Cognitive computing are intelligent systems that have been designed by companies in order to enhance customer experiences by providing personal advice and guidance for the everyday life buying decisions. The ability of cognitive computing systems to analyze huge amount of consumer data and their ability to learn from experience by machine learning systems, will revolutionize the interaction between consumers and companies. Therefore it is important to determine the major factors that impact the consumers' willingness to use cognitive computing systems. The objective of our research is to determine the perception and preferences of consumers regarding cognitive computing systems based on gender. The results of an online survey show that the two genders have more similarities than differences in the perception of cognitive computing. However women tend to be more reluctant to cognitive computing systems, as they don't know the processes behind the system and they don't have a control over the information shared with the intelligent system. These results are in accordance to previous research and they have important implications for the implementation of cognitive computing systems and for future research.

Artificial intelligence is one of the main topics characterizing the 21st century. The quick development of these new intelligent systems brings challenges into the daily life of consumers and companies. Even though artificial intelligence contributes to an increased quality of life, by simplifying the life of its users and the processes of companies, in the same time it can affect the cognitive abilities of humans. By taking over different tasks and having access to information, the AI will influence human decision-making and the human will be somehow dependent on the actions and decisions of the AI. In this paper we focus on the impact of the social appreciation on the consumers’ perception regarding anthropomorphic AI. We have investigated the extent to which anthropomorphic AI devices impact human capabilities and the social appreciation of owning an AI. The results show that AI with human-like physical appearance are perceived with higher anthropomorphic characteristics, but the physical appearance of the AI does not affect the social appreciation and the human capabilities of the owner. The average values of the items, measuring the direct perception show that consumers rather believe that AI does not affect their human abilities and owning a robot is not strongly influenced by the social reference group. This result has to be further investigated in a third person perspective and in a different social context.