A study by Prof. Dr. André Hanelt, which he produced together with researchers from the Technical Universities of Darmstadt and Dortmund and the Goethe University Frankfurt, has been accepted in the world-renowned journal Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ). MISQ is the best-rated journal in the field of information systems according to the ranking of the Association of University Professors of Business Administration.
The subject of the study (entitled "Opening The Network of Trust: How Domain Experts in Triadic Relationships Build Trust in AI-Based Counterparts") is a year-long research project on trust in artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of personal financial advice. The study examines the trust of human financial advisors in so-called robo advisors, i.e. AI systems that interact with investors and automatically manage portfolios.
As part of the study, the researchers found that the human experts evaluate the AI systems in particular in terms of the extent to which they appear to influence the relationships with their clients. In the study, the experts were initially very skeptical about AI and kept it away from their clients. By creating secure contexts that allowed intensive and personal support from human AI advisors before and during client contact, as well as independent testing of the AI systems by the experts, a high level of trust developed over time, which ultimately resulted in a kind of division of labor between human experts and the AI systems. The study thus provides important insights into the effective integration of AI in contexts that have been and will continue to be strongly characterized by personal interaction between experts and their clients.