University of Kwazulu-Natal

When Algorithms Delegate To Humans Exploring Human Algorithm

Bonisiwe Shabane
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when algorithms delegate to humans exploring human algorithm

"When Algorithms Delegate to Humans: Exploring Human-Algorithm Interaction at Uber" by me, Mareike Möhlmann, and Carsten Sorensen is now officially out and open access! You can download it directly from here: https://lnkd.in/gQs6y4kv. We're thrilled to be in such great company in Volume 49 Issue 1 and we look forward to any comments on our paper! Volume 49, Issue 1 of MIS Quarterly is available now! 📕 Read the Editor’s Comments and check out the issue here: https://lnkd.in/gAhA9taJ . #misq #misquarterly #openaccess #academicpublishing #informationsystems #academia #researchinsights #peerreviewed #peerreview #ebsco #mis #data

A great discussion - In line with one we had a little while back on agency reversal: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4512167 Congrats!! Looking forward to read this. Congrats. Curious to hear your thoughts on: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02252-7 AI is no more autonomous than a puppet on strings. Like Miss Piggy, AI relies entirely on its puppeteers for action.

The puppeteers may be invisible, but they are undeniably influential. Unlike Miss Piggy, who has one puppeteer controlling her every move, AI is shaped by many hands. Business priorities set its direction, engineers design its algorithms, users influence its outputs, and regulators impose boundaries. Sure, this makes it tricky to figure out who is responsible when things go wrong, but it does not change the basic truth: The AI puppet does not move on its own. When we humanise AI—calling it autonomous—we obscure who is really responsible. And therein lies the problem: it lets companies off the hook for the systems they profit from, often at mounting societal costs.

What people call “autonomy” in AI is really delegated autonomy—systems acting as an expression of collective human desires and decisions. If AI displaces workers, invades privacy, or spreads misinformation, it is not the AI acting autonomously—it is the result of human decisions in AI design, governance, and use. Home > Journals > Affiliated Journals > MISQ > Vol. 49 (2025) > Iss. 1 Marta Stelmaszak, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow Mareike Möhlmannn, Bentley UniversityFollow Carsten Sørensen, Copenhagen Business SchoolFollow

Algorithms are increasingly seen as capable of autonomously initiating and managing interactions with humans—for example, through delegating the rights and responsibilities for successful outcomes of shared tasks without human intervention. While research into such interactions primarily focuses on dyadic configurations, complex settings where multiple agents work together have become a nexus of more nuanced interactions that go beyond the dyad. This paper explores such interactions through the lens of delegation by investigating how many algorithms delegate to many humans in a multi-agent setting. Analyzing patent data and interviews with drivers and passengers, we unpack delegation in the context of the ride-hailing application Uber. We theorize distributed delegation as a construct capturing collective hybrid appraisal, collective hybrid distribution, and collective hybrid coordination, in which a collective of algorithms delegates by drawing on inputs from multiple human agents. Our findings highlight that distributed delegation is collective, hybrid, and relational by nature, and demonstrate the extent to which human inputs are necessary for collectives of algorithms to exercise the capacity to delegate.

Distributed delegation as a continuum of algorithmic and human involvement poses a challenge for recent theories suggesting the unprecedented autonomy of algorithms from humans. Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

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"When Algorithms Delegate to Humans: Exploring Human-Algorithm Interaction at Uber" by me, Mareike Möhlmann, and Carsten Sorensen is now officially out and open access! You can download it directly from here: https://lnkd.in/gQs6y4kv. We're thrilled to be in such great company in Volume 49 Issue 1 and we look forward to any comments on our paper! Volume 49, Issue 1 of MIS Quarterly is available no...

A Great Discussion - In Line With One We Had

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