Is Overreliance on AI Provoked by Study Design?

Abstract

Recent studies found that humans tend to overrely on AI when making decisions with AI support. AI explanations were often insufficient as mitigation, and sometimes even increased overreliance. However, typical AI-assisted decision-making studies consist of long series of decision tasks, potentially causing complacent behavior, and not properly reflecting many real-life scenarios. We therefore raise the question whether these findings might be favored by the design of these studies. In a first step to answer this question, we compared different study designs in an experiment and found indications that observations of overreliance might indeed be favored by common study designs. Further research is needed to clarify to what extent overreliance can be attributed to study designs rather than more fundamental human-AI interaction issues.