Speaker: Nori Jacoby, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Cornell University
Title: Designing Principles for Human-AI Hybrid Collectives
Time: 3-4 p.m.
Date: Oct. 14, 2026
Location: Computing and Information Science Building, Room 250
Click here to attend via Zoom
Abstract: We live in an increasingly hybrid society in which ideas, decisions, and cultural products are shaped by interactions between humans and generative AI. Yet AI systems are being deployed at unprecedented speed, often without a clear understanding of their collective consequences for domains previously governed primarily by humans, from open-source software development to creative writing. What kinds of hybrid societies will emerge from these interactions? Under what conditions can human–AI collaboration flourish? And what roles should humans and AI agents play in these emerging collectives?
To address these questions, I use large-scale social network experiments that bring together human participants and AI agents in shared environments. Our results provide empirical evidence that both humans and AI agents adapt their behavior through mutual interaction, and that these changes have complex, nonlinear effects on collective performance and the diversity of outcomes. For example, in some settings, we observe a “better-together” effect, in which hybrid collectives outperform both human-only and AI-only groups, achieving higher performance, greater diversity, or a better balance between the two. Importantly, differences in how humans and AI represent information and approach problems—often viewed as obstacles to effective collaboration—can instead become a source of synergy.
Taken together, these findings point toward design principles for hybrid societies that harness the complementary capabilities of humans and AI to enhance collective performance while preserving human contributions and cultural diversity.