New Povaddo survey of 301 U.S. and European public policy experts reveals widespread alarm over AI governance gaps, labor market disruption, and the risk of an AI-driven misinformation crisis

In the U.S., four-in-ten policy insiders say AI poses an existential threat to humanity

ST. LOUIS, May 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A newly released survey from Povaddo finds that public policy experts across the United States and Europe—the lawmakers, staffers, advocates, and analysts who help shape the rules governing society—agree that governments are failing to keep pace with the rise of AI. These findings from 301 individuals who help shape, influence, and analyze public policy reveal concern over AI’s impact on the labor market, democracy, and public safety, alongside near-universal agreement that government regulation of AI must be increased.

In an era when political consensus is elusive, this survey finds widespread agreement within the policy communities on both sides of the Atlantic that government regulation of AI should be increased. Three-in-five (61%) public policy experts say governments around the world are falling short in addressing the negative impacts of AI. The call for action is especially pronounced in the United States, where nine-in-ten (92%) public policy experts support stronger regulation compared to seven-in-ten (70%) in Europe.

The survey also reveals notable transatlantic differences in how public policy experts view AI’s societal impact. U.S. public policy experts express greater unease overall, particularly regarding the labor market. Over half (57%) believe AI is currently hurting the labor market in their country, compared to 34% of their European counterparts. U.S. public policy experts are also more likely to say AI poses a greater threat to jobs than immigration (63% versus 47% in Europe). Though public policy experts in both regions agree an AI-driven misinformation crisis is likely to happen within the next one to two years (87% in the U.S. versus 82% in Europe), those in the U.S. are more likely to believe misinformation created or spread by AI will affect national elections and voting outcomes as well as public health information.

These specific concerns are creating broader existential concerns. Four-in-ten U.S. public policy experts (41%) believe AI poses an existential threat to humanity, significantly more than the 29% of European public policy experts who share this view. U.S. public policy experts are also more likely than their European counterparts to believe that advances in AI will harm global security and stability. Despite geographic differences, these findings suggest that alarm about AI is moving into the mainstream of the policy world on both sides of the Atlantic.

The findings come at a moment of growing bipartisan concern in Washington. Senator Josh Hawley, one of the leading Republican voices calling for AI accountability, has introduced multiple pieces of bipartisan legislation with Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Mark Warner aimed at protecting workers and children from AI-related harms and making the case that Congress has “a moral imperative to make sure that AI is actually good for people.” Across the Atlantic, the introduction of the EU’s landmark AI Act — the world’s first comprehensive AI regulatory framework — may help explain why European public policy experts express comparatively lower levels of concern across several survey questions.

“What makes these findings so significant is who is saying it,” said William Stewart, President and Founder of Povaddo. “These are the practitioners who work inside the policy process every day, spanning every corner of the policy world from defense to healthcare to finance, not activists or everyday citizens. These findings foreshadow real action. The current path of governments accelerating AI deployment while falling short on governance is not sustainable, and the people who know that best are the ones in this survey. You cannot have nine-in-ten policy insiders demanding more regulation and four-in-ten calling AI an existential threat without that eventually moving the needle in Washington and Brussels in terms of legislative or regulatory action.”

Visit the “Published Studies” section of Povaddo’s website for a high-level summary of select key findings. 

The complete 38-page report is available for $500 and includes detailed survey results for more than 35 questions, including:

Trust in specific technology companies to regulate and deploy AI responsibly, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, xAI, and MetaTrust in specific governments to regulate and deploy AI responsibly, including the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, India, China, and IsraelPerceptions of current U.S. and EU regulatory approaches to AI, including the EU’s Apply AI StrategyCurrent and anticipated societal impact of AI on the economy, labor market, democracy, public health, and the environmentOpinions on data centers, including their economic benefits, community risks, and regulatory oversightAI’s crisis potential, including misinformation, labor displacement, cybersecurity, and existential risk

Members of the media may request complimentary access to the full report by contacting info@povaddo.com.

Media Inquiries:       William Stewart
                                  +1 (855) 768-2336
                                  stewart@povaddo.com

About This Survey: Conducted and funded by Povaddo as part of the firm’s insights and intelligence platform, this online survey was fielded January 6-18, 2026 among n=151 public policy experts in the U.S. and n=150 public policy experts in the EU. Public policy experts are defined as individuals who help shape, influence, and/or analyze public policy as part of their daily job. Respondents for this survey were sourced from the Povaddo Panel, Povaddo’s purpose-built research panel of more than 10,000 public policy and business leaders worldwide.

About Povaddo: With offices in the U.S. and South Africa, Povaddo specializes in public opinion and policy elite research. Founded in 2009, the firm is recognized as a trusted advisor to top-tier organizations that are seeking to navigate complex issues management, strategic communications, corporate reputation, and business transformation challenges. For more information, please visit www.povaddo.com.

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SOURCE POVADDO LLC

New platform transforms high-performing partnership ads into a scalable, omni-channel growth engine

NEW YORK, May 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Wayward today announced the launch of Wayward Boost™, a patent-pending platform designed to scale one of the most effective, yet historically constrained, forms of digital advertising: partnership media.

Partnership ads, featuring influencers and publishers, consistently outperform traditional brand advertising, often driving 3–5x higher performance. Despite this, they remain underutilized due to fragmented workflows and a lack of scalable infrastructure.

Wayward Boost addresses this gap by enabling brands to discover partners, produce partner-led content, transform it into co-branded creative, and deploy paid media campaigns across the open internet – turning partnership advertising into a repeatable, performance-driven channel.

“The results have always been there – the challenge has been scale,” said Ali Marino, Co-founder and CEO of Wayward. “Wayward Boost provides the infrastructure layer that makes partnership media as measurable, efficient, and scalable as any modern paid channel.”

The launch of Wayward Boost marks a significant evolution for the company, expanding Wayward from a partnerships platform into a full-scale, omni-channel performance marketing infrastructure. With this release, Wayward is building the foundation for how partnership-driven growth is executed at scale – enabling brands to manage, activate, and amplify collaborations across both organic and paid channels.

Defining Partnership Media Infrastructure

With the launch of Wayward Boost, Wayward is advancing what it calls Partnership Media – a performance marketing approach that amplifies trusted third-party voices through paid distribution at scale.

While brands have long invested in influencer marketing, publisher partnerships, and affiliate programs, these efforts have remained siloed and operationally complex. As a result, partnership-driven advertising has not scaled alongside traditional paid media.

Wayward Boost unifies these fragmented workflows into a single platform, enabling brands to run partnership media as a cohesive, scalable performance channel.

Through Wayward Boost, brands can:

Discover partnership opportunities with influencers and publishersProduce partner-led contentGenerate AI-powered co-branded ad creativeLaunch campaigns to editorial content, brands’ owned websites, or retailers like Amazon and WalmartApply Wayward Boost Intelligence™ audience targeting to maximize performanceScale partnership advertising across multiple collaborators simultaneously

Turning Trusted Voices Into Scalable Growth

The platform connects brands with influencers and publishers in a unified ecosystem where both sides can activate paid media around partnership content.

Brands gain the ability to amplify trusted recommendations through performance advertising, while influencers and publishers benefit from scaled distribution and measurable monetization opportunities.

The result is a powerful combination of authenticity, distribution, and performance accountability.

“Consumers trust influencers and publishers more than traditional advertising,” said Marino. “Wayward Boost allows brands to scale that trust through modern performance marketing infrastructure.”

Built for the Creator-Led Internet

As the creator economy reshapes how consumers discover products, brands are increasingly looking for ways to combine authenticity with scalable advertising performance.

Wayward Boost bridges that gap – transforming creator recommendations and editorial content into high-performing, measurable advertising campaigns.

With its patent-pending infrastructure, Wayward believes Partnership Media will become one of the fastest-growing allocations in modern marketing.

Availability

Wayward Boost™ launches May 1, 2026, in beta with select partners.
For more information, visit www.wayward.com or contact press@wayward.com.

About Wayward

Wayward is an AI-powered platform building the infrastructure for the future of partnership marketing. Its technology enables brands, influencers, and publishers to discover, activate, and scale high-impact collaborations across the internet.

Through Wayward Connect, an AI-powered marketplace for partnership discovery and execution, and Wayward Boost™, a patent-pending platform that enables partners to fund and scale paid media around partnership content, Wayward powers full-funnel partnerships – from discovery to activation to amplification and measurable performance. Wayward simplifies the complexities of marketing with a streamlined, intuitive end-to-end solution, redefining the historical reliance on marketing experience to run successful marketing campaigns at scale.

By combining artificial intelligence with scalable advertising infrastructure, Wayward transforms trusted recommendations into one of the most powerful growth engines in modern marketing.

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SOURCE Wayward LLC

As enterprises adopt increasingly autonomous AI systems, traditional governance models are proving too static to keep pace with emerging risks, regulatory change, and growing accountability demands. Info-Tech Research Group’s new blueprint, Establish Your Adaptive AI Governance Program: From Principles to Practice, outlines a practical, ten-phase approach to help organizations govern AI dynamically across its lifecycle while balancing innovation with accountability.

ARLINGTON, Va., May 1, 2026 /CNW/ – Traditional AI governance models are becoming less effective as organizations adopt agentic AI systems that can reason, act, and adapt with increasing autonomy. To help IT leaders respond, Info-Tech Research Group has published its blueprint, Establish Your Adaptive AI Governance Program: From Principles to Practice, designed to help organizations build AI governance that evolves alongside emerging risks, technologies, and regulatory requirements.

According to Info-Tech’s findings, governance approaches built around periodic reviews or siloed compliance functions are struggling to keep pace as AI systems move beyond narrow, task-specific use cases. The firm’s blueprint introduces adaptive AI governance as a dynamic, system-oriented model that integrates continuous monitoring, real-time risk detection, and feedback loops throughout the AI lifecycle.

The blueprint also emphasizes that adaptive AI governance cannot be treated as a compliance-only function. As agentic AI systems become more autonomous, organizations face growing pressure to clarify accountability, strengthen oversight, and ensure governance can respond in near real time without slowing innovation.

“Adaptive AI governance represents a fundamental shift from static oversight to continuous, system-level governance,” says Bill Wong, research fellow at Info-Tech Research Group. “As agentic AI systems become more autonomous, organizations need governance frameworks that can evolve in near real time to address emerging risks while still enabling value creation.”

Info-Tech’s Ten-Phase Framework for Adaptive AI Governance

Info-Tech’s Establish Your Adaptive AI Governance Program: From Principles to Practice blueprint provides a structured, end-to-end methodology that guides organizations through ten key phases required to build and sustain an adaptive AI governance program:

Assess current AI governance capabilities.Establish the organization’s foundational AI principles.Establish the organization’s AI governance structure.Develop an AI risk and compliance program.Implement AI policies to operationalize the foundational AI principles.Develop an AI assurance program.Ensure accountability for every AI application.Implement an adaptive and resilient AI governance framework.Integrate AI governance into the AI lifecycle.Build the adaptive AI governance roadmap.

Together, these phases help organizations move beyond ad hoc or siloed governance efforts and embed governance across all stages of the AI lifecycle, from planning and design through deployment, monitoring, and eventual decommissioning.

Info-Tech’s resource further emphasizes that adaptive AI governance is a shared organizational responsibility, requiring participation from executive leadership, legal and risk teams, developers, data scientists, and other stakeholders. By integrating governance throughout the AI lifecycle, organizations can proactively identify governance gaps, strengthen alignment with foundational AI principles, and respond more effectively to changing regulatory and technological conditions.

The global research and advisory firm’s blueprint is supported by practical tools that help organizations operationalize governance, including an AI governance maturity assessment, AI risk assessment templates, AI policy and committee charter templates, and an executive-ready roadmap presentation. Together, these materials help leaders translate governance principles into actionable practices that support both responsible AI use and measurable business value.

For timely and exclusive commentary from Info-Tech’s experts, including Bill Wong, and access to the complete Establish Your Adaptive AI Governance Program: From Principles to Practice blueprint and supporting tools, please contact  pr@infotech.com

Info-Tech Research Group is the “get things done” partner for over 30,000 IT, HR, and marketing leaders worldwide. The fastest growing research and advisory firm, Info-Tech enables leaders to make well-informed decisions and transform their organizations through AI, strategic foresight, step-by-step methodologies, practical tools, industry-leading advisory, and training programs. For nearly 30 years, tens of thousands of private and public organizations have trusted Info-Tech to lead their most important initiatives through periods of change and deliver outcomes that truly matter.

To learn more about Info-Tech’s HR research and advisory services, visit McLean & Company, and for data-driven software buying insights and vendor evaluations, visit the firm’s SoftwareReviews platform.

Media professionals can register for unrestricted access to research across IT, HR, and software, as well as hundreds of industry analysts through the firm’s Media Insiders program. To gain access, contact pr@infotech.com.

For information about Info-Tech Research Group or to access the latest research, visit infotech.com and connect via LinkedIn and X.

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SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group