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Dr. Dipankar Chakravarti, Professor of Marketing in the Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech, studies consumer psychology and consumer behavior in contemporary and commercial contexts. He works with human-computer interactions, like how humans respond to chatbots and service apps in commercial transactions.

Chakravarti looks at what he calls algorithm appreciation and aversion, or how people react to artificial intelligence (AI). “There is a gamut of technology around us,” he said. “What factors lead people to accept and keep them away from apps?”

On the appreciation side, apps give you a lot of power to process information that would otherwise be cumbersome. They guide people to “find what works for me,” he said.

Aversion can mean the feeling of being distanced from things important to people. Also, as Chakravarti said, people wonder “what does this thing know about me?,” fearing gender or racial bias. Uniqueness neglect is also a concern; patients are skittish about interacting with medical AI technology in part because they fear that AI won’t address their unique needs.

In the negative column, apps have an addictive quality and people can lose track of time while on them. Such addiction can cause lost sleep, obesity, high blood pressure, and stress due to the “expanded richness of the stimuli that are hitting you,” said Chakravarti. As with any addiction, when people become conscious of it, they make resolutions but the “slippage rate is very high” – in other words, the adjustment is often temporary.

In addition, using apps exposes us to “vulnerabilities we can’t even imagine” like hacking and data breaches. Ceding control to an algorithm can be dangerous; apps can make mistakes and errors can kill people, such as self-driving cars wrecking.

The economic impact of app usage is great. Chakravarti said that the total app market is $200 billion, and buildfire.com projects $935 in revenue in 2023. Chakravarti said that some estimates have the effect being half a trillion dollars by 2030.

The future of apps is an “enormous opportunity but things can tamp it down,” said Chakravarti. For example, publicity about a self-driving car accident would inhibit advancement. Projections show 15% annual growth until 2030 but Chakravarti thinks it will moderate.

“Even if it levels off, it’s a lot,” he said.

Where we are today would have been “difficult to imagine 25 to 30 years ago,” said Chakravarti. However, projections from the past had computers cooking for us by now, which isn’t the case. So there a tension.

“The scope is great but the future has enormous uncertainties,” Chakravarti said.

He continued, “Apps can be both good and bad. The truth lies somewhere in between.”