The Independent Center's latest focus group research reveals a striking disconnect between how everyday Americans experience artificial intelligence and how Washington and Silicon Valley are governing it.
Fifteen everyday Americans sat down with us in March 2026. They came from Sacramento and Alaska, from Ohio and Tennessee, from Maryland and Michigan. They were young and middle-aged, men and women, from different walks of life. The one thing they shared: they don't belong to a party. They are independent voters — and what they told us about artificial intelligence should be a wake-up call for anyone who claims to represent the American people.
This is Wave 9 of our AI & Main Street monthly pulse series, and the findings are as clarifying as any we have seen.
AI Has Arrived on Main Street — But the Feelings Are Complicated
Independent voters are no longer theorizing about artificial intelligence. They are living with it.
Kyle, 28, from Virginia, uses AI to prep for job interviews and process his emotions — "my therapist, my assistant," he calls it. Tabitha, 28, from Indiana, has given her AI chatbot a name and trained it to respond to her specific personality. Hillary, 32, from Tennessee, runs multiple businesses and has replaced entire personnel costs with AI-powered automation.
These are not tech insiders. These are regular Americans building a practical, working relationship with a technology that most policy discussions still treat as hypothetical.
But more real doesn't mean more comfortable. Rochel, 21, from New York, described a trajectory from amazement to fear: "At the beginning, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. But honestly, right now, it's kind of scaring me." Thomas, 42, from Ohio, put it plainly: "It makes you question everything."
The modernized American dream has always been about access — access to tools, opportunity, and a fair shot at building a better life. AI is the next chapter of that story. But as our participants made clear, access without accountability isn't opportunity. It's anxiety.
The Hopes Are Human. The Fears Are Real.
When we asked participants what they hoped for as AI keeps advancing, the answers were grounded and practical — not utopian. Mercedes, 29, from Ohio, wanted help with grocery lists and reminders. Hillary wanted to automate the operational grunt work of running a small business. Kyle imagined self-driving cars and a house that adapts to his needs. These aren't fantasies. These are the modernized American dream made tangible: technology working for people, not over them.
The worries, though, were larger in scale. Three fears dominated:
Deepfakes and misinformation. Kameron, 19, from Texas, described AI's capacity to create fake documents and images that destroy reputations. Abdou, 40, from Oregon, asked the question that haunted the whole room: "Can we start differentiating the difference between what's real and what's not?" In 2026, that is not a philosophical question. It is a daily challenge.
Job displacement. Thomas captured it simply: "I just hope that when it's more advanced, it don't actually take over every job. I don't want to be sitting at home with nothing to do." The economic security dimension of AI runs through nearly every conversation in this focus group, even when participants are ostensibly talking about something else.
Loss of control. Rochel voiced what many felt: "The thing that worries me the most is that we will no longer be able to control it. It will kind of be the elites running it." Daquan, 24, from Michigan, took it further — worrying that AI becomes "more emotionally intelligent than us — to the point where we don't even know how to use it. It just has us."
The pattern is unmistakable: independent voters hope for AI that simplifies and empowers everyday life, and fear AI that concentrates power in the hands of the few.
The Insider Problem: A Near-Unanimous Verdict
This is where the data becomes impossible to ignore.
When we asked whether people in power are making AI decisions with Main Street in mind, the answer from this group of independent voters was near-unanimous: no.
Mercedes: "It does not feel like it's to help us overall. It's more so feels like it's to spy on us."
Mckenzie, 33, from Alaska: "I don't think they have the general public in mind at all."
Rochel: "I don't think the people running AI ever have the minorities in their interest. They're thinking money, over protecting the citizens."
Hillary, herself an entrepreneur who benefits from AI, put the structural critique clearly: "Someone is creating these algorithms. They are definitely able to be manipulated to benefit people. So the people in power naturally would manipulate it to benefit them."
Thomas framed it in economic terms that cut to the bone: if AI takes over jobs and helps in the workforce, the people at the top "are gonna make more money in the long run because they ain't gotta pay an hourly wage."
This is not a partisan finding. These participants span the ideological spectrum — pure independents, Republican-leaners, Democratic-leaners. Their distrust of AI governance is not about political party. It is about something deeper: a structural alienation from institutions that no longer feel like they work for ordinary people.
This is exactly why the independent voter movement exists. Not to split the difference between two parties, but to build power outside and beyond a system that has stopped listening.
What Independent Voters Actually Want Done
The frustration in this group is specific, not nihilistic. When we asked what they wish a policymaker would actually do — not just say — the answers clustered into clear, actionable demands.
Label AI content. Mckenzie's ask was simple and urgent: put a label on every AI-generated picture, video, and piece of content. "It's so confusing to look at something and wonder if it's real or if it's AI." This is a policy demand that cuts across every demographic and ideological lean in our sample.
Regulate and fact-check. Abdou called for accountability infrastructure that can "weed out the right type of information versus the manufactured ones." Alex wanted references and sourcing built into AI responses. These aren't fringe demands — they are the modernized American dream applied to information: a right to know what's true.
Make AI work for everyday life. Michael, 34, from Sacramento, asked what should be a simple question: "Why can't AI help me get a job? Why can't AI help me make money?" Mercedes wanted AI freed up for the mundane — scheduling, grocery lists, data creation — so people could focus on higher-value work.
Protect people from AI-enabled harm. Tabitha's ask was the most emotionally resonant: "I wish they could get rid of the ability to use it for the bad, for the harm. We don't need any more of that in our world."
Deploy AI in healthcare and education. Kyle, a healthcare professional, described specific clinical applications — AI-assisted dermatology diagnoses — where the technology could save lives if policymakers created the framework to support it. Kameron, 19, envisioned AI integrated into school devices to give students an anonymous, always-available resource for guidance. These aren't exotic ideas. They are exactly the kind of practical, human-centered AI policy that Main Street wants and Washington has yet to deliver.
The Independent Voter Lens Changes Everything
Here is the finding that ties all of this together.
Sixty percent of our participants — 9 of 15 — said that an independent, non-aligned representative in Washington would give them more voice on issues like AI governance.
That number should be understood in context. These participants' distrust of AI governance is not separate from their identity as independent voters. It is an expression of it. They distrust concentrated power in politics. They distrust concentrated power in tech. For them, these are the same problem wearing different clothes.
The Independent Center is not a political party. We do not tell people how to vote, and we don't operate on partisan loyalty. We are a movement — a growing coalition of Americans who believe that the two-party system has stopped serving them, and that independent voters deserve real representation and real power.
The AI conversation in Wave 9 reveals why that movement matters. When participants describe feeling like "insiders" are running AI for their own benefit, they are using the same language — sometimes the exact same word — that independent voters use to describe Washington. The connection is not coincidental. It is the animating logic of an entire political identity.
A modernized American dream is one where technology expands opportunity rather than concentrating it. Where governance serves people rather than power. Where the voices of independent voters — 53% of Americans now identify as independent or lean independent — carry real weight in the decisions that shape their lives.
The Movement Forward
Wave 9 of AI & Main Street confirms what the Independent Center has long argued: independent voters are not apathetic. They are not disengaged. They are paying attention, making real decisions, and arriving at conclusions that the political establishment has been slow to recognize.
They want AI labeled and regulated. They want it deployed in healthcare and schools. They want their economic security protected. And they want to know that the people making these decisions are actually accountable to them — not to donors, not to tech executives, not to party leadership.
That is the work of this movement. And the independent voters in this focus group are showing us, in their own words, exactly what is at stake.
.jpg)
.jpeg)
