To Be or Not to Be …Human? Theorizing the Role of Human-Like Competencies in Conversational Artificial Intelligence Agents

ABSTRACT

Driven by the need to provide continuous, timely, and efficient customer service, firms are constantly experimenting with emerging technological solutions. In recent times firms have shown an increased interest in designing and implementing artificial intelligence (AI)-based interactional technologies, such as conversational AI agents and chatbots, that obviate the need for having human service agents for the provision of customer service. However, the business impact of conversational AI is contingent on customers using and adequately engaging with these tools. This engagement depends, in turn, on conversational AI’s similarity, or likeness to the human beings it is intended to replace. Businesses therefore need to understand what human-like characteristics and competencies should be embedded in customer-facing conversational AI agents to facilitate smooth user interaction. This focus on “human-likeness” for facilitating user engagement in the case of conversational AI agents is in sharp contrast to most prior information systems (IS) user engagement research, which is predicated on the “instrumental value” of information technology (IT). Grounding our work in the individual human competency and media naturalness literatures, we theorize the key role of human-like interactional competencies in conversational AI agents—specifically, cognitive, relational, and emotional competencies—in facilitating user engagement. We also hypothesize the mediating role of user trust in these relationships. Following a sequential mixed methods approach, we use a quantitative two-wave, survey-based study to test our model. We then examine the results in light of findings from qualitative follow-up interviews with a sampled set of conversational AI users. Together, the results offer a nuanced understanding of desirable human-like competencies in conversational AI agents and the salient role of user trust in fostering user engagement with them. We also discuss the implications of our study for research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial Intelligence
• AI
• chatbot
• human-like competencies
• human-like trust
• media naturalness theory
• user engagement
• mixed methods
• conversational agents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary information

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2022.2127441

Notes

¹ Demand characteristics are a type of response bias whereby respondents tend to alter their response or behavior if they figure out the study’s purpose.

² All boldfacing here and elsewhere has been done by the authors to emphasize relevant portions of the interview quotes.

³ Respondent code here and elsewhere as indicated in Online Supplemental Appendix 9.

Additional information

Funding

Shirish C. Srivastava gratefully acknowledges the financial support received from the HEC Paris Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Shalini Chandra

Shalini Chandra ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor at S P Jain School of Global Management, Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include artificial intelligence, technology-enabled innovation, and new collaborative technologies, adoption and acceptance of new technologies, dark side of technology, and social media. Dr. Chandra’s research has been published in such journals as MIS Quarterly, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), and Communications of the AIS, among others. She serves as an associate editor at EJIS. She has also presented her work at several conferences, such as International Conference on Information Systems, Academy of Management, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, and Americas Conference on Information Systems, and International Communication Association.

Anuragini Shirish

Anuragini Shirish ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor at Institute Mines-Télécom Business School, France. She is an elected member from her institution for the governance of the LITEM (Laboratoire Innovation Technologies Économie et Management) (EA 7363), a joint research laboratory under the University of Paris-Saclay, France. Dr. Shirish’s research focuses on studying the humanistic and instrumental impacts of several socio-technical phenomena in the broad areas of digital work, digital innovation, and digital society. Her research has been published in such journals as European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Communications of the Association of the Information Systems, and International Journal of Information and Management, among others She has also presented her work in several premier IS and management conferences including the International Conference on Information Systems, the Academy of Management, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, and the Americas Conference on Information Systems, among others.

Shirish C. Srivastava

Shirish C. Srivastava ([email protected]; corresponding author) is Professor and GS1 France Chair in “Digital Content for Omni Channel” at HEC Paris. He holds a Ph.D. from National University of Singapore. He has also completed his habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) at Université de Lorraine, France. Dr. Srivastava’s research interests include: technology enabled innovation, artificial intelligence, opensource, social media strategy, e-government, and services sourcing. His research has been published in such journals as Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS), European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), and many others. He has won multiple awards for his research and is a four-time winner of the Prix Académique la Recherche en Management in France. Dr. Srivastava serves as the senior editor at JAIS and EJIS. His experience includes coaching senior executives on issues related to managing technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and cross-border business relationships.