Falsification machines: could FM's bring an increasing amount of sense of agency back to the users in decision making?

Abstract

Every single day, many life-changing decisions are made in all sectors of life. More and more of these decisions are being assisted by decision support systems (DSS). These DSS could lead to an overreliance on those systems, due to automation overreliance or lack of expertise. And when these systems assist in such decisions, who should be held responsible? One of the ways to hopefully avoid this question from arising, a falsification machine (FM), is investigated by this study using a game of blackjack. A FM generates a two falsifying questions after the user picks their first answer. This falsifying question will aim to make the user more aware of the decision made. This could give more sense of agency (SoA) to the person that uses the assisting FM. An increasing sense of agency could result in humans being more in control of decision making. This meaningful human control (MHC) then might affect the responsibility taken by the user of the consequences of their decisions. By using a questionnaire, this study will measure one's SoA while playing a few games of blackjack. Although FMs have not been fully proven to be a effective machine to increase the SoA of a user, it sure is an interesting topic for future research.