Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

Significance Autonomous machines that act on our behalf—such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles—are quickly becoming a reality. These machines will face situations where individual interest conflicts with collective interest, and it is critical we understand if people will cooperate when acting through them. Here we show, in the increasingly popular domain of autonomous vehicles, that people program their vehicles to be more cooperative than they would if driving themselves. This happens because programming machines causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, and that encourages cooperation. Our results further indicate that personal experience influences how machines are programmed. Finally, we show that this effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles and we discuss theoretical and practical implications.