Artificial Social Intelligence in Action: Lessons Learned from Human-Agent Hybrid Search and Rescue

Socially intelligent artificial agents have recently shown some evidence of improving team performance when advising human teammates during the execution of time-pressured, complex missions. These agents, imbued with a form of social intelligence supported by Artificial Theory of Mind, have also demonstrated some negative outcomes associated with their approaches to delivering advice and motivating teammates to succeed. Here, we closely examine team performance outcomes associated with a simulated team Urban Search and Rescue mission in the context of interventions delivered by artificial socially intelligent agents that served as advisors to the human teammates engaged in task execution. The task studied here required some individual taskwork effectiveness as well as a notable amount of interdependent teamwork coordination. The interdependent activities provided the advising artificially intelligent teammates an opportunity to observe and intervene to improve aspects of team process. Some of the interventions delivered by the socially intelligent agents were found to positively impact performance, notably those that targeted objective data and the dissemination of information to the right individual at appropriate timepoints; however, other interventions negatively impacted team outcomes. Results showed that Motivation interventions aimed solely at bolstering the motivation of team members did not yield positive outcomes; in fact, they were found to have adverse effects on overall team performance and task execution.