Time to Reboot How We Think About Human and Machine Interactions

We need a radical overhaul of our understanding of human and machine interactions to combat new and urgent social challenges, according to a new international study, just published in the journal ‘Nature Human Behaviour’ calling for a new ‘sociology of humans and machines’.

From fake social media accounts to self-driving vehicles and stock trading algorithms to AI chatbots, the need for a deeper understanding of human-machine interactions cannot be overstated, say the authors.

The research, undertaken by a team of social scientists from Ireland, UK, USA and Germany, reviewed situations where algorithms, bots, and robots compete, cooperate, coordinate, communicate, and make decisions with humans.

“For the last two centuries, social science research has focused on humans as the only entities with agency, social cognition, and creative communication, relegating animals, the environment, and technology to the background,” explains Taha Yasseri, Professor of Technology and Society, Trinity College Dublin and one of the study’s co-authors.

“We are entering a new era in which agency, social cognition, and creative communication are no longer exclusive to humans only – algorithms, bots, and robots are now participating in society alongside humans, driving on roads, leading online conversations, and trading stocks.”

The paper calls on social scientists to start paying more attention to machines, AI engineers to explicitly design for human-machine and machine-machine interactions, and policymakers to strive for ecological diversity in human-machine social systems.

“To ensure more robust and resilient human-machine communities, we need a much deeper understanding of human-machine social systems. In short, we need a new sociology of humans and machines,” commented lead co-author Milena Tsvetkova, Associate Professor of Computational Social Science at The London School of Economics and Political Science.

“This new sociology of humans and machines will help us address many new and urgent social challenges: online misinformation, market flash crashes, cybersecurity, labour market resilience, and road safety, to name a few.”

The paper, ‘A new sociology of humans and machines’, Nature Human Behaviour, by Milena Tsvetkova, Taha Yasseri, Niccolo Pescetelli, and Tobias Werner, can be viewed on the journal website here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02001-8.