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Abstract

This study investigates the potential of using advanced conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to help people understand complex AI systems. In line with conversation-analytic research, we view the participatory role of AI as dynamically unfolding in a situation rather than being predetermined by its architecture. To study user sensemaking of intransparent AI systems, we set up a naturalistic encounter between human participants and two AI systems developed in-house: a reinforcement learning simulation and a GPT-4-based explainer chatbot. Our results reveal that an explainer-AI only truly functions as such when participants actively engage with it as a co-constructive agent. Both the interface’s spatial configuration and the asynchronous temporal nature of the explainer AI – combined with the users’ presuppositions about its role – contribute to the decision whether to treat the AI as a dialogical co-participant in the interaction. Participants establish evidentiality conventions and sensemaking procedures that may diverge from a system’s intended design or function.

Keywords

ChatGPT co-constructed explainability ethnomethodological conversation analysis human-computer interaction multimodality

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