Sample Project: Consumer Psychology & AI

Artificial Intelligence promises to create vast enhancement in products and services, from smarter and cheaper algorithic financial advisors, to self-driving that surpass human driver safety. Yet, people often mistrust new technologies, due to a variety of psychological and cultural reasons. This project tries to identify the causes of aversion to AI products, to explore when consumer fears are warranted, and to identify how to overcome consumer irrational aversion to AI products and services.

 

Scientific Writings

A. Shariff, J.-F. Bonnefon, I. Rahwan (2021). How safe is safe enough? Psychological mechanisms underlying extreme safety demands for self-driving cars. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. Volume 126,  103069
[paper, data & code] [Media: Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, Inverse]

E. Awad, S. Levine, M. Kleiman-Weiner, S. Dsouza, J. B. Tenenbaum, A. Shariff, J.-F. Bonnefon & I. Rahwan (2019). Drivers are blamed more than their automated cars when both make mistakes. Nature Human Behaviour. doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0762-8
[Selected media: Cosmos, Ars Technica, Phys.org]

A. Shariff, J. F. Bonnefon, I. Rahwan (2017). Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles. Nature Human Behaviour. Vol 1, October, 694–696.
[View-only open access version] [Selected Media: Summary by APA, MIT News Q&A, New York Times Magazine]