Page 128 - Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

114 Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

For instance, agency, intent, rich communication affordances, and
relationship-orientation may be facets of what people believe “humanness”
consists. However, it was impossible to test this speculation with the current
data given that many participants simply said the technology should be “like
a human” without saying what that actually means. Future research should
examine the dimensions of human-machine teaming to determine if
humanness is unique from the other components of teammate-likeness.
Another interesting finding is that participants noted different dimen-
sions of teaming depending on whether they viewed the technology as a
teammate versus as a tool. For participants who perceived the technology
as a teammate, they reported a higher percentage of comments relating to
benevolence and interdependence. For these individuals the technology
offered support and was believed to work interdependently with the
humans. These factors are consistent with dimensions of team processes
found in the literature on interpersonal teams (Cohen & Bailey, 1997; De
Jong et al., 2016; Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Human-machine teams appear
to involve some of the similar team process variables. In contrast, when indi-
viduals viewed the technology as a tool, they believed that added commu-
nication richness and humanness would facilitate future teammate
perceptions. It is interesting to note that these dimensions are what people
might look for in prospective teammate relationships versus what they
currently experience within teammate relationships.
A final notable finding in the current study is the fact that over 30% of
the sample reported viewing the relationship with the technology as a
teammate-based partnership. This suggests that human-machine teaming
is a viable and fruitful topic of inquiry within the human factors and robotics
literatures, because individuals do evidently establish very intimate connec-
tions with technologies. Future research is needed to validate the dimensions
of human-machine teaming to better understand why and how humans
make these connections with advanced technology.

6.5 CONCLUSION

The current study examined perceptions of current technology as described
by a sample of US workers. Clearly, a significant portion of this sample
viewed the technology as a partner, whereas the majority viewed them
as tools. Several trust antecedents were revealed while questions remain
why others were not as prominent. With regard to human-machine
teaming, several dimensions were revealed and another robust factor