Why don't Americans like AI? Airbnb's CEO has a theory.

Brian Chesky thinks the tech industry is building AI for itself and wondering why nobody else likes it.

The Airbnb CEO, speaking on Yahoo Finance's "Power Players with Brian Sozzi" podcast this week, said Silicon Valley's near-total focus on enterprise software is feeding public distrust of AI rather than easing it.

Consumer gap Chesky says AI hasn't filled

According to Chesky, who is a member of the board at Y Combinator, 159 of the last 175 startups have been aimed toward enterprises as opposed to consumers.

This stands in comparison to the situation 18 years ago, when he was setting up Airbnb, where he reckons about 90% of newly formed startups were aimed toward regular consumers and not towards enterprises.

"I think part of it's a narrative issue – that we're not talking about AI correctly," Chesky said, adding that the bigger problem is a lack of products ordinary people can point to and say AI has changed their lives.

He used healthcare as an example to discuss the benefits of having an AI system that can provide medical advice whenever needed, particularly for people who cannot afford to consult a doctor in person. In the absence of such practical examples, AI remained an abstract idea rather than something concrete.

Chesky’s remarks have come at a time when public perceptions about AI have become increasingly uneven. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June, 40% of American adults believed that AI would have a negative effect on society within the next two decades, whereas only 16% thought of it positively.

Chesky believed that this divide does not help the interest of the tech community of Silicon Valley, as no innovation that has the potential to make life easy for many will succeed without gaining popularity outside its realm.

Chesky framed the underinvestment in consumer AI as an opportunity rather than a dead end, calling the space "a huge gap" compared with an increasingly crowded enterprise market.