A Systematic Review of Ethical Concerns with Voice Assistants

TY - CHAP

T1 - A Systematic Review of Ethical Concerns with Voice Assistants

AU - Seymour, William

AU - Zhan, Nicole

AU - Coté, Mark

AU - Such, Jose

N1 - Funding Information: This research was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grant EP/T026723/1. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 ACM.

PY - 2023/8/8

Y1 - 2023/8/8

N2 - Since Siri's release in 2011 there have been a growing number of AI-driven domestic voice assistants that are increasingly being integrated into devices such as smartphones and TVs. But as their presence has expanded, a range of ethical concerns have been identified around the use of voice assistants, such as the privacy implications of having devices that are always listening and the ways that these devices are integrated into the existing social order of the home. This has created a burgeoning area of research across a range of fields including computer science, social science, and psychology. This paper takes stock of the foundations and frontiers of this work through a systematic literature review of 117 papers on ethical concerns with voice assistants. In addition to analysis of nine specific areas of concern, the review measures the distribution of methods and participant demographics across the literature. We show how some concerns, such as privacy, are operationalized to a much greater extent than others like accessibility, and how study participants are overwhelmingly drawn from a small handful of Western nations. In so doing we hope to provide an outline of the rich tapestry of work around these concerns and highlight areas where current research efforts are lacking.

AB - Since Siri's release in 2011 there have been a growing number of AI-driven domestic voice assistants that are increasingly being integrated into devices such as smartphones and TVs. But as their presence has expanded, a range of ethical concerns have been identified around the use of voice assistants, such as the privacy implications of having devices that are always listening and the ways that these devices are integrated into the existing social order of the home. This has created a burgeoning area of research across a range of fields including computer science, social science, and psychology. This paper takes stock of the foundations and frontiers of this work through a systematic literature review of 117 papers on ethical concerns with voice assistants. In addition to analysis of nine specific areas of concern, the review measures the distribution of methods and participant demographics across the literature. We show how some concerns, such as privacy, are operationalized to a much greater extent than others like accessibility, and how study participants are overwhelmingly drawn from a small handful of Western nations. In so doing we hope to provide an outline of the rich tapestry of work around these concerns and highlight areas where current research efforts are lacking.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165609181&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3600211.3604679

DO - 10.1145/3600211.3604679

M3 - Conference paper

T3 - AIES 2023 - Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

SP - 131

EP - 145

BT - AIES 2023 - Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

PB - ACM

ER -