Attitudes towards AI: measurement and associations with personality

Abstract

AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of many contemporary technologies, such as social media platforms, smart devices, and global logistics systems. At the same time, research on the public acceptance of AI shows that many people feel quite apprehensive about the potential of such technologies—an observation that has been connected to both demographic and sociocultural user variables (e.g., age, previous media exposure). Yet, due to divergent and often ad-hoc measurements of AI-related attitudes, the current body of evidence remains inconclusive. Likewise, it is still unclear if attitudes towards AI are also affected by users’ personality traits. In response to these research gaps, we offer a two-fold contribution. First, we present a novel, psychologically informed questionnaire (ATTARI-12) that captures attitudes towards AI as a single construct, independent of specific contexts or applications. Having observed good reliability and validity for our new measure across two studies (N1 = 490; N2 = 150), we examine several personality traits—the Big Five, the Dark Triad, and conspiracy mentality—as potential predictors of AI-related attitudes in a third study (N3 = 298). We find that agreeableness and younger age predict a more positive view towards artificially intelligent technology, whereas the susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs connects to a more negative attitude. Our findings are discussed considering potential limitations and future directions for research and practice.