Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Celso M de MeloJonathan Gratch

Abstract

Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.

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Citations

Nov 12, 2019·PloS One·Celso M de Melo, Kazunori Terada
Aug 17, 2019·Royal Society Open Science·Pu-Yan NieTing Cui
Dec 19, 2020·Accident; Analysis and Prevention·Can ZhaoXiangbin Wu
Mar 6, 2021·IScience·Celso M de MeloFrancisco C Santos
Jul 3, 2021·Frontiers in Robotics and AI·Celso M de MeloJonathan Gratch
Jul 16, 2021·PLoS Computational Biology·Pedro L FerreiraSérgio Pequito

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