Robots are friends as well as foes: Ambivalent attitudes toward mindful and mindless AI robots in the United States and China

Abstract In light of the ongoing and rapid development of innovative technologies, two intriguing issues arise: do people have more positive or more negative attitudes toward robots with high (versus low) mental capabilities, and do attitudes toward robots differ between Western and East Asian cultures? Past work on these topics has produced contradictory results. Inspired by the perspective that attitudes are ambivalent rather than bipolar, we argue that these controversial findings stem from people's ambivalent attitudes toward robots. To test the assumption that ambivalent attitudes toward robots differ by type of robots and by cultural background, we conducted an experimental study. By manipulating the level of robot mind and recruiting both American and Chinese participants, we examined how robot mind and culture influence ambivalent attitudes toward robots. We simultaneously measured participants' perceptions of robots as “ally” or “enemy”. The results revealed that robots with high (versus low) mental abilities elicited more ambivalent attitudes and that American participants reported more ambivalence toward robots than Chinese participants. These findings enhance our understanding of human–robot interaction and provide guidance for modulating people's attitudes toward robots.

[1]  M. Riketta.  Cognitive differentiation between self, ingroup, and outgroup: The roles of identification and perceived intergroup conflict , 2005 .

[2]  The possibility and risks of artificial general intelligence , 2019, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

[3]  Clifford Nass,et al.  The media equation - how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places , 1996 .

[4]  M. Conner,et al.  Ambivalence and Attitudes , 2002 .

[5]  Radoslaw Niewiadomski,et al.  Warmth, Competence, Believability and Virtual Agents , 2010, IVA.

[6]  C. Nass,et al.  Trust in Computers: The Computers-Are-Social-Actors (CASA) Paradigm and Trustworthiness Perception in Human-Computer Communication , 2010 .

[7]  Marjolein van Offenbeek,et al.  Towards integrating acceptance and resistance research: evidence from a telecare case study , 2013, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[8]  K. Kaplan.  On the ambivalence-indifference problem in attitude theory and measurement: A suggested modification of the semantic differential technique. , 1972 .

[9]  D. Wegner,et al.  Dimensions of Mind Perception , 2007, Science.

[10]  Heloir,et al.  The Uncanny Valley , 2019, The Animation Studies Reader.

[11]  Mariarosaria Taddeo,et al.  How AI can be a force for good , 2018, Science.

[12]  Deborah Compeau,et al.  Voluntary use of information technology: an analysis and synthesis of the literature , 2017, J. Inf. Technol..

[13]  N. Epley,et al.  The mind in the machine: Anthropomorphism increases trust in an autonomous vehicle , 2014 .

[14]  T. Kanda,et al.  Psychology in human-robot communication: an attempt through investigation of negative attitudes and anxiety toward robots , 2004, RO-MAN 2004. 13th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE Catalog No.04TH8759).

[15]  Karl F. MacDorman,et al.  Does Japan really have robot mania? Comparing attitudes by implicit and explicit measures , 2008, AI & SOCIETY.

[16]  Tatsuya Nomura,et al.  The influence of people’s culture and prior experiences with Aibo on their attitude towards robots , 2006, AI & SOCIETY.

[17]  Peter Ohler,et al.  Stay back, clever thing! Linking situational control and human uniqueness concerns to the aversion against autonomous technology , 2019, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[18]  E. Topol,et al.  Adapting to Artificial Intelligence: Radiologists and Pathologists as Information Specialists. , 2016, JAMA.

[19]  Amy J. C. Cuddy,et al.  The BIAS map: behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  Rosalind W. Picard,et al.  Subtle Expressivity by Relational Agents , 2003 .

[21]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Emotion and sociable humanoid robots , 2003, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[22]  Christoph Bartneck,et al.  The interactive effects of robot anthropomorphism and robot ability on perceived threat and support for robotics research , 2016 .

[23]  Michael E. W. Varnum,et al.  The Origin of Cultural Differences in Cognition , 2010 .

[24]  Armin Heinzl,et al.  Good, Bad, or both? Measurement of Physician's Ambivalent Attitudes towards AI , 2019, ECIS.

[25]  R. K. Hermann,et al.  Images and affect: A functional analysis of out-group stereotypes. , 1999 .

[26]  D. Wegner,et al.  Feeling robots and human zombies: Mind perception and the uncanny valley , 2012, Cognition.

[27]  Yochanan E. Bigman,et al.  People are averse to machines making moral decisions , 2018, Cognition.

[28]  Sue Newell,et al.  Coping with Information Technology: Mixed Emotions, Vacillation, and Nonconforming Use Patterns , 2015, MIS Q..

[29]  C. Nass,et al.  Machines and Mindlessness , 2000 .

[30]  R. Geraci.  Spiritual robots: Religion and our scientific view of the natural world , 2006 .

[31]  K. MacDorman,et al.  Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not , 2016, Cognition.

[32]  Ben J. A. Kröse,et al.  The Influence of a Robot's Social Abilities on Acceptance by Elderly Users , 2006, ROMAN 2006 - The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[33]  Maya B. Mathur,et al.  Navigating a social world with robot partners: A quantitative cartography of the Uncanny Valley , 2016, Cognition.

[34]  Roger Clarke,et al.  Why the world wants controls over Artificial Intelligence , 2019, Comput. Law Secur. Rev..

[35]  Bingjie Liu,et al.  Should Machines Express Sympathy and Empathy? Experiments with a Health Advice Chatbot , 2018, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[36]  Radoslaw Niewiadomski,et al.  How Is Believability of a Virtual Agent Related to Warmth, Competence, Personification, and Embodiment? , 2011, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[37]  Friederike Eyssel,et al.  Attitudes towards service robots in domestic environments: The role of personality characteristics, individual interests, and demographic variables , 2013, Paladyn J. Behav. Robotics.

[38]  Frédéric Kaplan,et al.  Who is Afraid of the Humanoid? Investigating Cultural Differences in the Acceptance of Robots , 2004, Int. J. Humanoid Robotics.

[39]  Yi Mou,et al.  The media inequality: Comparing the initial human-human and human-AI social interactions , 2017, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[40]  Tatsuya Nomura,et al.  Cultural Differences in Attitudes Towards Robots , 2005 .

[41]  Friederike Eyssel,et al.  Robots in the Classroom: What Teachers Think About Teaching and Learning with Education Robots , 2016, ICSR.

[42]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Who Sees Human? , 2010, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[43]  Naho Kitano.  Animism , Rinri , Modernization ; the Base of Japanese Robotics , 2007 .

[44]  Steven O. Entezari,et al.  Individual differences predict sensitivity to the uncanny valley , 2015 .

[45]  Joop van der Pligt,et al.  The Agony of Ambivalence and Ways to Resolve It: Introducing the MAID Model: , 2009 .

[46]  Roland Siegwart,et al.  What do people expect from robots? , 2008, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[47]  M. Zanna,et al.  Let's not be indifferent about (attitudinal) ambivalence. , 1995 .

[48]  Alison Ledgerwood,et al.  Calibrate your confidence in research findings: A tutorial on improving research methods and practices , 2020 .

[49]  Clifford Nass,et al.  Consistency of personality in interactive characters: verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and user characteristics , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[50]  M. Morris,et al.  Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and Physical Events , 1994 .

[51]  Yochanan E. Bigman,et al.  Holding Robots Responsible: The Elements of Machine Morality , 2019, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[52]  P. Ohler,et al.  Venturing into the uncanny valley of mind—The influence of mind attribution on the acceptance of human-like characters in a virtual reality setting , 2017, Cognition.

[53]  S. Turkle.  Authenticity in the age of digital companions , 2007 .

[54]  Stefan Kopp,et al.  A Second Chance to Make a First Impression? How Appearance and Nonverbal Behavior Affect Perceived Warmth and Competence of Virtual Agents over Time , 2012, IVA.

[55]  P. Winkielman,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Prototypes Are Attractive Because They Are Easy on the Mind , 2022 .

[56]  Mark Conner,et al.  The effects of attitudinal ambivalence on attention-intention-behavior relations , 2004 .

[57]  Katsumi Watanabe,et al.  Cultural Differences in Perception and Attitude towards Robots , 2014 .

[58]  G. Maio,et al.  The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change , 2015 .

[59]  Selma Sabanovic,et al.  Culturally Variable Preferences for Robot Design and Use in South Korea, Turkey, and the United States , 2014, 2014 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[60]  Friederike Eyssel,et al.  Involve the user! Changing attitudes toward robots by user participation in a robot prototyping process , 2019, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[61]  Jun Hu,et al.  Rapid prototyping for interactive robots , 2004 .

[62]  Illah R. Nourbakhsh,et al.  A survey of socially interactive robots , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..