  Human resource management technologies have moved from biometric surveillance
to emotional artificial intelligence (AI) that monitor employees' engagement
and productivity, analyze video interviews and CVs of job applicants. The rise
of the US$20 billion emotional AI industry will transform the future workplace.
Yet, besides no international consensus on the principles or standards for such
technologies, there is a lack of cross-cultural research on future job seekers'
attitude toward such use of AI technologies. This study collects a
cross-sectional dataset of 1,015 survey responses of international students
from 48 countries and 8 regions worldwide. A majority of the respondents (52%)
are concerned about being managed by AI. Following the hypothetico-deductivist
philosophy of science, we use the MCMC Hamiltonian approach and conduct a
detailed comparison of 10 Bayesian network models with the PSIS-LOO method. We
consistently find having a higher income, being male, majoring in business,
and/or self-rated familiarity with AI correlate with a more positive view of
emotional AI in the workplace. There is also a stark cross-cultural and
cross-regional difference. Our analysis shows people from economically less
developed regions (Africa, Oceania, Central Asia) tend to exhibit less concern
for AI managers. And for East Asian countries, 64% of the Japanese, 56% of the
South Korean, and 42% of the Chinese professed the trusting attitude. In
contrast, an overwhelming majority of 75% of the European and Northern American
possesses the worrying/neutral attitude toward being managed by AI. Regarding
religion, Muslim students correlate with the most concern toward emotional AI
in the workplace. When religiosity is higher, the correlation becomes stronger
for Muslim and Buddhist students.
