On the 11th of March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) characterized the Covid-19 virus outbreak as a pandemic. Since then, countries around the world have been implementing strategies to prevent the spread of the disease. Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become a major component of such strategies. While discussing the ethics and responsibility behind AI-powered tools which have been put into action in different countries, a crucial issue was identified on the societal and cultural levels: the acceptance of AI initiatives (The Future Society et al., 2020; IEAI, 2020).
In our Research brief “Culture is “Tight” with Technology Adoption: Cultural and governance factors involved in the acceptance of AI-powered surveillance technology deployed to fight Covid-19”, we will discuss the moderating factors which might have played a role in countries’ technology acceptance, and the ethics behind the use of surveillance technologies depending on cultural and political contexts.
