Initial validation of the general attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence Scale

By Astrid Schepman, Paul Rodway. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2020

672 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A new General Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS) was developed. The scale underwent initial statistical validation via Exploratory Factor Analysis, which identified positive and negative subscales. Both subscales captured emotions in line with their valence. In addition, the positive subscale reflected societal and personal utility, whereas the negative subscale reflected concerns. The scale showed good psychometric indices and convergent and discriminant validity against existing measures. To cross-validate general attitudes with attitudes towards specific instances of AI applications, summaries of tasks accomplished by specific applications of Artificial Intelligence were sourced from newspaper articles. These were rated for comfortableness and perceived capability. Comfortableness with specific applications was a strong predictor of general attitudes as measured by the GAAIS, but perceived capability was a weaker predictor. Participants viewed AI applications involving big data (e.g. astronomy, law, pharmacology) positively, but viewed applications for tasks involving human judgement, (e.g. medical treatment, psychological counselling) negatively. Applications with a strong ethical dimension led to stronger discomfort than their rated capabilities would predict. The survey data suggested that people held mixed views of AI. The initially validated two-factor GAAIS to measure General Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence is included in the Appendix.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8ae0a79eecfc33dfa00c6d9ca69a9d0545c75331

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Paul Rodway
2. Astrid Schepman
3. Feridun Kaya
4. Okan Yeti̇şensoy
5. Meva Demir Kaya
6. F. Aydın

In Safety Research

1. Paul Rodway
2. Astrid Schepman

Citations in the corpus

• The Roles of Personality Traits, AI Anxiety, and Demographic Factors in Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence (2022, methodology): “…means ( M positive ¼ 3.59, SD ¼ .52; M negative ¼ 3.06, SD ¼ .69) to those observed in the English validation studies, where means for the positive GAAIS had been 3.60, 3.60, 3.61, and means for the negative GAAIS 2.93, 3.10, and 3.14 (Schepman & Rodway, 2020, 2022, Studies 1 and 2, respectively).”
• The General Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS): Confirmatory Validation and Associations with Personality, Corporate Distrust, and General Trust (2022, methodology): “None of the participants had participated in the Schepman and Rodway (2020) study.”