AI safety comms reading list

Published on October 15, 2026 9:15 AM GMT The reading list I wish I'd had at the start of my AI safety comms journey. Why I put this list together I've been building Common Signals, which studies how the public receives messages about AI risk. Along the way I've found a lot of existing research and previous studies, just not in one place. It's spread across polling reports, psychology journals, think-tank articles and forum posts. Much of it is hard to find unless someone points you to it. So, this is the list I wish I'd had at the start of my AI safety comms journey. It's for anyone new to AI safety who wants to join the conversation knowing what's already been tested, whether you're a campaigner, creator, journalist or researcher. Each entry says in a sentence or two what the work found, so you can choose what is most relevant for you. For a fuller, filterable catalogue of polls and framing studies, see the Common Signals research library. If you only read five articles How do people feel about AI?, Ada Lovelace Institute and The Alan Turing Institute (2025). The most rigorous picture of UK attitudes: 3,513 adults at a 62% response rate, asked questions first used in 2022 so you can see what changed. Nearly nine in ten support independent regulation of AI. From catastrophic to concrete, Philip Trippenbach, Isabella Scala, Jai Bhambra and Rowan Emslie (2025). A message test with 1,063 people across five countries. Risks to jobs and children had the most potential to mobilise people, and existential risk came last in every demographic group. The authors argue extinction messages trigger mortality avoidance, and name Tech-Positive Urbanites and World Guardians as the most receptive segments. Which AI harms and risks will mobilise the public to act?, Markus Ostarek, Cathy Rogers, Ben Kenward and Sam Nadel, Social Change Lab (2026). A UK randomised trial with 3,467 people comparing eleven AI harms. It agrees with Trippenbach on extinction framing and disagrees on jobs. AI warfare raised concern about extinction more than extinction messaging did. Anger predicted action while anxiety did not. Perception of risk, Paul Slovic (1987). A short paper in Science on why the public and experts rank hazards differently. Lay judgements follow how dreaded and how unfamiliar a risk feels, a description that fits most AI risks. AI is on the march. Is the AI safety movement ready?, Social Change Lab (2025). Sorts civil-society groups into four clusters: protest and mobilisation, narrative-shaping and watchdogs, public literacy, and field-building and lobbying. It finds sharp disagreement between present-day-harms and existential-risk groups. What the public thinks about AI AI Index Report 2026: public opinion chapter, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (2026). The quickest overview, drawing the major international polls into one chapter. The global share seeing more benefits than drawbacks rose from 55% to 59% between 2024 and 2025, while the share saying AI makes them nervous rose to 52%. What do the public think about AI?, Octavia Field Reid, Anna Colom and Roshni Modhvadia, Ada Lovelace Institute (2023). A rapid evidence review written ahead of the UK AI Safety Summit. People welcome AI in health and science, worry about it making consequential decisions such as hiring or benefits, care about rights like privacy, and want regulation. How do people feel about AI? Wave one, Ada Lovelace Institute and The Alan Turing Institute (2023). More than 4,000 British adults asked about specific uses of AI rather than AI in general. Public attitudes to data and AI: tracker survey wave 4, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (2024). The UK government's annual tracker, running since December 2021. How Americans view AI and its impact on people and society, Pew Research Center (2025). The US reference point. Half of Americans say the growing use of AI in daily life makes them more concerned than excited, up from 37% in 2021. How people around the world view AI, Pew Research Center (2025). Concern, excitement and trust in institutions to regulate AI, compared across 25 countries including the UK and Canada. Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence: a global study 2025, KPMG and the University of Melbourne (2025). More than 48,000 people in 47 countries. 66% use AI with some regularity and 46% are willing to trust it, and trust has fallen as use has grown since the 2022 edition. What 81,000 people want from AI, Anthropic (2026). AI-led interviews with 80,508 Claude users in 159 countries. Claude users aren't the public, but the ranking still tells you something: unreliability was the most-raised of 13 concerns and existential risk the least. What the public thinks about catastrophic AI risk US public opinion of AI policy and risk, Rethink Priorities (2023). 2,444 US adults, weighted to be representative. An estimated 70% would favour federal regulation of AI, yet only 4% named AI as the most likely cause