Abstract
Attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) and social robots are often depicted as different in Japan, compared to other western countries, such as Sweden. Several different reasons for why there are general differences in attitudes have been suggested. In this study, five hypotheses based on previous literature were investigated. Rather than attempting to establish general differences between groups, subjects were sampled from the respective populations, and correlations between the hypothesized confounding factors and attitudes were investigated within the groups between individuals. The hypotheses in this exploratory study concerned: (H1) animistic beliefs in inanimate objects and phenomena, (H2) worry about unemployment due to AI deployment, (H3) perceived positive or negative portrayal of AI in popular culture, (H4) familiarity with AI, and (H5) relational closeness and privacy with AI. No clear correlations between attitudes and animistic belief (H1), or portrayal of AI in popular culture (H3) could be observed. When it comes to the other attributes, worry about unemployment (H2), familiarity with AI (H4), and relational closeness and privacy (H5), the correlations were similar for the individuals in both groups and in line with the hypotheses. Thus, the general picture following this exploratory study is that individuals in the two populations are more alike than different.
Highlights
Products using artificial intelligence (AI) are implemented all over the globe
The first step to analyze is the main attitude measure used in this study, the transformed Negative Attitude towards Robots Scale (NARS) questionnaire that will be called “Negative Attitude towards Artificial Intelligence Scale” (NAAIS)
This study aimed to investigate some propositions of cultural differences between individuals in Japan and Sweden as a western country, regarding attitudes towards AI
Summary
Ranging from Tesla’s self-driving auto-pilots to Google’s and Apple’s services in our smartphones—AI technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in our everyday lives. How are this affecting people, how do people feel about this change, and are there any systematic differences in how it affects individuals, both practically and emotionally?. First impressions tend to be lasting and do not change considerably with more observations and considerations. They affect subsequent judgments and evaluations of the object in question [1, 2]. This can inform how to implement AI, as well as enabling the implementation of ethically considered AI systems
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