Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered. Benjamin asks, do personality traits influence attitudes toward artificial intelligence?
Benjamin that’s an awesome question! To answer your question, I’ll start by defining personality traits.
Personality Traits. ScienceDirect tell us that personality traits are relatively stable patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions in which each individual is different from the others. In other words, personality traits are fairly stable over time and across situations but still open to change. Personality traits are primarily units of analysis of individual differences relative to cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behavior. They do not include physical features, e.g., attractiveness, or abilities, e.g., intelligence.
Personality traits operate within a larger social context. Hence, the place to begin is obvious—economic. Let’s be honest, AI makes workers anxious—and workers may have reason to be nervous. According to Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and the Nexford University, between 400M and 800M workers worldwide could lose their jobs by 2030 due to AI. Jobs most at risk include:
Data Entry Customer Service Representative
Manufacturing Transportation & Logistics
Retail Sales Market Research Analyst
Proof Readers & Translators Radiologists and Diagnostic Technicians
Financial Analysts Bookkeepers and Accounts
Economic is not the exclusive concern of humans with AI; people also express worry about the social impact of AI. For example, will AI reinforce biases? Will AI leave millions “behind”? Will AI eliminate all privacy? Will AI cut my health insurance right before an illness? The list of concerns is long.
According to “The Role of Personality Traits, AI Anxiety, and Demographic Factors in Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2024,” personality traits influence attitudes toward AI. The report is based on a survey taken in Turkey. Let’s examine the report in detail.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10447318.2022.2151730
The following hypotheses were tested:
- Demographic Characteristics (i.e., age, gender, education level, level of computer usage, level of AI) could predict attitudes towards AI.
- Higher openness to experience would coincide with greater positive attitudes toward AI.
- Higher AI anxiety would predict more negative attitudes toward AI.
RESULTS
Age. Age did not predict attitudes toward AI. That was somewhat unexpected.
Agreeable. Researchers used a series of questions to determine whether agreeable traits. Researchers concluded people who were determined to be agreeable had positive attitudes toward AI. Interesting! I suppose I should agree. lol.
AI Configuration Anxiety. AI configuration anxiety means a fear of humanoid AI, e.g., human-like robots. The more AI configuration anxiety, the more negative attitude toward AI. Logical.
AI Learning Anxiety. AI learning anxiety significantly predicted both positive and negative attitudes toward AI. The less learning anxiety the more positive attitude and vice versa.
Computer Usage. Computer usage was predictive of attitudes toward AI. The more computer usage the greater was the positive view of AI. No surprise.
Conscientiousness. Whether people are conscientious or not apparently makes no difference in their attitude toward AI, researchers say.
Extroversion. The findings were mixed on extroversion. Technologies that facilitate social interactions may be liked by extroverts but AI technologies can help reduce social interactions. Thus, the mixed results.
Gender. Gender did not predict attitudes toward AI. However, men tend to view AI more positively than females.
Job Replacement Anxiety. People are worried. Lol.
Self-Rated AI Knowledge. People who consider themselves tech savvy and AI literate, have a more positive attitude toward AI. Makes sense.
Time to end with a proverb from Turkey, where they say: “stretch your foot according to your blanket”.
Until next time,
Yogi Nelson
Blockchain & AI Forum 