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Main Authors: Besanson, Gaston, Todeschini, Federico
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13283
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author Besanson, Gaston
Todeschini, Federico
author_facet Besanson, Gaston
Todeschini, Federico
contents We study how people trade off accuracy when using AI-powered tools in professional versus personal contexts for adoption purposes, the determinants of those trade-offs, and how users cope when AI/apps are unavailable. Because modern AI systems (especially generative models) can produce acceptable but non-identical outputs, we define "accuracy" as context-specific reliability: the degree to which an output aligns with the user's intent within a tolerance threshold that depends on stakes and the cost of correction. In an online survey (N=300), among respondents with both accuracy items (N=170), the share requiring high accuracy (top-box) is 24.1% at work vs. 8.8% in personal life (+15.3 pp; z=6.29, p<0.001). The gap remains large under a broader top-two-box definition (67.0% vs. 32.9%) and on the full 1-5 ordinal scale (mean 3.86 vs. 3.08). Heavy app use and experience patterns correlate with stricter work standards (H2). When tools are unavailable (H3), respondents report more disruption in personal routines than at work (34.1% vs. 15.3%, p<0.01). We keep the main text focused on these substantive results and place test taxonomy and power derivations in a technical appendix.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_13283
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accuracy Standards for AI at Work vs. Personal Life: Evidence from an Online Survey
Besanson, Gaston
Todeschini, Federico
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
We study how people trade off accuracy when using AI-powered tools in professional versus personal contexts for adoption purposes, the determinants of those trade-offs, and how users cope when AI/apps are unavailable. Because modern AI systems (especially generative models) can produce acceptable but non-identical outputs, we define "accuracy" as context-specific reliability: the degree to which an output aligns with the user's intent within a tolerance threshold that depends on stakes and the cost of correction. In an online survey (N=300), among respondents with both accuracy items (N=170), the share requiring high accuracy (top-box) is 24.1% at work vs. 8.8% in personal life (+15.3 pp; z=6.29, p<0.001). The gap remains large under a broader top-two-box definition (67.0% vs. 32.9%) and on the full 1-5 ordinal scale (mean 3.86 vs. 3.08). Heavy app use and experience patterns correlate with stricter work standards (H2). When tools are unavailable (H3), respondents report more disruption in personal routines than at work (34.1% vs. 15.3%, p<0.01). We keep the main text focused on these substantive results and place test taxonomy and power derivations in a technical appendix.
title Accuracy Standards for AI at Work vs. Personal Life: Evidence from an Online Survey
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13283