Perceived Trustworthiness of Human vs. AI Instructors in Digital Privacy Education for Older Adults

Recent work highlights digital privacy education as a crucial component in overcoming the digital literacy gap among seniors, but also shows that seniors distrust AI systems and prefer a more personable education experience. To this end, we conducted a within-subjects experiment to explore the pivotal role of trust in digital privacy education for older adults, with a specific focus on how the physical characteristics of instructors—human and AI—influence trust levels. In our study, 36 younger and 27 older participants evaluated 9 introductions to a video tutorial on digital privacy, featuring 3 AI and 6 human instructors (the latter varying by age and gender). Analysis revealed that trust towards the AI instructors was lower than towards the human instructors. Among the AI instructors, a robot with human-like features was the most trusted, while among the human instructors, the older and middle-aged female instructors were the most trusted. Furthermore, participant demographics such as gender and rurality were found to moderate trust levels. This research has implications for instructional design and technology acceptance, particularly in addressing privacy concerns and fostering inclusive digital literacy among the senior population.