Speciesism: An Obstacle to AI and Robot Adoption

Once artificial intelligence (AI) is indistinguishable from human intelligence, and robots are highly similar in appearance and behavior to humans, there should be no reason to treat AI and robots differently from humans. However, even perfect AI and robots may still be subject to a bias (referred to as speciesism in this article), which will disadvantage them and be a barrier to their commercial adoption as chatbots, decision and recommendation systems, and staff in retail and service settings. The author calls for future research that determines causes and psychological consequences of speciesism, assesses the effect of speciesism on the adoption of new products and technologies, and identifies ways to overcome it.