Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 116; no. 9; pp. 3482 - 3487
• Main Authors: de Melo, Celso M., Marsella, Stacy, Gratch, Jonathan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 26.02.2019
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Automobile Driving - psychology; Autonomous vehicles; Cooperative Behavior; Female; Game Theory; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Middle Aged; Reward; Social Sciences; Vehicles; Young Adult; social dilemmas; autonomous vehicles; cooperation
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817656116

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.