I was very surprised at research conducted by the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which found that people trusted a robot to guide them to safety, even when it made mistakes or experienced technical difficulties.

“Only when the robot made obvious errors during the emergency part of the experiment did the participants question its directions. In those cases, some subjects still followed the robot’s instructions even when it directed them toward a darkened room that was blocked by furniture.”

You can read an article about the study here (and if you REALLY want to get into the nitty-gritty you can read the PhD student’s dissertation here).

Very interesting, right?

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