Can AI Explanations Make You Change Your Mind?

TL;DR

This study investigates whether users consider AI explanations carefully enough to change their minds, revealing that many users overlook details, which impacts trust and decision-making in AI-supported systems.

Contribution

The paper provides an exploratory analysis of factors influencing how users engage with AI explanations and their ability to change opinions based on these explanations.

Findings

Many users spend little time on explanations

User engagement with explanations affects trust and decision change

Factors influencing careful consideration are identified

Abstract

In the context of AI-based decision support systems, explanations can help users to judge when to trust the AI's suggestion, and when to question it. In this way, human oversight can prevent AI errors and biased decision-making. However, this rests on the assumption that users will consider explanations in enough detail to be able to catch such errors. We conducted an online study on trust in explainable DSS, and were surprised to find that in many cases, participants spent little time on the explanation and did not always consider it in detail. We present an exploratory analysis of this data, investigating what factors impact how carefully study participants consider AI explanations, and how this in turn impacts whether they are open to changing their mind based on what the AI suggests.