Home assistant chat-bots, self-driving cars, drones or automated negotiations are some of the several examples of autonomous (artificial) agents that have pervaded our society. These agents enable the automation of multiple tasks, saving time and (human) effort. However, their presence in social settings raises the need for a better understanding of their effect on social interactions and how they may be used to enhance cooperation towards the public good, instead of hindering it. To this end, we present an experimental study of human delegation to autonomous agents and hybrid human-agent interactions centered on a public goods dilemma shaped by a collective risk. Our aim to understand experimentally whether the presence of autonomous agents has a positive or negative impact on social behaviour, fairness and cooperation in such a dilemma. Our results show that cooperation increases when participants delegate their actions to an artificial agent that plays on their behalf. Yet, this positive effect is reduced when humans interact in hybrid human-agent groups. Finally, we show that humans are biased towards agent behaviour, assuming that they will contribute less to the collective effort.
翻译:家庭助理聊天机、自行驾驶汽车、无人驾驶飞机或自动谈判是渗透我们社会的自主(人工)代理人的一些例子。这些代理人能够实现多种任务、节省时间和(人)努力的自动化,然而,他们在社会环境中的存在使人们更有必要了解它们对社会互动的影响,以及如何利用它们来增进对公共利益的合作,而不是阻碍这种合作。为此目的,我们提出一份人类授权给自主代理人和混合人体代理人的互动的实验性研究,这种互动以集体风险形成的公益两难境地为中心。我们的目的是通过实验了解自主代理人的存在是否对社会行为、公平和合作产生积极或消极的影响。我们的结果显示,当参与者将其行动委托给代表他们的人为代理人时,合作会增加。然而,当人类在混合人体代理人团体中进行互动时,这种积极效果就会减少。最后,我们表明人类对代理人行为的偏向,假定他们对集体努力的贡献会更少。