One in three people in Denmark now says they want to keep artificial intelligence out of their lives. TrygFonden's new survey puts the share at 34 percent, up from 23 percent two years ago. At the same time, three out of four respondents say the pace of AI development is too quick to follow.
That is an awkward combination for a country whose public services and employers are heading the other way. Peter G. H. Madsen, project chief at TrygFonden, told TV 2 that the speed of the shift feeds fears about social relationships and about telling true from false. He wants a public conversation about how AI should fit into daily life.
The mood has turned sharply. In 2024, more than half of Danes thought artificial intelligence would benefit society as a whole, per TrygFonden. Two years later the doubt has grown. Madsen points to why: the gains are visible mostly for companies and tech giants, while the human costs are harder to see.
Scepticism is growing faster than the tools
Eleven percentage points in two years is a lot for a technology most people meet through a chat box. This is automation anxiety measured in one number, and it is not a fringe group. A third of the adult population is a market segment, and in Denmark that segment overlaps heavily with the people who use public services every week. Opting out is not a switch you flip when the state, your bank and your employer all run on machine learning behind the counter.
Bent Dalager, a partner at KPMG and author of the book 'Henry Ford-reglen', calls the ambition a misunderstanding. Some resistance in any technology shift is healthy, he told TV 2, but total avoidance is not realistic. His comparison: giving up on cars because you prefer the horse cart. The people who skip the learning curve, he argues, are the ones who arrive last.
The bill for opting out lands on the labour market
Here is the business angle the survey numbers do not spell out. If a third of Danish workers refuse to touch AI tools, employers will sort applicants by willingness to use them. That creates a two-tier workforce. People who learn the tools move into better-paid roles, and people who do not get pushed toward the tasks that stay manual. The labour market disruption is not machines taking jobs. It is the split between people who use them and people who will not.
That carries a price for the Denmark economy. Small firms with thin margins cannot carry staff who decline the productivity tools their competitors adopt. Expect job ads in Copenhagen and the Øresund region to list AI familiarity as a requirement rather than a bonus, and expect the gap between the two groups to widen before it narrows.
Trust is the missing input
TrygFonden's numbers point to something harder to fix than skills. If more than half of Danes believed in the common good two years ago, and a third now want out entirely, the problem is trust, not usability. Danish welfare technology and public sector digitalisation both rest on the assumption that people will show up and use the systems. That assumption is weakening.
Madsen's call for a conversation is the right instinct and also the easy part. The hard part is proving the gains get shared beyond boardrooms.
Expect Danish employers and unions to start writing AI clauses into collective agreements before the next TrygFonden survey lands. If the sceptic share crosses 40 percent, companies will be defending adoption instead of selling it.