Cited by 146Human-Automation Interaction and SafetyExplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)Ethics and Social Impacts of AI

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 71 of the 71 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 5 of the 71 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Human-AI Collaboration via Conditional Delegation: A Case Study of Content Moderation

Open access
Lai, Vivian, Carton, Samuel, Bhatnagar, Rajat, Liao, Q. Vera, Zhang, Yunfeng, Tan, Chenhao·2022·CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Abstract

Despite impressive performance in many benchmark datasets, AI models can still make mistakes, especially among out-of-distribution examples. It remains an open question how such imperfect models can be used effectively in collaboration with humans. Prior work has focused on AI assistance that helps people make individual high-stakes decisions, which is not scalable for a large amount of relatively low-stakes decisions, e.g., moderating social media comments. Instead, we propose conditional delegation as an alternative paradigm for human-AI collaboration where humans create rules to indicate trustworthy regions of a model. Using content moderation as a testbed, we develop novel interfaces to assist humans in creating conditional delegation rules and conduct a randomized experiment with two datasets to simulate in-distribution and out-of-distribution scenarios. Our study demonstrates the promise of conditional delegation in improving model performance and provides insights into design for this novel paradigm, including the effect of AI explanations.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

The paper proposes conditional delegation, where humans create keyword rules defining trustworthy regions for an AI model, and tests it on content moderation. In a 240-participant randomized experiment, conditional delegation improved model precision over the model alone, but achieved complementary performance over manual rule-based moderation only for in-distribution AI, not out-of-distribution AI.

Key findings

  • Conditional delegation with human-created rules improved precision over the model working alone both in-distribution and out-of-distribution (p < 0.001 for average and union precision). On WikiAttack, the model alone already outperformed the manual condition, and conditional delegation further improved precision, achieving complementary performance; on Reddit, it improved the model but did not compensate enough to outperform the manual rule-based approach.
  • Distribution type had the most salient effect: two-way ANOVA found significant effects of distribution type, experimental condition, and their interaction (p < 0.001). For average precision, condition was significant on WikiAttack (p < 0.001) but not Reddit (p = 0.864); for union precision, condition was significant on both (p < 0.001), and on Reddit the global explanation condition was worse than manual (p = 0.004) and predicted labels (p = 0.028).
  • Explanations did not significantly improve conditional delegation performance; global explanations slightly hurt union precision and reward out-of-distribution. Explanations improved efficiency: rules per minute had a significant condition effect (p = 0.008), with global explanations vs predicted labels significant (p = 0.031), and global explanations led to higher overlap with rationale words.
  • Participants were more engaged with delegation support than manual (actions p < 0.001; manual vs predicted labels/global p < 0.001, local p = 0.009). Subjective measures were generally positive with no strong condition differences; local explanations trended toward the best experience on WikiAttack.

Methods

  • Between-subject randomized experiment with 240 Mechanical Turkers (30 per condition per distribution; 120 in-distribution, 120 out-of-distribution; 6 of 240 filtered from analysis). Four conditions: predicted labels; predicted labels + local explanations; predicted labels + local explanations + global explanations; manual. Two datasets: WikiAttack (in-distribution) and Reddit hate speech (out-of-distribution). Participants had to submit at least 10 rules; bonus was $0.10 per 100 toxic comments correctly reported and −$0.10 per 100 nontoxic comments mistakenly reported, bounded $0–$2.
  • Model: rationale-style neural architecture with BERT encoders, trained on WikiAttack (70k training, 23K test comments) and applied to Reddit (22K comments); recall weight 0.5 chosen. Measures: average precision, union precision, reward, engagement actions, elapsed time, rules per minute, and Likert subjective measures. Analysis: t-tests, two-way/one-way ANOVA, and Tukey’s HSD.

Limitations

  • Stated: the work is one instantiation of conditional delegation; precision/coverage tradeoffs may vary by application; participants are not representative of content moderators; evaluations are limited by the roughly 10 rules participants created in about 10 minutes; model, dataset, and explanation choices affect outcomes; the study does not account for future rule updates or existing moderator rules, and uses a narrow toxicity component of content moderation.
  • Evident: the in-distribution vs out-of-distribution contrast is confounded with model performance and dataset/community differences, which the paper itself notes as a complexity; reward is highly volatile because a small number of keywords can dominate, especially out-of-distribution, as the paper states.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1145/3491102.3501999

Cites

71 of 71 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

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Verification

Claims the paper makes

46 Own result · 38 Own interpretation · 29 Not checked yet · 15 Own method · 8 No basis given · 2 Supported · 1 Partly supported · 1 Not supported · accuracy not yet measured

Verify all 66 references — free account

Show all 44 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 56
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 55
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 2
96 of 96
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The study assumes the same workflow as the manual rule-based approach: comments falling outside keyword rules are ignored without taking an action.

    “We assume the same workflow in our study and only focus on the precision and coverage related metrics for comments within the scope of keywords rules.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Content moderators often do not have labeled comments to quantify model performance.

    “When given an AI model, content moderators often do not have labeled comments to quantify model performance.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In content moderation, recall is often less of a priority given limited time for content moderators, who are often volunteers, to deal with massive incoming comments.

    “In the context of content moderation, recall (identifying all toxic comments) is often less of a priority given the limited time for content moderators, who are often volunteers, to deal with a massive amount of incoming comments.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The current workflow using manual rule-based approach ignores comments falling outside the rules without taking an action.

    “This is reflected in the current workflow using the manual rule-based approach (Fig. 1(C)), where comments falling outside the rules are ignored without taking an action.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In a real-world scenario, it is unlikely that models are used to classify data that is exactly the same as the training dataset.

    “In a real-world scenario, it is unlikely that models are used to classify data that is exactly the same as the training dataset.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Current AI models rely on identifying patterns in training datasets.

    “Current AI models rely on identifying patterns in training datasets.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The reward mechanism assumes that the cost of wrongly reported non-toxic comments (false positive) equals the benefit of correctly reported toxic comments (true positive).

    “To make the calculation easy to understand for participants, this reward makes a simplifed assumption that the cost of wrongly reported non-toxic comments (false positive) equals the beneft of correctly reported toxic comments (true positive).”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Turkers are a sufficiently good sample to compare whether conditional delegation improves content moderation outcomes over the baseline condition.

    “Furthermore, we believe turkers are a sufciently good sample for us to compare whether conditional delegation improves the content moderation outcomes over the baseline condition, and expert users are likely to further enhance the improvement pattern, if any.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Social media content moderation is often performed by part-time volunteers whose expertise varies.

    “We note that while this recruiting choice may limit the generalizability of our results, social media content moderation is often performed by part-time volunteers whose expertise varies.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In practice, an AI model rarely faces exactly the same distribution in deployment.

    “In practice, it is rarely the case that an AI model faces exactly the same distribution in deployment.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Keyword-based rules are a reasonable approach in content moderation given that rule-based methods are already used in AutoModerator.

    “Keyword-based rules are a reasonable approach in content moderation given that rule-based methods are already used in AutoModerator.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In practice, moderators usually have historical data on which moderation decisions were made.

    “Second, in practice, moderators usually have historical data on which moderation decisions were made.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Content moderation involves a wide range of different rules beyond toxicity.

    “Last but not least, content moderation involves a wide range of diferent rules beyond toxicity, and even the policies under the umbrella term of toxicity can vary, so the AI model that we uses represents a narrow component in content moderation.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Even the policies under the umbrella term of toxicity can vary.

    “Last but not least, content moderation involves a wide range of diferent rules beyond toxicity, and even the policies under the umbrella term of toxicity can vary, so the AI model that we uses represents a narrow component in content moderation.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Moderators are more familiar with the moderation process and more knowledgeable about important words.

    “As moderators are more familiar with the moderation process and more knowledgeable about important words, experts might fnd the interface more useful than crowdworkers.”
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Citations

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Metadata

Authors
Lai, V., Carton, S., Bhatnagar, R., Liao, Q. V., Zhang, Y., & Tan, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Colorado Boulder (US)
  • Amazon (United States) (US)
  • Microsoft (Canada) (CA)
  • Twitter (United States) (US)
  • University of Chicago (US)
Venue
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher
ACM
Published
2022-04-27
Pages
1-18
OpenAlex
W4224940987
Cited by
145
References
63
Citations by year
2026: 32 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 2
FWCI
54.47
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by-nd)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
  • National science foundation (2125116, 2125113, 1837986)
  • IBM faculty award
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Keywords
human-AI collaboration, content moderation, social media comments, AI explanations, human-AI interface

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