Don't be Fooled: The Misinformation Effect of Explanations in Human-AI Collaboration

Across various applications, humans increasingly use black-box artificial intelligence (AI) systems without insight into these systems’ reasoning. To counter this opacity, explainable AI (XAI) methods promise enhanced transparency and interpretability. While recent studies have explored how XAI affects human-AI collaboration, few have examined the potential pitfalls caused by incorrect explanations. The implications for humans can be far-reaching but have not been explored extensively. To investigate this, we ran a study (n=160) on AI-assisted decision-making in which humans were supported by XAI. Our findings reveal a misinformation effect when incorrect explanations accompany correct AI advice with implications post-collaboration. This effect causes humans to infer flawed reasoning strategies, hindering task execution and demonstrating impaired procedural knowledge. Additionally, incorrect explanations compromise human-AI team-performance during collaboration. With our work, we contribute to HCI by providing empirical evidence for the negative consequences of incorrect explanations on humans post-collaboration and outlining guidelines for designers of AI.

Ryan Watkins

Professor at George Washington University

I am a Professor with Human-Technology Collaboration and Educational Technology programs at George Washington University in Washington DC. I have written 12 books and more than 100 articles, and I co-host of the Parsing Science podcast where scientists tell the stories behind their research. I am also the developer of the WeShareScience.com online platform for sharing research videos, and SciencePods.com where researchers can create free podcasts about their science. My research interests include human interactions with intelligent machines, needs, needs assessments, and instructional design.