Tetris reveals how people respond to unfair AI

Date:
May 15, 2023
Source:
Cornell University
Summary:
An experiment in which two people play a modified version of
Tetris revealed that players who get fewer turns perceived the
other player as less likable, regardless of whether a person or
an algorithm allocated the turns.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A Cornell University-led experiment in which two people play a modified
version of Tetris revealed that players who get fewer turns perceived
the other player as less likable, regardless of whether a person or an algorithm allocated the turns.

Most studies on algorithmic fairness focus on the algorithm or the
decision itself, but researchers sought to explore the relationships
among the people affected by the decisions.

"We are starting to see a lot of situations in which AI makes decisions
on how resources should be distributed among people," said Malte Jung, associate professor of information science, whose group conducted the
study. "We want to understand how that influences the way people perceive
one another and behave towards each other. We see more and more evidence
that machines mess with the way we interact with each other." In an
earlier study, a robot chose which person to give a block to and studied
the reactions of each individual to the machine's allocation decisions.

"We noticed that every time the robot seemed to prefer one person,
the other one got upset," said Jung. "We wanted to study this further,
because we thought that, as machines making decisions becomes more a part
of the world -- whether it be a robot or an algorithm -- how does that
make a person feel?" Using open-source software, Houston Claure -- the
study's first author and postdoctoral researcher at Yale University -- developed a two-player version of Tetris, in which players manipulate
falling geometric blocks in order to stack them without leaving gaps
before the blocks pile to the top of the screen.

Claure's version, Co-Tetris, allows two people (one at a time) to work
together to complete each round.

An "allocator" -- either human or AI, which was conveyed to the players -
- determines which player takes each turn. Jung and Claure devised their experiment so that players would have either 90% of the turns (the "more" condition), 10% ("less") or 50% ("equal").

The researchers found, predictably, that those who received fewer turns
were acutely aware that their partner got significantly more. But they
were surprised to find that feelings about it were largely the same
regardless of whether a human or an AI was doing the allocating.

The effect of these decisions is what the researchers have termed "machine allocation behavior" -- similar to the established phenomenon of "resource allocation behavior," the observable behavior people exhibit based on allocation decisions. Jung said machine allocation behavior is "the
concept that there is this unique behavior that results from a machine
making a decision about how something gets allocated." The researchers
also found that fairness didn't automatically lead to better game play
and performance. In fact, equal allocation of turns led, on average,
to a worse score than unequal allocation.

"If a strong player receives most of the blocks," Claure said, "the team
is going to do better. And if one person gets 90%, eventually they'll
get better at it than if two average players split the blocks."
* RELATED_TOPICS
o Mind_&_Brain
# Consumer_Behavior # Behavior # Social_Psychology #
Perception
o Computers_&_Math
# Video_Games # Neural_Interfaces # Robotics #
Computer_Programming
* RELATED_TERMS
o Massively_multiplayer_online_game o Milgram_experiment o
Alan_Turing o Random_variable o Early_childhood_education o
Familiarity_increases_liking o Tinnitus o Social_inclusion

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Cornell_University. Original written
by Tom Fleischman, courtesy of the Cornell Chronicle. Note: Content may
be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Houston Claure, Seyun Kim, Rene' F. Kizilcec, Malte Jung. The social
consequences of Machine Allocation Behavior: Fairness, interpersonal
perceptions and performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 2023;
146: 107628 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107628 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230515131943.htm

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