Highlights
Social psychological and social science research on robotics and new technologies:
› Helps to understand people’s desires, needs and fears
› Reveals how human behavioral patterns develop in new environments
› Supports favorable technology adoption
› Serves the development of economically and socially sustainable solutions
Background
The emergence of robots and artificial intelligence is radically transforming many post-industrial societies. Humans work and interact with robots in different walks of life from industry to care. The transformation under way is socially revolutionary and requires extensive research. New information is needed on how people interact with robots and artificial intelligence solutions, do they trust this emerging technology, and whether people have specific desires or fears toward it.
Goal
We examine social psychological processes of robots and artificial intelligence acceptance by utilizing social media big data as well as experimental and longitudinal survey setups. Our survey data is collected from population-based and other survey samples. With social media data we utilize methods from computational social sciences to investigate how robots are discussed on social media, and whether emotional features contained therein are related to robot terminology, social context or topic.
Impact
We provide up-to-date empirical research evidence on social processes related to robotic and artificial intelligence acceptance. Different methodological approaches give us a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in acceptance. Survey studies offer effective means to study the respondents’ self-reported reactions to intelligent technology. Furthermore, exploring the emotional aspects of robot conversations deepens our understanding of robots and different social processes related to the topic.