Introduction to the Special Issue on Human Interaction with Artificial Advice Givers

Many interactive systems in today’s world can be viewed as providing advice to their users. Commercial examples include recommender systems, satellite navigation systems, intelligent personal assistants on smartphones, and automated checkout systems in supermarkets. We will call these systems that support people in making choices and decisions artificial advice givers (AAGs) : They propose and evaluate options while involving their human users in the decision-making process. This special issue addresses the challenge of improving the interaction between artificial and human agents. It answers the question of how an agent of each type (human and artificial) can influence and understand the reasoning, working models, and conclusions of the other agent by means of novel forms of interaction. To address this challenge, the articles in the special issue are organized around three themes: (a) human factors to consider when designing interactions with AAGs (e.g., over- and under-reliance, overestimation of the system’s capabilities), (b) methods for supporting interaction with AAGs (e.g., natural language, visualization, and argumentation), and (c) considerations for evaluating AAGs (both criteria and methodology for applying them).