UC Merced Magazine | Volume XX, Issue VI

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Why Do We Trust AI So Much?

“We must remember these are still devices with

As much chatter in the public square about AI leans toward concern, perhaps even fear, of its expanding presence, research indicates we put far too much trust in it, especially in moments where lives hang in the balance. Experiments conducted by a team led by Professor Colin Holbrook found that subjects in life-or-death warfare scenarios were swayed by information from robots. e subjects were told the robots had limited abilities and were giving advice that could be wrong. In reality, the robots’ advice was completely random. Yet if the subject made a choice — one that, in the scenario, would kill either questioned the decision, the subject changed their mind two-thirds of the time. A human-looking robot with an expressive face and moving arms and torso was marginally more in uential than a ’bot that was simply a box with two cameras mounted on top. But no matter what the AI looked like, and no matter how sure the subject may have been about their rst decision, a machine had a powerful in uence on their resolve. Holbrook stressed that the research’s war-like setup was a means to a broader end. “Our project was about life-or-death decisions made under uncertainty, when the AI is unreliable,” he said, enemy combatants or civilians — if the robot

limited abilities.” — Professor Colin Holbrook

Professor Colin Holbrook

citing situations like emergency medical care or police calls. e project’s ndings raise larger concerns, Holbrook said. Despite the stunning advancements in AI, the “intelligence” part does not include ethical values or an awareness of the world in which we co-exist. We must be careful every time we hand AI another key to our lives, he said. “We must remember these are still devices with limited abilities,” Holbrook said. “ e example I o en give is: Would you take relationship advice from your dishwasher? No. But what if it had an appealing face and spoke to you as a caring friend? Many people might be in uenced by what this dishwasher buddy said.” Sharing (Maybe) the Theory of Mind Nearly a century ago, psychologists started kicking around ideas about social interaction that, in the late 1970s, would crystallize into a concept called the theory of mind. In brief, the theory is the ability to understand the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of others, and to use this understanding to interpret and even predict others' behavior. “It’s an important part of what it means to be human,” Professor Chris Kello said.

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