Challenging presumed technological superiority when working with (artificial) colleagues

Abstract Technological advancements are ubiquitously supporting or even replacing humans in all areas of life, bringing the potential for human-technology symbiosis but also novel challenges. To address these challenges, we conducted three experiments in different task contexts ranging from loan assignment over X-Ray evaluation to process industry. Specifically, we investigated the impact of support agent (artificial intelligence, decision support system, or human) and failure experience (one vs. none) on trust-related aspects of human-agent interaction. This included not only the subjective evaluation of the respective agent in terms of trust, reliability, and responsibility, when working together, but also a change in perspective to the willingness to be assessed oneself by the agent. In contrast to a presumed technological superiority, we show a general advantage with regard to trust and responsibility of human support over both technical support systems (i.e., artificial intelligence and decision support system), regardless of task context from the collaborative perspective. This effect reversed to a preference for technical systems when switching the perspective to being assessed. These findings illustrate an imperfect automation schema from the perspective of the advice-taker and demonstrate the importance of perspective when working with or being assessed by machine intelligence.