Social appreciation of the interaction with an anthropomorphic robot

Artificial intelligence is one of the main topics characterizing the 21^st century. The quick development of these new intelligent systems brings challenges into the daily life of consumers and companies. Even though artificial intelligence contributes to an increased quality of life, by simplifying the life of its users and the processes of companies, in the same time it can affect the cognitive abilities of humans. By taking over different tasks and having access to information, the AI will influence human decision-making and the human will be somehow dependent on the actions and decisions of the AI. In this paper we focus on the impact of the social appreciation on the consumers’ perception regarding anthropomorphic AI. We have investigated the extent to which anthropomorphic AI devices impact human capabilities and the social appreciation of owning an AI. The results show that AI with human-like physical appearance are perceived with higher anthropomorphic characteristics, but the physical appearance of the AI does not affect the social appreciation and the human capabilities of the owner. The average values of the items, measuring the direct perception show that consumers rather believe that AI does not affect their human abilities and owning a robot is not strongly influenced by the social reference group. This result has to be further investigated in a third person perspective and in a different social context.