Assessing the Attitude Towards Artificial Intelligence: Introduction of a Short Measure in German, Chinese, and English Language

Abstract

In the context of (digital) human–machine interaction, people are increasingly dealing with artificial intelligence in everyday life. Through this, we observe humans who embrace technological advances with a positive attitude. Others, however, are particularly sceptical and claim to foresee substantial problems arising from such uses of technology. The aim of the present study was to introduce a short measure to assess the Attitude Towards Artificial Intelligence (ATAI scale) in the German, Chinese, and English languages. Participants from Germany (N = 461; 345 females), China (N = 413; 145 females), and the UK (N = 84; 65 females) completed the ATAI scale, for which the factorial structure was tested and compared between the samples. Participants from Germany and China were additionally asked about their willingness to interact with/use self-driving cars, Siri, Alexa, the social robot Pepper, and the humanoid robot Erica, which are representatives of popular artificial intelligence products. The results showed that the five-item ATAI scale comprises two negatively associated factors assessing (1) acceptance and (2) fear of artificial intelligence. The factor structure was found to be similar across the German, Chinese, and UK samples. Additionally, the ATAI scale was validated, as the items on the willingness to use specific artificial intelligence products were positively associated with the ATAI Acceptance scale and negatively with the ATAI Fear scale, in both the German and Chinese samples. In conclusion we introduce a short, reliable, and valid measure on the attitude towards artificial intelligence in German, Chinese, and English language.

Acceptance and Fear of Artificial Intelligence: associations with personality in a German and a Chinese sample

“…For example, if one's general attitude towards AI is extremely negative, it is unlikely that one has very positive attitudes to many specific AI services. This is also underlined by a study showing that the "Attitude Towards Artificial Intelligence" (ATAI) measure assessing general attitudes towards AI (and used in the present work as well) is associated with individuals' willingness to use diverse AI products such as Siri or Alexa [10].…”

“…AI is incorporated in computers, smartphones, cars, and in various machines and robots in factories (e.g., in products and services of Apple Inc. [1], BMW [2], Daimler [3], Google [4]). Recent work reveals that individuals differ in their attitudes towards AI products [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Thus, system characteristics (i.e., AI related characteristics) on their own cannot explain all the variance in individuals' attitudes towards AI.…”

“…Several studies from various fields show that there are individual differences in attitudes towards and trust in AI [5][6][7][8][9][10]. 1 Differences in attitudes towards AI are most likely due to the various negative and positive consequences of incorporation of AI in daily life, which might differ in terms of perception between individuals: On the one hand, some experts suggest the putative replacement of certain jobs by machines, which are currently implemented by humans [19,20].…”

What Went Wrong? Predictors of Contact Tracing Adoption in Italy during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As underlined by psychological models [22][23][24][25], people's attitudes are an important element for behavioral change. In the specific case of new technologies adoption, recent works have tried to measure the attitude that people have towards artificial entities such as robots, artificial intelligence, and chatbots [29,30]. These works have shown how a more positive attitude leads to greater acceptance and less fear [31,32].…”

“…Attitudes towards contact tracing systems (ATCTS): This instrument was developed from the ATAI Scale [29] that assesses attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence. The original scale is composed of five items that comprise two dimensions, acceptance and fear of artificial intelligence.…”