The Consumer Psychology of Adopting AI

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite all the ways that artificial intelligence promises to improve our lives, many consumers feel anxious and are averse to AI-powered products and services. For marketers and product managers, it’s vital to understand what is driving that resistance to adoption. Julian De Freitas is an assistant professor in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. He has identified five main ways people see artificial intelligence negatively: that AI is opaque, emotionless, inflexible, autonomous, and not human enough. Through real-life cases and the latest research, he explains how companies can soothe anxieties and encourage consumer adoption. De Freitas the author of the HBR article "Why People Resist Embracing AI."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:14.0	I'm Kurt Nikif.
0:16.0	Artificial intelligence is changing businesses we know it but the extent of those changes depends on two things
0:28.9	first how good the technology gets and second how much companies adopt it and consumers actually buy it
0:36.6	and there's a gap there. According to
0:39.2	a Gartner survey, for instance, four out of five corporate strategists say AI will be critical
0:44.7	to their success in the near future, but only one out of five said they actually use AI in
0:50.5	their day-to-day work. That was a 2023 survey.
0:55.7	It's probably different today.
0:59.2	But the point remains, adoption is lagging.
1:02.1	And a key reason for that is perception.
1:07.1	Many people view AI and automation negatively and resist using them.
1:13.3	Today's guest has studied the psychological barriers to adoption and explains what managers can do to overcome them. Julian DeFratis is an assistant professor at Harvard Business
1:19.3	School and he wrote the HBR article, Why People Resist Embracing AI. Julian, hi. Hi, Kurt. Thanks for having me on the show.
1:29.9	Julian, the adoption of technology is an age-old experience for people.
1:35.2	We've resisted technology many times in the past and have adopted it.
1:38.9	Is AI any different from other technologies when it comes to resistance to adoption?
1:45.1	I think the answer is yes, and we're finding in many cases AI is different from a consumer
1:52.5	perception standpoint. What we're seeing is that in many use cases, people perceive AI as
1:59.7	though it is more human-like as opposed to being this
2:03.3	sort of non-living technology.
2:05.6	And this has profound implications for a number of marketing problems, such as overcoming
	...

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