  Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to reshape the way
individuals communicate and interact. While this form of AI has the potential
to efficiently make numerous human decisions, there is limited understanding of
how individuals respond to its use in social interaction. In particular, it
remains unclear how individuals engage with algorithms when the interaction
entails consequences for other people. Here, we report the results of a
large-scale pre-registered online experiment (N = 3,552) indicating diminished
fairness, trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and coordination by human
players in economic twoplayer games, when the decision of the interaction
partner is taken over by ChatGPT. On the contrary, we observe no adverse
welfare effects when individuals are uncertain about whether they are
interacting with a human or generative AI. Therefore, the promotion of AI
transparency, often suggested as a solution to mitigate the negative impacts of
generative AI on society, shows a detrimental effect on welfare in our study.
Concurrently, participants frequently delegate decisions to ChatGPT,
particularly when the AI's involvement is undisclosed, and individuals struggle
to discern between AI and human decisions.
