AI Agents as Team Members: Effects on Satisfaction, Conflict, Trustworthiness, and Willingness to Work With

Organizations are beginning to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) agents as members of virtual teams to help manage information, coordinate team processes, and perform simple tasks. How will team members perceive these AI team members and will they be willing to work with them? We conducted a 2 x 2 x 2 lab experiment that manipulated the type of team member (human or AI), their performance (high or low), and the performance of other team members (high or low). AI team members were perceived to have higher ability and integrity but lower benevolence, which led to no differences in trustworthiness or willingness to work with them. However, the presence of an AI team member resulted in lower process satisfaction. When the AI team member performed well, participants perceived less conflict compared to a human team member with the same performance, but there were no differences in perceived conflict when it performed poorly. There were no other interactions with performance, indicating that the AI team member was judged similarly to humans, irrespective of variations in performance; there was no evidence of algorithm aversion. Our research suggests that AI team members are likely to be accepted into teams, meaning that many old collaboration research questions may need to be reexamined to consider AI team members.