‘The Robot Caused Me To Do It’: Robots Support Risk-Taking Conduct In Humans
By: Mary Elaine
Tags: Robots, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Human Behavior, Science

‘The Robot Caused Me To Do It’: Robots Support Risk-Taking Conduct In Humans

To show us whether robots can influence risk-taking could have ethical, practical, and policy implications, which this study set out to investigate. Mary Elaine Follow Dec 14, 2020 · 3 min read

Photo by Andy Kelly from Unsplash

Based on new research, it has been indicated that robots can encourage individuals to face greater risks in a simulation of a gambling scenario than they would if there was nothing to impact their behaviors. Increasing our comprehension of whether robots can influence risk-taking could have clear moral, practical, and strategized suggestions, which this study set out to investigate and explore more.

Dr. Yaniv Hanoch, Associate Professor in Risk Management at the University of Southampton who led the study briefly explained,

“We know that peer pressure can lead to higher risk-taking behavior. With the ever-increasing scale of interaction between humans and technology, both online and physically, it is crucial that we understand more about whether machines can have a similar impact.”

This newly conducted research, distributed in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, included 180 college undergraduate students taking the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), a computer assessment that requests that participants press the spacebar on a console to inflate a balloon shown on the screen. With each press of the spacebar, the balloon inflates somewhat a little bit, and 1 penny is added to the player’s “temporary money bank.” The inflatables can detonate haphazardly, which means the player loses any cash they have won for that balloon and they have the option to “cash in” before this occurs and proceed onward to the following balloon.

One-third of the participants stepped through the examination assessment in a room all alone (the control group), the other one-third of participants stepped through the assessment close by a robot that only gave them the directions but was quiet the rest of the time, and the final, the experimental group, stepped took the test with the robot giving guidance as well as speaking empowering statements, for example, “for what reason did you stop pumping?”

The outcomes indicated that the group who were encouraged by the robot faced more challenges, blowing up their balloons altogether frequently than those with other group participants. They also did bring in more cash overall. There was no significant difference in the practices of the students accompanied by the silent robot and those with no robot.

With Dr. Hanoch’s observation, he said:

“We saw participants in the control condition scale back their risk-taking behavior following a balloon explosion, whereas those in the experimental condition continued to take as much risk as before. So, receiving direct encouragement from a risk-promoting robot seemed to override participants’ direct experiences and instincts.”

Scientists currently, after several types of research, believe that further studies and investigations are expected to see whether comparable outcomes would rise out of human cooperation from other human interaction with other artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks, for example, digital assistants or on-screen avatars.

Dr. Hanoch also concluded that “With the wide-spread of AI technology and its interactions with humans, this is an area that needs urgent attention from the research community.”