“How AI Can Degrade Human Performance in High-Stakes Settings” by Dane A. Morey, Mike Rayo, David Woods
Description
Last week, the AI nonprofit METR published an in-depth study on human-AI collaboration that stunned experts. It found that software developers with access to AI tools took 19% longer to complete their tasks, despite believing they had finished 20% faster. The findings shed important light on our ability to predict how AI capabilities interact with human skills.
Since 2020, we have been conducting similar studies on human-AI collaboration, but in contexts with much higher stakes than software development. Alarmingly, in these safety-critical settings, we found that access to AI tools can cause humans to perform much, much worse.
A 19% slowdown in software development can eat into profits. Reduced performance in safety-critical settings can cost lives.
Safety-Critical Scenarios
Imagine that you’re aboard a passenger jet on its final approach into San Francisco. Everything seems ready for a smooth landing — until an AI-infused weather monitor misses a sudden microburst. [...]
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Outline:
(01:04 ) Safety-Critical Scenarios
(03:30 ) How Current Safety Frameworks Fail
(05:43 ) AI Influences Humans to Perform Slightly Better... or Much, Much Worse
(08:50 ) A Clear Pattern in Human-AI Collaboration
(09:49 ) Three Rules for Better Evaluations
(11:43 ) Faster, Easier, and Earlier Evaluations
(13:48 ) Toward Responsible Deployments of AI
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First published:
July 16th, 2025
Source:
https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-ai-can-degrade-human-performance
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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