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Research project

The Role of Stereotypes in Human-AI Interaction

Recent technological advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are reshaping our social environment as we increasingly interact with bots (AI-enabled virtual agents) in various commercial, occupational, and recreational settings. Accordingly, it is important to examine whether these interactions are shaped and affected by our pre-existing human biases and prejudices. This project addresses this very question by examining the role of stereotypes in interaction between humans and bots.

This project has received funding via the EUI Research Council call 2021.

The scholarship on Gender and Competition has established several differences between men and women in gender matching preferences (GMT) and in willingness to enter competition (WTC). This project draws on this scholarship as well as on literature on gender stereotypes to address the following research question: Do gender differences persist when competition is not amongst humans but between humans and bots?

An online experiment simulating competitive and collaborative environments between humans and bots will measure if GMT and WTC are affected by the gender appearance of bots. Results from this study can shed light on the durability of gender stereotypes and their adverse effect on judgment. Additionally results from this study can help inform our still limited understanding of what our Hybrid Human-AI future might look like.

The team

Group members

  • Portrait picture of Klarita Gërxhani

    Klarita Gërxhani

    Full-time professor and Head of the Ethics, Governance, and Society department

    Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  • Portrait picture of Arnout Van De Rijt

    Arnout Van De Rijt

    Head of Department

    Full-time Professor

    Department of Political and Social Sciences

  • Jonathan Winter

    Researcher

    Department of Political and Social Sciences