Measured human-AI teams lose performance on average; synergy is most negative on constrained-choice decisions, positive only on creation.

groundsWhen combinations of humans and AI are useful, Abdullah Almaatouq

In our broad sample of recent experiments, the vast majority (about 85%) of the effect sizes were for decision-making tasks in which participants chose among a predefined set of options. But in these cases we found that the average effect size for human–AI synergy was significantly negative.

qualifiesWhen combinations of humans and AI are useful, Abdullah Almaatouq

Even though our main result suggests that—on average—combining humans and AI leads to performance losses, we do not think this means that combining humans and AI is a bad idea.

qualifiesWhen combinations of humans and AI are useful, Abdullah Almaatouq

Finally, we found a high level of heterogeneity among the effect sizes in our analysis. The moderators we investigated account for some of this heterogeneity, but much remains unexplained.