“How AI Can Degrade Human Performance in High-Stakes Settings” by Dane A. Morey, Mike Rayo, David Woods

Last week, the AI nonprofit METR published an in-depth study on human-AI collaboration that stunned experts. It found that software developers with access to AI tools took 19% longer to complete their tasks, despite believing they had finished 20% faster. The findings shed important light on our ability to predict how AI capabilities interact with human skills. Since 2020, we have been conducting similar studies on human-AI collaboration, but in contexts with much higher stakes than software development. Alarmingly, in these safety-critical settings, we found that access to AI tools can cause humans to perform much, much worse. A 19% slowdown in software development can eat into profits. Reduced performance in safety-critical settings can cost lives. Safety-Critical Scenarios Imagine that you’re aboard a passenger jet on its final approach into San Francisco. Everything seems ready for a smooth landing — until an AI-infused weather monitor misses a sudden microburst. [...] ---Outline:(01:04) Safety-Critical Scenarios(03:30) How Current Safety Frameworks Fail(05:43) AI Influences Humans to Perform Slightly Better... or Much, Much Worse(08:50) A Clear Pattern in Human-AI Collaboration(09:49) Three Rules for Better Evaluations(11:43) Faster, Easier, and Earlier Evaluations(13:48) Toward Responsible Deployments of AI --- First published: July 16th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-ai-can-degrade-human-performance --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.