Three Modes of Human-AI Collaboration

Human-AI Collaboration (HAIC) systems can be classified by how they allocate authority and tasks between humans and AI:

AI-Centric Mode: AI leads decision-making with minimal human intervention. Humans primarily monitor or receive outputs. Focus on maximizing AI capabilities and efficiency. One-directional flow from AI to human.

Human-Centric Mode: Humans retain primary decision-making authority. AI serves as an augmentative tool, handling data-intensive or repetitive tasks while humans drive strategic and ethical choices. AI supports without superseding human judgment.

Symbiotic Mode: Balanced partnership with two-way interaction, shared decision-making, and continuous feedback exchange. Both parties mutually enhance each other’s capabilities toward collective goals. Most applicable to complex tasks requiring both human intuition and AI computation.

The mode determines which evaluation metrics matter most: AI-Centric prioritizes efficiency and accuracy; Human-Centric emphasizes usability and user satisfaction; Symbiotic requires measuring adaptability and task distribution effectiveness.

Related: 05-atom—trust-calibration-problem, 05-atom—learning-to-defer-paradigm