Spontaneous Theory of Mind for Artificial Intelligence

Existing approaches to Theory of Mind (ToM) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) overemphasize prompted, or cue-based, ToM, which may limit our collective ability to develop Artificial Social Intelligence (ASI). Drawing from research in computer science, cognitive science, and related disciplines, we contrast prompted ToM with what we call spontaneous ToM -- reasoning about others' mental states that is grounded in unintentional, possibly uncontrollable cognitive functions. We argue for a principled approach to studying and developing AI ToM and suggest that a robust, or general, ASI will respond to prompts \textit{and} spontaneously engage in social reasoning.

Operational Collective Intelligence of Humans and Machines

We explore the use of aggregative crowdsourced forecasting (ACF) as a mechanism to help operationalize ``collective intelligence'' of human-machine teams for coordinated actions. We adopt the definition for Collective Intelligence as: ``A property of groups that emerges from synergies among data-information-knowledge, software-hardware, and individuals (those with new insights as well as recognized authorities) that enables just-in-time knowledge for better decisions than these three elements acting alone.'' Collective Intelligence emerges from new ways of connecting humans and AI to enable decision-advantage, in part by creating and leveraging additional sources of information that might otherwise not be included. Aggregative crowdsourced forecasting (ACF) is a recent key advancement towards Collective Intelligence wherein predictions (X\% probability that Y will happen) and rationales (why I believe it is this probability that X will happen) are elicited independently from a diverse crowd, aggregated, and then used to inform higher-level decision-making. This research asks whether ACF, as a key way to enable Operational Collective Intelligence, could be brought to bear on operational scenarios (i.e., sequences of events with defined agents, components, and interactions) and decision-making, and considers whether such a capability could provide novel operational capabilities to enable new forms of decision-advantage.

Comparing Psychometric and Behavioral Predictors of Compliance During Human-AI Interactions

Optimization of human-AI teams hinges on the AI's ability to tailor its interaction to individual human teammates. A common hypothesis in adaptive AI research is that minor differences in people's predisposition to trust can significantly impact their likelihood of complying with recommendations from the AI. Predisposition to trust is often measured with self-report inventories that are administered before interactions. We benchmark a popular measure of this kind against behavioral predictors of compliance. We find that the inventory is a less effective predictor of compliance than the behavioral measures in datasets taken from three previous research projects. This suggests a general property that individual differences in initial behavior are more predictive than differences in self-reported trust attitudes. This result also shows a potential for easily accessible behavioral measures to provide an AI with more accurate models without the use of (often costly) survey instruments.

My Actions Speak Louder Than Your Words: When User Behavior Predicts Their Beliefs about Agents' Attributes

An implicit expectation of asking users to rate agents, such as an AI decision-aid, is that they will use only relevant information -- ask them about an agent's benevolence, and they should consider whether or not it was kind. Behavioral science, however, suggests that people sometimes use irrelevant information. We identify an instance of this phenomenon, where users who experience better outcomes in a human-agent interaction systematically rated the agent as having better abilities, being more benevolent, and exhibiting greater integrity in a post hoc assessment than users who experienced worse outcome -- which were the result of their own behavior -- with the same agent. Our analyses suggest the need for augmentation of models so that they account for such biased perceptions as well as mechanisms so that agents can detect and even actively work to correct this and similar biases of users.

The Role of Heuristics and Biases During Complex Choices with an AI Teammate

Behavioral scientists have classically documented aversion to algorithmic decision aids, from simple linear models to AI. Sentiment, however, is changing and possibly accelerating AI helper usage. AI assistance is, arguably, most valuable when humans must make complex choices. We argue that classic experimental methods used to study heuristics and biases are insufficient for studying complex choices made with AI helpers. We adapted an experimental paradigm designed for studying complex choices in such contexts. We show that framing and anchoring effects impact how people work with an AI helper and are predictive of choice outcomes. The evidence suggests that some participants, particularly those in a loss frame, put too much faith in the AI helper and experienced worse choice outcomes by doing so. The paradigm also generates computational modeling-friendly data allowing future studies of human-AI decision making.