Anti Robot Speciesism

Humanoid robots are a form of embodied artificial intelligence (AI) that looks and acts more and more like humans. Powered by generative AI and advances in robotics, humanoid robots can speak and interact with humans rather naturally but are still easily recognizable as robots. But how will we treat humanoids when they seem indistinguishable from humans in appearance and mind? We find a tendency (called "anti-robot" speciesism) to deny such robots humanlike capabilities, driven by motivations to accord members of the human species preferential treatment. Six experiments show that robots are denied humanlike attributes, simply because they are not biological beings and because humans want to avoid feelings of cognitive dissonance when utilizing such robots for unsavory tasks. Thus, people do not rationally attribute capabilities to perfectly humanlike robots but deny them capabilities as it suits them.

Lessons From an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships

Can consumers form especially deep emotional bonds with AI and be vested in AI identities over time? We leverage a natural app-update event at Replika AI, a popular US-based AI companion, to shed light on these questions. We find that, after the app removed its erotic role play (ERP) feature, preventing intimate interactions between consumers and chatbots that were previously possible, this event triggered perceptions in customers that their AI companion's identity had discontinued. This in turn predicted negative consumer welfare and marketing outcomes related to loss, including mourning the loss, and devaluing the "new" AI relative to the "original". Experimental evidence confirms these findings. Further experiments find that AI companions users feel closer to their AI companion than even their best human friend, and mourn a loss of their AI companion more than a loss of various other inanimate products. In short, consumers are forming human-level relationships with AI companions; disruptions to these relationships trigger real patterns of mourning as well as devaluation of the offering; and the degree of mourning and devaluation are explained by perceived discontinuity in the AIs identity. Our results illustrate that relationships with AI are truly personal, creating unique benefits and risks for consumers and firms alike.