Knowing Better Than the AI

Knowing Better Than the AI: How the Dunning-Kruger Effect Shapes Reliance on Human-AI Decision Making

Kuiper, Lucie (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Houben, G.J.P.M. (mentor)
Gadiraju, Ujwal (mentor)
Tielman, M.L. (graduation committee)
He, G. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science

2022-11-30

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly helping people with all kinds of tasks, due to its promising capabilities. In some tasks, an AI system by itself will take over tasks, but in other tasks, an AI system making decisions on its own would be undesired due to ethical and legal reasons. In those cases, AI can still be of help by forming human-AI teams, in which humans get advice from the AI system helping them with making their final decisions. Human-AI teams are for instance used in the medical and legal fields. One problem arises, in which instances should one trust an AI system and in which not? Trusting the AI system when it is correct and trusting yourself when you are correct, results in a high appropriate reliance. If users appropriately rely on AI systems, it is possible to achieve complementary team performance, which is better than any single teammate. However, as known from previous literature, people struggle with assessing their performance and knowing how well they perform compared to peers. When one overestimates their performance this can be because of a dual burden, due to the lack of skill they also lack the skill to accurately estimate their performance. This phenomenon is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). This raises questions about whether the inability to estimate their own capabilities would also reflect on their assessment of the AI system its performance.

In this thesis we look at how the DKE affects (appropriate) reliance on AI systems and if so, how such effects due to the DKE can be mitigated. The effects of the DKE and possible mitigation are being tested through an empirical study (N = 249). The attempt at mitigation is done by including a tutorial intervention, which has been proved in previous research to be useful in decreasing the DKE. The tutorial intervention is aimed at revealing the weaknesses of the participant and making them aware of their miscalibrated self-estimation. Furthermore, in this thesis, the effects of revealing how the AI system makes its decisions through explainable AI (XAI) are explored. The XAI consisted of highlights from logic unit-based explanations, it should allow participants to gain more understanding of the AI advice. This thesis shows how this will affect user self-assessment and reliance on the AI system.

We found that participants who overestimate themselves tend to rely less on the AI system, compared to participants that had an accurate or underestimation of their performance. After the tutorial participants have a better calibration of their self-assessment. While the designed tutorial intervention can help participants calibrate their self-assessment, it fails to promote (appropriate) reliance. Furthermore, the logic units-based explanations did not improve accurate self-assessing or increase user (appropriate) reliance on AI systems.
This thesis shows the importance of considering cognitive biases when dealing with human-AI teams and invites more research on how to handle and mitigate the DKE in human-AI decision making.

Human Computer Interaction
Human-AI Decision Making
XAI
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Self-assessment
Appropriate Reliance

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6f0b90bb-eee8-404e-99d0-b5c27b5a31ac

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Lucie Kuiper