College of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Central Florida.
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida.
Top Cogn Sci. 2024 Jul;16(3):450-484. doi: 10.1111/tops.12613. Epub 2022 May 5.
In this study, we explore the future of work by examining differences in productivity when teams are composed of only humans or both humans and machine agents. Our objective was to characterize the similarities and differences between human and human-machine teams as they work to coordinate across their specialized roles. This form of research is increasingly important given that machine agents are becoming commonplace in sociotechnical systems and playing a more active role in collaborative work. One particular class of machine agents, bots, is being introduced to these systems to facilitate both taskwork and teamwork. We investigated the association between bots and productivity outcomes in open source software development through an analysis of hundreds of project teams. The presence of bots in teams was associated with higher levels of productivity and higher work centralization in addition to greater amounts of observed communication. The adoption of bots in software teams may have tradeoffs, in that doing so may increase productivity, but could also increase workload. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for advancing human-machine teaming research.
在这项研究中，我们通过考察仅由人类或人类和机器代理组成的团队的生产力差异，探讨了未来的工作。我们的目标是描述人类和人机团队在跨专业化角色协调时的相似点和不同点。鉴于机器代理在社会技术系统中越来越普遍，并在协作工作中发挥更积极的作用，这种形式的研究变得越来越重要。一类特殊的机器代理，即机器人，被引入到这些系统中，以促进任务和团队工作。我们通过对数百个项目团队的分析，研究了机器人与开源软件开发中的生产力结果之间的关联。机器人在团队中的存在与更高的生产力水平和更高的工作集中化以及更多的观察到的沟通有关。在软件团队中采用机器人可能存在权衡，因为这样做可能会提高生产力，但也可能增加工作量。我们讨论了这些发现对推进人机团队研究的理论和实际意义。
