In today’s column, I examine the psychology underlying how people choose to trust others. By others, I am referring not only to trusting humans but also to opting to trust AI. The vexing question of whether people are going to trust AI is a monumental one and keeps getting a lot of solemn attention. The abundantly logical approach entails discussing trust in two pathways, consisting of the longstanding human-to-human basis and the newly arising human-to-AI basis.
Numerous research studies have indicated that people often have an inherent trust bias known as the “human premium”. They tilt toward trusting humans more than trusting AI. Indeed, there is an allied bias referred to as the “AI penalty”, namely that people perceive AI as less trustworthy than their placing trust in humans. It’s a double whammy on the trust spindle. But there is a surprising twist to this. Sometimes, there is a switcheroo. People will have a semblance of an “AI premium”, perceiving AI as more trustworthy than humans, and demote their human trust into a kind of “human penalty” of sorts. The crux is that the whole kit-and-caboodle is much more complex than it might seem at initial glance.
Let’s talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage of the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining key AI complexities (see the link here).
The Minds Problem
Much of the handwringing about AI is whether AI is going to become sentient and embody consciousness, often referred to as AI as a thinking machine. That is an important topic and one that I’ve continued to closely explore and analyze; see the link here. There is a quite different angle that also deserves rapt attention, and I’d like to place it on the table.
How will human minds change because of interacting with AI?
This unexpected question catches many people by surprise. The customary focus is on AI as formulating a mind, not on how human minds might change due to interacting with AI. But, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango. When humans increasingly interact with AI, there is a two-way street involved. Humans adjust their minds about how they view the world, how to communicate with others, and shift in ways that we still do not have a full or clear picture of.
In that sense, it is wholly worthwhile to study the psychology of humans as they mentally adjust to a world that entails human-to-AI interaction and human-to-human interaction. Notably, this doesn’t have to wait until or if AI becomes sentient. There is plenty to study right now. Humans are already adjusting their minds to the ubiquitous nature of non-sentient AI. The starting gun has gone off. Human minds are changing.
For my comprehensive tracing of how AI and psychology dovetail with each other, see the link here and the link here.
The Matter Of Trust
Humans are very preoccupied with trust. You make mindful decisions about who you trust. Do you trust your family members? Do you trust the people at work? Do you trust your friends? Do you trust newly met strangers? Much of the mental work we do daily and moment-by-moment involves levels of trust and the assignment of trust.
The online Cambridge Dictionary defines the word “trust” as follows: “To believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable.” The trickiness about trust is that it isn’t a one-and-done affair. You don’t just decide that a particular level of trust for this person or that person is going to stick for the rest of your entire life. Instead, you modify your perception of the trust that you are willing to assign to someone or something.
Trust is dynamic. It comes and goes. Humans learn from a very young age how to assign trust and rely on the trust that they perceive in others. A new target for that trust assessment has loomed large, namely the trust that we assign to AI. Again, even though AI is not yet sentient, we nonetheless still tend to perceive AI in human-like terms and opt to mentally calculate the level of trust that we assign to the AI that we encounter.
Trust For Humans Over Trust For AI
Various research studies have done intriguing experiments about the trust that humans assign to humans versus the trust assigned to AI. I will take you through a brief thought experiment so you can gauge your own sense of human-to-human versus human-to-AI trust capacities.
You receive a text message from the customer service of a company from which you want to return a product you recently purchased. The text indicates this:
- Text message: “Your business is of utmost importance to us, and I am ready to assist you in your request to make a product return.”
If I tell you that this is a human agent of the company, what semblance of trust do you mentally assign to the interaction you are about to have regarding your product return efforts? I suppose you might be partially wary since we’ve all had situations where returning a product was much harder than it should have been. In any case, your trust is perhaps going to be at a moderate level, containing a modicum of optimism and a touch of skepticism.
The Human Bias Against AI
What if I tell you that this text is not from a human agent but instead from an AI-based agent? Yes, you are going to be interacting with AI about undertaking the product return. No human-to-human interaction is going to occur. It is entirely a human-to-AI discussion.
Now that you know it is AI, what is your mentally assigned trust level?
Most people would likely be immediately dismayed. AI is perceived as being less trustworthy than interacting with a human. The odds are that the AI is going to be formulaic. It will not be as flexible and fluid as trying to do the product return with a fellow human. Yikes, this dialogue on returning the item you purchased is going to be a potential nightmare.
The psychological catchphrase that is used for this reaction is that people tend to assign a “human premium” for being able to interact on a human-to-human basis. They give a higher level of trust to human interactions. Furthermore, they tend to give an “AI penalty” for having to interact with AI. They mentally take points off for dialoguing with AI over dialoguing with humans. It is a double whammy. People tend to favor human dialogues and tend to disfavor AI dialogues.
The Matter Is In The Mind
Research studies have generally found support for this “human premium” and “AI penalty” as a mental formulation. To ascertain how deep this bias might be, experiments have been performed where the wool was pulled over the eyes of the experimental subjects. A trick of sorts was played on the participants.
Suppose that I told you the product return interaction was going to be AI-based, but it was actually a human who would be doing the dialogue. I lied to you about the source of the dialog. In other words, you perceive that the interaction will be with AI. Meanwhile, reality is that a human is on the other end of the interaction.
Many people would ardently claim that they will detect this immediately. The dialogue will get underway, and they will realize that they aren’t conversing with AI. The tomfoolery will be discovered. They will readily discern that the discussion is with a fellow human.
The thing is, the latest advances in AI are so good that you would be hard-pressed to differentiate an AI-powered discussion from a human-led discussion. It used to be that AI dialogues were stilted. The AI showed its hand. Clever questions on your side of things would get the AI boxed in, and it would say that it cannot respond. Those days are numbered, and routine conversations are a thing of the past.
When You Can’t Discern
Here’s where I am taking you. If people are told that they are interacting with AI, but it is really a human, the odds are that those people will accordingly bring their mental “AI penalty” into play and hold that against the human that is on the other end (assuming that they cannot otherwise discern the designated source). The person will stridently harbor their preference for a “human premium” and apply their “AI penalty” throughout the dialogue.
Likewise, the reverse condition occurs. If people are told they are interacting with a human, but it is really AI, the odds are that those people will accordingly bring their mental “human premium” into play. They will grant added trust to the source of the dialogue, doing so merely because they perceive the source to be a fellow human.
Let’s bring this back to the human mind. Your mind is adjusting the level of assignable trust based on a perception of whether you are interacting on a human-to-human basis or a human-to-AI basis. This occurs even if your perception is wrong.
There are four situations involved:
- (1) Human-to-human matched. Perceived as human-to-human, and the interaction is human-to-human (matching).
- (2) Human-to-AI matched. Perceived as human-to-AI, and the interaction is human-to-AI (matching).
- (3) Human-to-human mismatched. Perceived as human-to-human, but the interaction is human-to-AI (mismatched).
- (4) Human-to-AI mismatched. Perceived as human-to-AI, but the interaction is human-to-human (mismatched).
The Strength Of The Bias
You might be doubtful that this bias would be carried forward even when the mismatch is occurring. The research tends to show that the bias does indeed persist. Furthermore, a person can get unduly anchored to their bias.
If you tell someone they are about to interact with a human, they seem to mentally click into the “human premium”. After a smattering of dialogue, suppose you now reveal that they have been interacting with AI. The chances are they will declare you to be lying to them and that they are in fact interacting with a human. They won’t believe that you lied to them at the get-go and instead you are lying now.
Why would that be? Because their frame of reference that they were interacting with a human has been reinforced during the initial dialogue. They expected a human; they now believe they have been interacting with a human. There is also a chance that they don’t want to appear to have been bamboozled. To avoid looking foolish, they will cling to the belief that it has been human and not AI.
Switcheroo On Mental Bias
One aspect of the interpretation of these mental biases is that you must take into account that things can get switched up. People will not always be enamored of the “human premium,” nor will they always be leaning into an “AI penalty”. In fact, a complete switcheroo can arise.
Imagine that you have regularly dealt with human customer service agents, and they are exasperating and difficult to contend with. They at times go off on tangents that aren’t pertinent to the product return activity. You have developed a bias against human agents.
In addition, imagine that you have dealt with interactive AI-based customer service systems. Those have been straightforward for you. You answer the questions posed. The product return gets processed. Easy-peasy. No small talk, no wasted time.
This means that depending upon the context of a given situation, you are willing to flip the entire trust framework. Rather than fostering a “human premium,” you have an “AI premium” associated with situations where AI is more trustworthy than dealing with a human. Indeed, you also harbor a “human penalty” whereby the instant you find out you will need to chat with a human, you let out a sigh of dismay. You were hoping that it would be AI in lieu of being a human.
The Four Mental States
All told, a person can hold these four mental states:
- (a) Human Premium. Mental bias that interacting with humans is desirable and deserves a premium accordingly.
- (b) AI Penalty. Mental bias that interacting with AI is less desirable and deserves a penalty accordingly.
- (c) AI Premium. Mental bias that interacting with AI is desirable and deserves a premium accordingly.
- (d) Human Penalty. Mental bias that interacting with AI is less desirable and deserves a penalty accordingly.
When I see research that only acknowledges the first two, I worry that they might not have been aware that the additional two also exist. This is easy to overlook or downplay. The “human premium” and the “AI penalty” are currently getting a boatload of attention. The “AI premium” and the “human penalty” are not yet getting their rightful attention.
Anyway, the gist too is that all of this is heavily context-dependent. People will shift their mental models according to their prior experiences. Of course, the shift is not necessarily going to be on target.
For example, suppose a person wanted to interact with AI; they indeed get AI, and so they would seem to be happy about the alignment. If the AI doesn’t perform as per their expectations, they are bound to regret that they are locked into an AI conversation. At that point, they will try to escape the AI and see if they can get into a human-to-human conversation instead. The same holds with wanting a human-to-human chat and later deciding you’d prefer to switch to a human-to-AI chat.
The World We Are In
Consider whether you have a mental bias toward human-to-human versus human-to-AI interactions. When do you prefer the human-to-human side? When do you prefer the human-to-AI side? Are you bringing that bias into your mind when told beforehand whether you are interacting with a human versus AI, or AI versus human? Can you adjust if the source turns out to be different from what was initially conceived?
Human psychology is gradually adapting to a world entailing AI that can convincingly appear to be human-like. Up until now, you could treat other artifacts as though they were human-like, but you knew for sure they weren’t. You might act as though your car or toaster is a living being, and converse at them, though you knew this was just pretend. AI is advancing to the point where it is exceedingly hard to differentiate during a dialogue whether you are conversing with a human or AI.
A final thought for now. The famous philosopher Simone de Beauvoir made this notable remark: “It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.” I mention this point because even if you are aware of the premium and penalty biases, you aren’t necessarily free of them. Your best bet is to harness them, control them, and minimize their impact. Awareness is a great first step.
