Who interacts with communicative AI and what attitudes are displayed toward it? Sociodemographic, personality, and futurephobia variables

Abstract

Communicative applications of artificial intelligence (AI) have burst into the lives of millions of people through products such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, or Replika, with the ability to generate texts and images and even understand natural language and socialize with humans. This study addresses attitudes toward communicative AI, as well as the sociodemographic and personality factors that are related to its positive perception and usage. For this purpose, we use data from a survey conducted at the end of February 2023 among adult residents in Spain (N = 821). Our results suggest that there is a slight predominance of negative attitudes toward communicative AI, which include cognitive and affective elements such as the perception of dehumanizing aspects and job-related threats, caution, or fear. However, a relevant portion of our respondents is not familiar with communicative AI or generalizes their answers toward other applications of AI. Individuals with higher educational level, greater openness to experience, and lower level of futurephobia show more positive attitudes toward these technologies. In terms of adoption, men, younger people, and those with more favorable attitudes toward AI are more likely to decide to use it, while those scoring higher in agreeableness tend to use it less frequently once they have decided to use it. We discuss these results under the premise that early adopters may play a central role in the attitudes of late majority and laggards, as well as in the future development of communicative AI and its regulatory framework.