AI advice suppresses people's willingness to say "I don't know", even when the advice is wrong and accuracy is incentivized
Knowing when to say "I don't know" is fundamental to human judgment, yet AI assistants offer a fluent answer to almost any question. In five experiments (N = 3,132; four preregistered, one direct replication), participants answered difficult questions and could always decline to respond. We engineered the questions so that AI advice was wrong, separating AI use from its accuracy. Merely having access to AI nearly eliminated participants' willingness to suspend judgment, and this held whether the advice was actively requested or simply displayed. Consequently, participants answered more questions but were correct about a third as often as when AI was unavailable-yet their confidence nearly...
| Authors | Chiara Marcoccia, Walter Quattrociocchi, Valerio Capraro |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 15 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 15 July 2026 |
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