerment finding” is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called for a rewrite of the endangerment finding in March as part of a series of environmental rollbacks announced at the same time in what Zeldin said was “the greatest day of deregulation in American history.” A total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under Zeldin’s plan.

He singled out the endangerment finding as “the Holy Grail of the climate change religion” and said he was thrilled to end it “as the EPA does its part to usher in the Golden Age of American success.”

Tailpipe emission limits also targeted

The EPA also called for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Three former EPA leaders have criticized Zeldin, saying his March proposal would endanger the lives of millions of Americans and abandon the agency’s dual mission to protect the environment and human health.

“If there’s an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what they’re doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about,” Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under Republican President George W. Bush, said after Zeldin’s plan was made public.

The EPA proposal follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report “on the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding.

Conservatives and some congressional Republicans hailed the initial plan, calling it a way to undo economically damaging rules to regulate greenhouse gases.

But environmental groups, legal experts and Democrats said any attempt to repeal or roll back the endangerment finding would be an uphill task with slim chance of success. The finding came two years after a 2007 Supreme Court ruling holding that the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Passing court muster could be an issue

David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said it was virtually “impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding (to the 2009 standard) that would stand up in court.”

Doniger and other critics accused Trump’s Republican administration of using potential repeal of the endangerment finding as a “kill shot’’ that would allow him to make all climate regulations invalid. If finalized, repeal of the endangerment finding would erase current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources and could prevent future administrations from proposing rules to tackle climate change.

“The Endangerment Finding is the legal foundation that underpins vital protections for millions of people from the severe threats of climate change, and the Clean Car and Truck Standards are among the most important and effective protections to address the largest U.S. source of climate-causing pollution,” said Peter Zalzal, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

“Attacking these safeguards is manifestly inconsistent with EPA’s responsibility to protect Americans’ health and well-being,” he said. “It is callous, dangerous and a breach of our government’s responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution.”

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at https://apnews.com/hub/us-environmental-protection-agency.

By MATT OTT, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ view of the U.S. economy improved this month, but Americans remain concerned about the impact of tariffs on their economic futures.

The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose two points to 97.2 in July, up from 95.2 the previous month.

The increase in confidence was in line with analysts’ forecasts.

In April, American consumers’ confidence in the economy sank to its lowest reading since May 2020, largely due to anxiety over the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market rose 4.5 points to 74.4, however that’s still significantly below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead.

Consumers’ assessments of their current economic situation inched down by 1.5 points to 131.5.

Tariffs and the impact they could have on personal finances remains respondents’ greatest concern, the Conference Board said.

Trump’s aggressive and unpredictable policies — including massive import taxes — have clouded the outlook for the economy and the job market, raising fears that the American economy is headed toward a recession.

Consumers’ fears of a recession during the next 12 months declined slightly in July but remain elevated and above last year’s levels.

Also Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its economic outlook for the U.S. and the world this year and next because Trump’s protectionist trade policies so far appear to be doing less damage than many expected.

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The IMF now forecasts 3% growth for the global economy this year. That’s down from 3.3% in 2024, but an improvement on its previous forecast of 2.8% growth.

Though concerns about inflation eased in July, it remains a major concern among respondents, who frequently mentioned higher prices in tandem with tariffs.

Another government report earlier this month showed that consumer prices rose last month to its highest level since February Trump’s sweeping tariffs push up the cost of everything from groceries and clothes to furniture and appliances.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May. Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, also rose.

Economists pay close attention to core prices because they generally provide a better indication of where inflation is headed.

In the Conference Board’s survey, respondents’ views of the job market deteriorated for the seventh straight month, though the reading remains in positive territory as the U.S. labor market continues to churn out jobs.

In June, U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 147,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked down unexpectedly to 4.1%.

However, those headline numbers masked some weaknesses as the U.S. economy contends with fallout from Trump’s economic policies.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that U.S. employers posted 7.4 million job vacancies last month, down from 7.7 million in May. The number of people quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their prospects elsewhere — dropped last month.