The findings raise safety concerns for workplaces that engage in dangerous and repetitive tasks.
Everyone knows (or may have had experience being) the colleague or classmate who’s taken the easy route on an assignment knowing someone else will swoop in to save the day. New research suggests that the same phenomena, which psychologists call “social loafing,” may also apply when a teammate is made of software and hunks of metal.
A new study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI found that human workers checking manufacturing defects on circuit boards spotted fewer errors if they were told a competent robot had already reviewed the board once before. The findings suggest humans working alongside robots—an increasingly common site at major warehouses—may exhibit similar offloading of responsibilities as workers in all-human teams.
Source: GIZMODO Newsletter
