The dynamics of human trust in AI from the instrumental and value perspectives

Abstract: With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, human-AI relationships have become increasingly prevalent and consequential in organizations. Human trust in AI lies at the core of human-AI relationships and is critical to the effectiveness of human-AI interactions. Key challenges in research on human trust in AI include how to conceptualize trust, understand dynamic patterns of human-AI relationships, and achieve complementary advantages through human-AI interactions. This study addresses these issues by focusing on the dyadic interaction between humans and AI to explore the dynamic processes of human trust in AI over time. First, drawing on the perspective of technological ethics, this study conceptualizes human trust in AI as a two-dimensional construct comprising instrumental trust and value trust, and further develops a corresponding measurement scale. Second, adopting a dynamic development perspective, the study explores the temporal characteristics and dynamic patterns of human trust in AI, thereby opening the “black box” of trust dynamics in human-AI relationships. Finally, from the perspective of human-AI collaboration, the study investigates the effect of different forms of human trust in AI on employee creativity, offering a nuanced understanding of human-AI relationship development and providing insights into how trust in AI shapes employees’ core competencies in the digital intelligence era.