The multifaceted construct of attitudes: Age- and gender-related perspectives on AI, robotics and their users.

Abstract

Participants: T. Kolling (Germany), M. Damholdt (Denmark), M. Wessel (Germany), S. Baisch (Germany). ISSUE AI and robots as a form of embodied AI become more and more well-known in both the younger and the older age groups. In the context of gerontechnology, older people are usually assumed as the primary users of (new) technology, whereas younger people are considered either secondary users, like e.g., formal caregivers, or robot developers. Since believes and attitudes are powerful determinants of behavior, they affect the success or failure of a (new) technology, by impacting on both technology development (through the perceptions held by its developers), and robot implementation (through the perceptions held by primary and secondary users). In all of these relevant groups, believes and attitudes can affective, cognitive, or behavioral, they can be stereotypical and they can relate not only to a particular technology, but also to its users. Although most technology acceptance models acknowledge the importance of attitudes for robot acceptance and usage, this multitude of different facets of this complex construct often go unnoticed.  CONTENT Therefore, the current symposium is designed to shed light on some of these different facets. We will examine 1.) age- and gender-related differences attitudes towards embodied and non-embodied AI as opposed to age- and gender-stereotypical views on its users, 2.) cognitive and affective attitudes regarding emotional and non-emotional technology, and 3.) the perspective of the three different stakeholder groups. STRUCTURE The first two talks examine attitudes towards a technology. Kolling firstly presents an age-and gender-related framework of technology diffusion and data on age-differences in cognitive and affective attitudes towards AI. Thereafter, Damholdt examines how different individual characteristics affect older and younger users’ attitudes towards (emotional) robots. In contrast, the following two talks examine attitudes towards technology users. Baisch compares the age-related perceptions of (younger) professional carers and elderly people on the older users of two different companion type robots. Finally, Wessel presents results from a qualitiative approach investigating the age- and gender-stereotypical views of younger stakeholders (robot developers and professional caregivers) on older robot users and discusses the ethical implication of the findings. CONCLUSION The different talks show the multiple facets that need to be considered in research on attitudes towards technology. They suggest that stakeholders in robot development (developers, researchers) and implementation (formal informal carergivers) differ in their attitudes towards both new technologies and their users. They also highlight that these groups are rarely aware of this. As will be shown, sensitivity to these issues is mandatory, since ignorance can hamper robot development and implementation, and, even more important, has ethical implications for the older users. Age- and gender- sensitive theoretical frameworks will be presented acknowledging the multifacetedness of attitudes towards embodied and non-embodied AI.