Cognition 259 (2025): 106124

doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106124

In decision-making scenarios, individuals often face the challenge of balancing between exploring new options and exploiting known ones—a dynamic known as the exploration-exploitation trade-off. In such situations, people frequently have the opportunity to observe others' actions. Yet little is known about when, how, and from whom individuals use observational learning in the exploration-exploitation dilemma. In two experiments, participants completed multiple nine-armed bandit tasks, either independently or while observing a fictitious agent using either an explorative or equally successful exploitative strategy. To analyze participants' behaviors, we used a reinforcement learning model (simplified Kalman Filter) to extract parameters for both copying and exploration at the individual level. Results showed that participants copied the observed agents' choices by adding a bonus to the individually estimated value of the observed action. While most participants appear to use an unconditional copying approach, a subset of participants adopted a copy-when-uncertain approach, that is copying more when uncertain about the optimal action based on their individually acquired knowledge. Further, participants adjusted their exploration strategies in alignment with those observed. We discuss, in how far this can be understood as a form of emulation. Results on participants' preferences to copy from explorative versus exploitative agents are ambiguous. Contrary to expectations, similarity or dissimilarity between participants' and agents' exploration tendencies had no impact on observational learning. These results shed light on humans' processing of social and non-social information in exploration scenarios and conditions of observational learning.

©  2025, Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

PNAS Nexus 4 (2025): pgaf112

https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf112

Large language models (LLMs) are poised to reshape the way individuals communicate and interact. While this form of AI has the potential to efficiently make many human decisions, there is limited understanding of how individuals will respond to its use in social interactions. In particular, it remains unclear how individuals interact with LLMs when the interaction has consequences for other people. Here, we report the results of a large-scale, preregistered online experiment (⁠n=3,552⁠) showing that human players’ fairness, trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and coordination in economic two-player games decrease when the decision of the interaction partner is taken over by ChatGPT. On the contrary, we observe no adverse reactions when individuals are uncertain whether they are interacting with a human or a LLM. At the same time, participants often delegate decisions to the LLM, especially when the model’s involvement is not disclosed, and individuals have difficulty distinguishing between decisions made by humans and those made by AI.

 © 2025, Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

AI & SOCIETY (2024)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02155-z

The primary aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to argue that we can enter into relation of trust with robots and AI systems (automata); and secondly, to provide a comprehensive description of the underlying mechanisms responsible for this relation of trust. To achieve these objectives, the paper first undertakes a critical examination of the main arguments opposing the concept of a trust-based relation with automata. Showing that these arguments face significant challenges that render them untenable, it thereby prepares the ground for the subsequent positive analysis, proposing a framework in which these challenges can be addressed . According to this framework trust does not originate from mere reliability, but rather from an empathic relation with automata. This initial empathic relation elevates the automata to the status of what I will term "Otheroids." The paper then explores how this human-Otheroid relationship inherently possesses the seeds for the development of trust. Finally, it examines how these seeds can grow into a basic form of trust with Otheroids through the establishment of a rich history of interaction.

© The Authors ( CC BY 4.0 )

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (2024): 1-17

https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2024.2404618

The thesis of open intersubjectivity (OI) is that the other is present in our perceptual experience of objects without any concrete encounter. The main goal of this paper is to provide a modified version of this thesis that meets two conditions at the same time: first, preserves the main insight of OI, namely the structural presence of the other in the act of object perception; and second, prevents challenges to the strong version proposed by Zahavi. To that end, after Zahavi's explanation of OI is introduced, the main lines of argument against it will be discussed. These lines call into question both the phenomenological validity of this version and the broader context in which it has been embedded. Then, a new framework for object perception will be proposed which reconciles the normative and enactive approaches to object perception. This new framework is capable of meeting the two aforementioned conditions.

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Ethics and Information Technology 25 (2023):  53, s10676-023-09731-9

doi: 10.1007/s10676-023-09731-9

David Gunkel’s most recent book Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond is an impressive intellectual project, which intends to get back to the Things themselves. The Thing with capital T, to which Gunkel intends to get back to is not thing in the current sense of its use which is typically understood in contrast to the person. It is, he (2023, pp. 166–167) writes “…a monstrous excrescence that escapes the conceptual grasp of existing categories.” The most visible manifestation of this conceptual monster that is neither a person nor a thing is the robot. Therefore, in order to understand the status of robots as Things, we must go beyond the deeply rooted and well-established thing/person distinction. This, in turn, brings us to the heart of his project: deconstruction. Going beyond this distinction necessitates deconstructing the existing conceptual order in which “thing” is embedded. Gunkel implements the deconstruction procedure in two steps, one negative and one more positive. First, in the negative phase of his project, he convincingly demonstrates the lack of any compelling rationale for categorizing a robot as a ‘thing,‘ a ‘person,‘ or even a hybrid of both, through an extensive examination of the literature. This paves the way for his positive step, in which he attempts to open up a new horizon, a new conceptual order to understand robots. In this part, his reliance on Levinas’ philosophy is especially noticeable.

©The Author(s) 2023

npj Microgravity 9 (2024): 81

doi: 10.1038/s41526-023-00329-5

Protecting the Martian environment from contamination with terrestrial microbes is generally seen as essential to the scientific exploration of Mars, especially when it comes to the search for indigenous life. However, while companies and space agencies aim at getting to Mars within ambitious timelines, the state-of-the-art planetary protection measures are only applicable to uncrewed spacecraft. With this paper, we attempt to reconcile these two conflicting goals: the human exploration of Mars and its protection from biological contamination. In our view, the one nominal mission activity that is most prone to introducing terrestrial microbes into the Martian environment is when humans leave their habitat to explore the Martian surface, if one were to use state-of-the-art airlocks. We therefore propose to adapt airlocks specifically to the goals of planetary protection. We suggest a concrete concept for such an adapted airlock, believing that only practical and implementable solutions will be followed by human explorers in the long run.

© 2024, The Authors, CC BY 4.0

44th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 16-24 July, 2022. Online at https://www.cosparathens2022.org/. Abstract PEX.2-0002-22.

Bibcode: 2022cosp...44.3186A

Leading space agencies have the intention to bring humans to Mars in the next decades, and some private companies push for sooner deadlines. In fact, promises and plans to land humans on Mars have recurrently been announced since the end of the Apollo era, but have remained largely incomplete or even abandoned. At the University of Bremen, we are convinced that human Mars exploration will happen and that it will have a huge impact on both humankind and on the Martian environment. Given that even optimists do not see humans on Mars before the 2030s, we believe that now is the right moment to research possible scenarios for human Mars exploration and settlement, and to study the consequences for Earth, Mars and humankind. To this end, we have formed a new research initiative "Humans on Mars - Pathways to a long-term sustainable human presence" at the University of Bremen. Our approach to human Mars exploration is transdisciplinary and human-centered. On one hand, humankind has experienced tremendous progress and increase in welfare since the Apollo era. On the other hand, we see unambiguously the immense impact of increasing population and welfare on the environmental pollution and associated climate changes. In a nutshell, while the development of new technologies has been the main driver of progress, it has also put Earth in danger. We here argue that human Mars exploration can be instrumental in leading a change from a technology-centered toward a human-centered society, thereby solving our most pressing problems on Earth. Specifically, the thin CO2 Martian atmosphere, the scarcity of energy sources and water, the difficulties to produce food and consumables, and the need for cooperative human-robotic crews, pose challenges whose solutions will enormously benefit Earth. In short, the mindset emerging from thinking under the severe constraints on Mars could be the key to making our presence on Earth sustainable. In this talk, we will present our vision and report on the progress made in selected areas, starting with the shifts in experience and demands on new ways of interaction which come with humankind's expansion to Mars. These include the interactions of the humans on Mars with the humans on Earth on one hand and their habitat and swarm of robots on the other. We will present our efforts in in-situ resource utilization, which focus on sustainable bioproduction, the extraterrestrial fabrication of metal alloys, the production with impure materials and the harvesting of energy from space radiation.