Humanistic Values and Digital Communication with Chat-bots in Russia

The paper deals with the current trends in the theory of communication caused by the implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in the practices of communication strategies and mass communication. The massive spread of digital communications has led to a transformation of communication practices. New actors appear on the network, whose perceptions are transformed by the values shared by the participants of communication processes. The emergence in the digital environment of actors imitating human behavior re-emphasizes our problem, because not only the practices of interaction with these actors are changing, but also their perception on the value level. The purpose of this article is to detect the role of human values on the process of human communication with non-humans. With the help of focus groups conducted among different age groups of respondents (students and pensioners), the attitude of representatives of different generations to chatbots and the basic principles of interaction with the network actors were revealed. It was found that although young people were generally more active in interacting with chatbots, both age groups demonstrated a favorable attitude towards chatbots and technological progress. However, in the older age group, humanistic values were more explicit. The study also revealed that there was no value gap between students and retirees when interacting with non-humans. Among the respondents of both groups there were both supporters of instrumental values and those whose perception of technology is based on terminal (final) values. The conclusions made in the article open perspectives for studying the process of “humanizing” non-humans by users of various network resources and identifying the values that guide users in “humanizing” non-humans. The authors argue that modern anthropology must be applied to evaluate problems and perspectives of the AI-technologies application in public relations, journalism, and mass media.