The Task Matters: The Effect of Perceived Similarity to AI on Intention to Use in Different Task Types

Abstract

With the development of AI technologies, especially generative AI (GAI) like ChatGPT, GAI is increasingly assisting people in various tasks. However, people may have different requirements for GAI when using it for different kinds of tasks. For instance, when brainstorming new ideas, people may want GAI to propose different ideas that supplement theirs with different problem-solving perspectives, but for decision-making tasks, they may prefer GAI adopt a similar problem-solving process with people to make a similar or even the same decision as they would. We conducted an online experiment examining how perceived similarities between GAI and human task-solving influence people’s intention to use GAI, mediated by trust, for four task types (creativity, planning, intellective, and decision-making tasks). We demonstrate that the effect of similarity on trust (and so intent to use AI) depends on the type of task. This paper contributes to understanding the impact of task types on the relationship between perceived similarity and GAI adoption, with implications for future use of GAI in various task contexts.