Interacting with customer service AI can make people act more like robots, research suggests

By University of Birmingham

New research argues that interacting with robots displaying human-like behaviours can cause people to adopt robot-like traits or ‘robotoid humanness.’

Image: Theo - Unsplash

As AI continues to develop at a rapid pace, social robots powered by AI are becoming more commonplace in customer service settings such as retail, hospitality, tourism, and healthcare. But as these robots become smarter and appear more human, little attention has been given to how this might impact the consumers interacting with them.

Now, research from the University of Birmingham (UK), Aarhus University (Denmark), and Linnaeus University (Sweden) has found that interacting with robots displaying human-like behaviours, such as adaptive learning, personalised communication, and empathetic engagement, can reinforce, reshape, or destabilise a consumer’s self-perception.

The research has been published open access in the journal AI & Society.

Dr Inci Toral-Manson, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Birmingham, said: “Social robots for customer service settings are designed to mimic gestures, speech, and emotional cues to elicit cognitive and emotional responses from customers. Our research explores how dealing with these anthropomorphised robots can create a bidirectional influence, where robots become more like people, and people become more like robots, which we call ‘robotoid humanness’.”

The researchers set out a framework of human-robot interactions and how it can influence self-discovery/perception. This framework includes the service setting, consumer expectations, the robot’s appearance and speech and, crucially, the commitments (actions) from the consumer and robot.

To foster engagement with people, customer service robots use AI and learning models to mimic the behaviour of humans. This aims to instil trust and achieve the best customer engagement. People in interactions use social cues from those they interact with, often subconsciously imitating others’ behaviours or expressions, also known as mirroring. It is between the two actions in the framework that mirroring and mimicry come into effect.

Dr Selcen Ozturkcan, Associate Professor of Business Administration at Linnaeus University, explained: "The consumer acts, the robot responds, and with repeated exposure, in time the consumer internalises the exchange. Machine learning and AI can amplify this process, adjusting robot behaviour based on user input, enabling more personalised and human-like mimicry from the robot. For people, the innate instinct to mirror can lead to people returning the robot’s communicative behaviours, making them more robot-like.”

The study argues that this mirroring can cause ethical concerns, as persistent mimicry can lead to a mimicking/mirroring feedback loop, where consumer identity is shaped. It can also be constrained by repeated exposure to algorithmically driven feedback, causing confirmation bias and other negative outcomes.

These repeated interactions can also change an individual’s self-perception depending on factors such as technological readiness, cultural background, and personality traits. This creates ethical questions, especially when there may be a risk of people depending on robots for validation of their self-worth, as repeated positive reinforcement can enhance confidence in consumers, whilst negative cues may lower self-esteem.

Dr Jean-Paul Jde Cros Peronard, Associate Professor at Aarhus University, concluded: "Robots and AI are now commonplace in customer service, and so it is important that we understand how people interact with them for businesses to use the technology at their disposal to best effect, whilst remaining ethical.”

The researchers argue that as consumers see aspects of themselves increasingly reflected in robots, understanding the mimicry and mirroring process in robot-mediated services offers opportunities for connection. However, they also call for careful consideration of the cognitive and ethical consequences in shaping the consumer self.

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

Read next: Researchers Warn Widespread AI Use May Make Business Storytelling Harder As Communications Become Increasingly Similar
by External Contributor via Digital Information World

Researchers Warn Widespread AI Use May Make Business Storytelling Harder As Communications Become Increasingly Similar

By Joe Stafford, University of Manchester

New research suggests widespread use of generative AI creates new challenges for businesses seeking to stand out through their business communications.

Image: DIW, CC BY

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT make it easier for business owners to produce polished pitches, business plans and other communications, but according to new research from The University of Manchester and Canada’s University of Alberta, their widespread use could ultimately make it harder for businesses to effectively communicate with their audiences.

This challenges the idea that AI will simply “level the playing field” by helping business owners who lack strong writing and storytelling skills. Instead, the researchers argue that as more business owners use the same tools to create their external communications, business storytelling becomes increasingly similar.

The study argues that widespread use of generative AI may narrow the space available for businesses to differentiate themselves. If audiences are repeatedly exposed to similar AI-assisted communications, those linguistic patterns could become the expected norm - making genuinely distinctive communication harder to achieve.

The researchers describe a paradox - while AI can make storytelling easier for an individual business owner, its widespread adoption could make effective storytelling more difficult for business owners collectively.

Key points

• In the age of AI, business communications start to look more alike.
• The researchers generated AI-augmented twins of more than 26,000 real-world crowdfunding campaign descriptions. Across the resulting AI-augmented versions, there was substantially less variation than across the original human-written narratives. Among other differences, the AI-rewritten pitches varied 43% less in how abstract their language was, and variation in length and writing quality fell by around 80%.
• As AI makes polished communications easier to produce, audiences likely develop more demanding expectations about the quality of these communications.
• Business owners may increasingly need to provide evidence for the claims they make about their businesses, as audiences become less willing to rely on plausible-sounding statements alone.
• Cultural competence and storytelling skills could even become more valuable, rather than less, as it becomes more challenging to craft effective business communications in the age of generative AI.

What the experts say

"Generative AI can support entrepreneurs in many aspects of storytelling, but it cannot substitute for the cultural understanding required to navigate an increasingly complex evaluative environment," said lead author Dr Karl Taeuscher from The University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School. "Business owners will still need to understand their audiences, recognise cultural expectations and know how to position their businesses in ways that are both credible and distinctive."

"The point is not that business owners should avoid these tools, but that using them well – and knowing when to depart from what they suggest – requires relevant skills and expertise." — Dr Karl Taeuscher.

The researchers caution that the study presents a plausible scenario rather than a prediction, as both AI technology and social norms surrounding its use are changing rapidly. The analysis of AI-augmented crowdfunding descriptions is intended to illustrate the research’s central argument rather than to test it.

Publication details: The research was published in the journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587261472523.

Fact-Checked by Irfan Ahmad.

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by External Contributor via Digital Information World

No sick days? How remote work is changing the way we work when ill

By Joe Stafford, University of Manchester

New research calls for a rethink of ‘presenteeism’ as technology makes it possible to work while unwell from almost anywhere.

Image: Pavel Bekker - Unsplash

Working from home and digital technology may be making it easier for employees to work while ill and blurring the boundaries between work and home, according to a new study.

The paper, by Professor Sir Cary Cooper of The University of Manchester, Professor Luo Lu of National Taiwan University and Professor Shu-Fang Kao of Soochow University, argues that traditional definitions of presenteeism no longer reflect the realities of modern working life.

Working from home doesn’t mean switching off

The researchers say the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid working means many employees no longer need to physically go into the workplace to do their jobs while unwell. Instead, they can remain at home, respond to emails or messages, attend virtual meetings or carry out urgent tasks while ill.

The study argues that this creates new challenges for understanding the impact of an increasingly ‘always-on’ workplace culture.

Key findings

• Presenteeism is no longer simply about going into work while sick - people can now work while unwell from home or elsewhere.
• Digital technology can make it harder to switch off, with employees potentially feeling pressure to remain available through email, messaging platforms and other workplace technology even outside normal working hours.
• Mental health needs to be recognised alongside physical illness when considering why people work while unwell, as existing research has focused heavily on physical sickness.
• Working while ill can take different forms - from completing a normal working day remotely to doing only urgent tasks or checking emails intermittently.
• Employers should consider whether workers have flexibility to reduce their hours or workload when ill, rather than treating working while sick as an inherently good or bad behaviour.

Presenteeism is no longer just about physical presence

The researchers propose redefining presenteeism as the “behaviour of attending work in the state of suboptimal health, with varied location choices and degree of engagement”.

This means that presenteeism should be understood not simply in terms of whether someone turns up to work, but also where they work, what health problem they are experiencing and how much effort they put into working.

The authors argue that existing approaches to measuring presenteeism are too narrow because they generally focus on how often people go to work despite being ill, or on the extent to which illness affects their productivity. Instead, they propose a three-dimensional framework based on health, location and engagement.

Eight ways of working while unwell

The first dimension considers whether presenteeism is triggered by a physical or mental health problem. The second considers whether someone works on-site or remotely. The third considers whether they work a full schedule with normal levels of engagement or reduce their hours and effort. Together, these dimensions produce eight different forms of presenteeism.

For example, an employee with a physical illness might go into the workplace and work a full day, while another might stay at home and only deal with urgent requests. Someone experiencing anxiety or depression could similarly work either remotely or on-site, with either full or reduced engagement.

The researchers say this approach could help distinguish between situations where working while ill may be harmful and situations where employees are able to adapt their work in ways that allow them to protect their health while meeting essential responsibilities.

The paper also highlights concerns about inequality in access to flexible working. Remote working is not available to everyone, meaning that some workers may be able to adapt their working arrangements when ill while others have little choice but to attend their workplace.

What the experts say

“The world of work has changed dramatically, but our understanding of what it means to work while sick has not necessarily kept pace with this transformation,” said Professor Cary Cooper, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at The University of Manchester. “Technology has given people much greater flexibility over where and when they work, but that flexibility can become a trap if employees feel they have to be available all the time.”

“Someone working from their sofa while ill, answering emails and dealing with urgent requests, is still working while sick - even though they have not physically gone into the workplace. The challenge for employers is to make sure that technology and flexible working are used to support people’s health, rather than creating an expectation that they should always be available.” — Professor Sir Cary Cooper.

Making flexibility work for employees

The authors argue that future research should examine whether giving employees greater control over their location, working hours and workload can make presenteeism a more adaptive behaviour. They also call for greater attention to mental health-related presenteeism, which they say has been relatively neglected by existing research.

The researchers stress that working while sick should not automatically be regarded as either positive or negative. Instead, they argue that understanding how someone works while unwell - and the circumstances surrounding that decision - is essential to understanding its effects on health and performance.

The paper concludes that organisations need to strike a balance between maintaining performance and protecting employee wellbeing as digital technology continues to reshape the workplace.

Publication details: The paper was published in journal Health Psychology Research. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36922/HPR026130066.

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

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by External Contributor via Digital Information World

New Meta safeguards shift burden to parents, UEA expert warns

By University of East Anglia

Image: Mariia Berezovsky - Unsplash.

New Meta measures may deepen inequalities by shifting responsibility onto parents and young people – according to an expert at the University of East Anglia.

The tech giant has agreed to a historic $18 billion settlement with dozens of US states, bringing an end to a high-profile federal trial.

The lawsuit accused Meta of deliberately designing addictive platforms that harmed children's mental health.

The proposed settlement introduces new youth safeguards, but social media expert Dr Harry Dyer says that such measures may deepen digital inequalities.

Dr Harry Dyer, Associate Professor in Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at UEA, said: “Meta has spent a long time insisting that their product is safe for young people, despite the large amount of research that has detailed online harms for children.

“Whilst the settlement allows Meta to deny wrongdoing, it also suggests that there is a clear need to change their platforms and also suggests they were reluctant to continue with the public transparency that the trial would continue to bring.

“The proposed changes to the platform as part of the settlement include default daily time limits of two hours and nighttime blocks for users that are deemed to be under 18 by the platform, which will seemingly only be liftable by parents.

“Whilst this is promising, our recent work has revealed that engaging with these platforms as a parent require a high level of digital literacy and citizenship from parents and children.

“Our recent work has found that the burden of understanding these platforms mapped onto existing class and educational inequalities, and exacerbated harms on the most vulnerable young people.

“The proposed protections by Meta will likely not be evenly distributed and will also likely be linked to different level of cultural and technological capital.

“As usual, users are being made responsible to navigate these changes, and to make informed choices about which design features are better, whilst the platform evades the accountability that an ongoing trail would likely bring. Structural risk here gets repackaged as individual responsibility for parents and children to navigate.”

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

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• Consumers Are More Likely to Use Free AI Chatbots Than Paid Versions

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by External Contributor via Digital Information World

Consumers Are More Likely to Use Free AI Chatbots Than Paid Versions

By Felix Richter, Statista

Nvidia’s latest results once again underlined that the AI boom shows no signs of slowing down. Last quarter, the company returned to triple-digit growth, doubling revenue and net income, the latter already exceeding $100 billion halfway through the current fiscal year. And yet, behind the extraordinary spending on chips and data centers looms a harder question: when and how will all that investment pay off?

One reason for the skepticism is that much of the AI economy still looks suspiciously circular. Hyperscalers are investing hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers, fueling Nvidia’s extraordinary growth. Nvidia partially invests those billions in AI companies who in turn use that money to rent computing power from the aforementioned hyperscalers. What’s missing in this equation is an influx of money from outside of this loop or at least a clear idea where this money will eventually come from. As of today, many of the most popular AI tools – at least the consumer-facing ones – remain free to use to a certain extent, raising the question of who is footing the bill.

Survey data from Statista Consumer Insights confirms this observation. In all five markets surveyed, respondents were significantly more likely to say they usually use free AI chatbots than to have access to a paid version. The difference is particularly pronounced in Brazil, Germany and the United States – suggesting that widespread experimentation with AI has not yet translated to willingness to pay for it.

Fact-checked by Irfan Ahmad.

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• China’s AI and tech breakthroughs are built on decades of work. Here’s what other nations can learn

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by External Contributor via Digital Information World

China’s AI and tech breakthroughs are built on decades of work. Here’s what other nations can learn

By Frederik von Briel, The University of Queensland

Image: Zhe ZHANG - Unsplash

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a race for technological and ideological supremacy.

The Cold War was still in its early years and each side was intently focused on the other’s scientific and military progress. The US believed it was firmly in front.

So the Americans were caught almost completely off guard in October 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik-1, the world’s first ever artificial satellite, into orbit.

Today, the US is locked in competition with a different superpower: China. In recent years, China has given the world some surprise breakthroughs of its own – from advanced hypersonic missiles to cutting-edge computer chips and powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The question is, how did China get there – and what can other countries like Australia learn from it?

Decades in the making

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US sought to better understand Chinese innovation by examining about 14 million Chinese patent publications from between 1985 and 2023.

Its findings suggest these modern “Sputnik moments” were not isolated strokes of luck, but were instead decades in the making.

The study noted that Chinese patent activity in critical technology areas (as defined by the US Department of Defense) has been growing.

The number of new patents has steadily increased from fewer than 10,000 annually in the early 2000s to more than 400,000 in 2022.

A related report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute suggests China now leads globally in 69 of 74 critical and emerging technology domains.

Quality and quantity

When looking more closely at the recent NBER study, a few interesting insights emerge.

First, it reveals China hasn’t just been filing an increasing number of low-quality patent applications. On a measure that tracks whether novel ideas influence later inventions, Chinese patents steadily gained ground relative to US patents.

Second, it hasn’t just been a few “national champion” organisations driving China’s patenting activity. Quite the opposite.

The ten largest owners of critical-technology patents only held 4% of all Chinese patents in 2022. That’s markedly different to the US, where the ten largest owners held 20% of all patents.

And there are big differences on a third point, too – the role of universities. While the private sector accounts for 58% of China’s critical-technology patents, 27% of patents originate from Chinese universities.

That’s in stark contrast to the US, where universities account for only 3% of critical-technology patents.

The role of public research

History suggests that this pattern may not be unique to China. In her 2013 book, The Entrepreneurial State, US-Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato challenges the myth that individual entrepreneurs and firms develop major breakthroughs on their own.

She argues many technological breakthroughs in the US depended on the long-term accumulation of inventions and capabilities across various actors. And importantly, that publicly funded research often also played a major role.

For example, drawing on the iPhone as a breakthrough product, Mazzucato shows that many of the technologies that made the iPhone possible – from touchscreens to GPS and even its voice assistant Siri – had been developed across different, often publicly funded, research institutions before the iPhone was even conceived.

How does Australia compare?

Australia has had a strong track record of invention and scientific discovery in the past. But we’re increasingly struggling to keep pace with the world’s technological leaders.

Australia does still punch above its economic weight in some specific critical technology areas.

For instance, since 2000, Australia accounts for almost 9% of patents in critical-metals refinement for batteries. Australia also ranks 12th globally in the number of quantum-computing patents.

And Australia has had some big innovation success stories in the past. A form of solar cell developed at UNSW in the 1980s now powers more than 90% of new solar panels around the world.

The wireless local area network (WLAN) technology that made modern wifi fast and reliable was also developed here, by the publicly funded CSIRO.

A troubling trajectory

However, Australia’s current trajectory in technology development is somewhat concerning.

Relative to the size of its economy, Australia’s spending on research and development has fallen from 2.24% of gross domestic product in 2008–09 to 1.69% in 2023–24.

Simply increasing spending on research and development may not be enough. New inventions and capabilities also need businesses with the people, expertise and resources to absorb them and develop them further.

Here, Australia appears comparatively weak. Australian businesses employ only around 3 researchers per 1,000 employees, compared with an OECD average of 6.5.

This suggests Australia might have less capacity to turn technological breakthroughs into commercially viable products and services compared with the rest of the world.

Lessons for other countries

This doesn’t mean Australia or other middle powers need to invent and build every critical technology domestically to benefit.

Wireless LAN technology generated around A$430 million in licensing revenue. It is also embedded in more than 15 billion devices globally. This is despite Australia never becoming a dominant producer of wifi hardware.

One key takeaway from China’s innovation success is that by the time a technological breakthrough becomes visible globally, the domestic capabilities behind it may have been accumulating for decades.

Trying to develop them only when they suddenly become critical may be too late.

Frederik von Briel, Associate Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

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by External Contributor via Digital Information World

Study Examines How Personality Traits Relate to Phubbing Behavior

By Inderscience

Image: Julie Ricard - Unsplash

Personality traits may help predict whether a person will ignore others while using their smartphones, according to a study of healthcare workers in the International Journal of Business Innovation and Research.

The study involved 177 co-workers and looked at how prevalent 'phubbing' is. Phubbing is a portmanteau of the words 'phone' and 'snub' and is the practice of ignoring someone in preference to using one's phone despite being in a situation in which face-to-face conversation and interaction would be the norm. The study might help social scientists and others understand better the notion of smartphone addiction.

The research assessed participants using the so-called Big Five personality traits - openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Personality and phone addiction were self-reported, while co-workers provided evidence of phubbing by others. The team found that people scoring higher in openness, extraversion and neuroticism were more likely to display phubbing behaviour. Conscientiousness, a tendency towards responsibility, self-discipline, and consideration of one's obligations, was associated with less phubbing. There was no significant relationship between phubbing and agreeableness, oddly enough.

If a condition we might call mobile phone addiction exists, then it might be described as an inability to refrain from phone use despite the potential for offline human interaction. To be a true addiction, there has to be associated harm, and the researchers suggest that psychological harm may well occur, either to the phubber or the phubbed. This phenomenon partly explains the relationships between personality and phubbing, the team reports. That said, the researchers emphasise that understanding individual differences behind problematic smartphone use could help organisations address antisocial phone behaviour without treating smartphone use itself as inherently harmful.

Khan, M.N., Shahzad, K. and Shafi, M.Q. (2026) 'This or that, which coworker phubb more; association between personality traits and phubbing behaviour through mobile phone addiction', Int. J. Business Innovation and Research, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp.466–487.
DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2026.155659.

Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

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