Human–AI collaboration is widely seen as the work model of the future: The expectation is that together, humans and AI will be more productive than either working alone. Yet the research to date seemed to tell a different story: On average, human–AI teams did less well than the better of the two alone. A reanalysis led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development now suggests this verdict was overly pessimistic.
"The potential of human–AI collaboration is underestimated." That is the central conclusion of the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and conducted by an international team led by Julian Berger and Stefan Herzog from the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The research team took a closer look at a review study that made waves in 2024. The review analyzed 74 studies on human–AI interaction, spanning a wide range of tasks from classifying images and predicting house prices to writing code.
Its findings were sobering: On average, the synergy effect was negative. In other words, the human–AI team performed worse together than the better of the two working alone. This fueled doubts about whether human–AI collaboration was worth pursuing at all.
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