  In recent years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained much popularity, with
the scientific community as well as with the public. AI is often ascribed many
positive impacts for different social domains such as medicine and the economy.
On the other side, there is also growing concern about its precarious impact on
society and individuals. Several opinion polls frequently query the public fear
of autonomous robots and artificial intelligence (FARAI), a phenomenon coming
also into scholarly focus. As potential threat perceptions arguably vary with
regard to the reach and consequences of AI functionalities and the domain of
application, research still lacks necessary precision of a respective
measurement that allows for wide-spread research applicability. We propose a
fine-grained scale to measure threat perceptions of AI that accounts for four
functional classes of AI systems and is applicable to various domains of AI
applications. Using a standardized questionnaire in a survey study (N=891), we
evaluate the scale over three distinct AI domains (loan origination, job
recruitment and medical treatment). The data support the dimensional structure
of the proposed Threats of AI (TAI) scale as well as the internal consistency
and factoral validity of the indicators. Implications of the results and the
empirical application of the scale are discussed in detail. Recommendations for
further empirical use of the TAI scale are provided.
