Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

Significance Autonomous machines that act on our behalf—such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles—are quickly becoming a reality. These machines will face situations where individual interest conflicts with collective interest, and it is critical we understand if people will cooperate when acting through them. Here we show, in the increasingly popular domain of autonomous vehicles, that people program their vehicles to be more cooperative than they would if driving themselves. This happens because programming machines causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, and that encourages cooperation. Our results further indicate that personal experience influences how machines are programmed. Finally, we show that this effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles and we discuss theoretical and practical implications. Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.