Young adults are traditionally among the first to jump on emerging tech trends, and AI has proven no exception.
An Oct. 2025 Gallup poll found that 69% of college students responded that they use AI assistants in their coursework at least once a month.
But generative AI’s growing popularity has also been followed by an equally growing series of concerns – and that divide is informing how some young people plan to vote this November.
Jakob Garcia, a computer science grad student at the University of Arizona, said a politician’s AI policy could decide how he casts his ballot.
“There’s a lot of different privacy concerns regarding AI,” Garcia says, “I would definitely be looking towards someone’s stance on AI for whether I would vote for them or not."
For many young people, politicians are lagging far behind in the race against ever-evolving AI technologies. Which begs the question: do young voters want to pull the brake on this AI train?
We talked with the young voters of Tucson to learn about their hopes and fears for the future of AI and whether or not their AI views will impact their big decision come November.