Perceptions of the Impact of High-Level-Machine-Intelligence from University Students in Taiwan: The Case for Human Professions, Autonomous Vehicles, and Smart Homes

Abstract

There is a “timing optimism” that artificial general intelligence will be achieved soon, but some literature has suggested that people have mixed feelings about its overall impact. This study expanded their findings by investigating how Taiwanese university students perceived the overall impact of high-level-machine-intelligence (HLMI) in three areas: a set of 12 human professions, autonomous vehicles, and smart homes. Respondents showed a relatively more positive attitude, with a median answer of “on balance good”, toward HLMI’s development corresponding to those occupations having a higher probability of automation and computerization, and a less positive attitude, with a median of “more or less neutral”, toward professions involving human judgment and social intelligence, and especially creativity, which had a median of “on balance bad”. On the other hand, they presented a highly positive attitude toward the AI application of the smart home, while they demonstrated relatively more reservation toward autonomous vehicles. Gender, area of study, and a computer science background were found as predictors in many cases, whereas traffic benefits, and safety and regulation concerns, among others, were found as the most significant predictors for the overall impact of autonomous vehicles, with comfort and support benefits being the most significant predictor for smart homes. Recommendations for educators, policy makers, and future research were provided.

Bosses without a heart: socio-demographic and cross-cultural determinants of attitude toward Emotional AI in the workplace

“…In terms of future sustainability, Gherheș and Obrad ( 2018 ) find Romanian students at technical universities hold more positive views of AI than their humanities counterparts. Likewise, Chen and Lee ( 2019 ) show that Taiwanese students majoring in science and engineering are more positive about AI’s social impacts than those in humanities, social science, management, education and arts. Importantly, it appears that curricula of business schools with Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AASCB) accreditation emphasize the importance and advantages of acquiring data analytics skills to enter the increasingly AI-enabled business world but mention very little about data ethics and algorithmic bias (Clayton and Clopton 2019 ).…”

The risks associated with Artificial General Intelligence: A systematic review

“…Within the included articles, three described the specific functionality of the AGI. These included 12 different human professions, smart homes, and autonomous vehicles (Chen & Lee, 2019), a malicious AGI (Bradley, 2020), and AGI in the manufacturing, communication, and technology sectors (Narain et al, 2019). The remaining articles referred to generic AGI systems and did not describe a specific AGI functionality.…”

“…The majority of studies reviewed were non-domain specific and focused on the general risks to humanity. However, specific domains identified in the eligible articles included autonomous vehicles, human professions, and smart homes (Chen & Lee, 2019), manufacturing, communication, and energy (Narain et al, 2019), law (Nindler, 2019), environment and social aspects (Pueyo, 2018). Two notable domains that did not feature in the review were research investigating the risks associated with defence and autonomous weapons systems, and healthcare.…”

Preparing Society for Automated Vehicles: Perceptions of the Importance and Urgency of Emerging Issues of Governance, Regulations, and Wider Impacts

“…The project was funded for Taiwanese social science researchers to work side by side with their technological counterparts to explore the opportunities and the challenges AI generates. Following a project on examining the approach toward the impact of AI on human professions, AV and smart homes from the previous year [22], as the second year of a four-year project, we focused on AV, and set out to investigate the perceptions of Taiwanese AI experts and CS/EE majors on the importance and urgency of emerging issues of governance, regulation, and the wider impact toward preparing society for the future of sustainable AV. The specific research questions of the present study are as follows:…”

“…Ten issues associated with preparing the society for AV were identified as mentioned in the earlier section, with a total of 66 questionnaire items constructed for the present study. These items were developed based on three major sources: a study by Cohen, Stilgoe, and Cavoli's study [6,21], on the context of Taiwan [22][23][24], and four Taiwanese AI experts, who have research expertise on regulation and governance, technology innovation and industry, engineering and computing, and AI application. The backtranslation method was used for all measures in the questionnaire to ensure consistency of meaning across languages.…”