Human-AI Ensembles: When Can They Work?

An “ensemble” approach to decision-making involves aggregating the results from different decision makers solving the same problem (i.e., a division of labor without specialization). The authors draw on the literatures on machine learning-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as on human decision-making to propose conditions under which human-AI ensembles can be useful. The authors argue that human and AI-based algorithmic decision-making can be usefully ensembled even when neither has a clear advantage over the other in terms of predictive accuracy, and even if neither alone can attain satisfactory accuracy in absolute terms. Many managerial decisions have these attributes, and collaboration between humans and AI is usually ruled out in such contexts because the conditions for specialization are not met. However, the authors propose that human-AI collaboration through ensembling is still a possibility under the conditions they identify.