Research Hit: The AI Placebo Effect

Just believing AI is helping improves performance

So we have the Placebo with AI now, really? How do we do a placebo AI experiment?

Yes, the placebo effect is an important one in our lives. As I am sure we will know placebo is when a non-functional component improves outcomes. In medicine it will be giving a pill with no active ingredients in it.

This experiment with AI is a touch more interesting though!

How?

Well, this experiment by Agnes Mercedes Kloft et al. of Aalto University in Finland had participants do a simple letter matching exercise on a computer. They first did this solo and then were told they would have AI assist them.

So far so good, but the interesting part is that they were told either that the AI was reliable and would help them improve their performance, or that the AI was unreliable and would be detrimental to performance.

Oh wow, so they were told that one would help and one wouldn’t - where is the placebo bit?