How Technology Impacts and Compares to Humans in Socially Consequential Arenas

TL;DR

This paper examines how societal perceptions, performance, and impacts influence decisions on developing and adopting technologies by comparing humans and machines across three scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of human versus machine performance, sentiment, and impacts in socially consequential contexts to inform technology development decisions.

Findings

Sentiment towards technology affects adoption decisions.

Performance metrics influence perceptions of technology.

Impacts of technology vary across different scenarios.

Abstract

One of the main promises of technology development is for it to be adopted by people, organizations, societies, and governments -- incorporated into their life, work stream, or processes. Often, this is socially beneficial as it automates mundane tasks, frees up more time for other more important things, or otherwise improves the lives of those who use the technology. However, these beneficial results do not apply in every scenario and may not impact everyone in a system the same way. Sometimes a technology is developed which produces both benefits and inflicts some harm. These harms may come at a higher cost to some people than others, raising the question: {\it how are benefits and harms weighed when deciding if and how a socially consequential technology gets developed?} The most natural way to answer this question, and in fact how people first approach it, is to compare the new technology to what used to exist. As such, in this work, I make comparative analyses between humans and machines in three scenarios and seek to understand how sentiment about a technology, performance of that technology, and the impacts of that technology combine to influence how one decides to answer my main research question.