Why did people delegate more after repeated AI tasks?
In 392 video-question trials, intended delegation rose across the session even after accounting for trust. The small student study cannot tell whether learning, comfort or fatigue caused the shift.
The short version
- What happened
- Fifty-six AI-literate participants completed seven trials each, producing 392 observations with video-question answers generated by Gemini 2.5 Flash or ground-truth controls.
- Who it affects
- Managers and service designers need to know whether staff actually verify AI output, not only whether they report trusting the system.
- What remains unproven
- This is an unreviewed exploratory study of 56 mostly engineering students. Participants stated a future policy but did not hand over a live task, and the design cannot establish why delegation increased with task order.
Keep in mind
This is an unreviewed exploratory study of 56 mostly engineering students. Participants stated a future policy but did not hand over a live task, and the design cannot establish why delegation increased with task order.
Source analysis · 1 linked source. Primary analysed source date: 15 October 2026.
Read the full report · 4 min The evidence, methods, implications and limitations
Trust and oversight did not move as one dial
People who trusted a multimodal AI answer more were much more willing to hand a similar future task to it—but high trust often came with a decision to verify. In a new 56-person study, verification was the dominant policy rather than full delegation. That distinction matters for workplaces and public services: a trust survey alone may not reveal whether someone intends to check, reject or rely entirely on an AI contribution.
Participants completed seven video-question trials each, creating 392 observations. After answering a question themselves, they inspected a response described as AI-generated, rated trust on a five-point scale and chose whether they would reject AI help, use it with verification or delegate fully on an analogous task. Responses were prepared with Gemini 2.5 Flash; some control groups saw ground-truth answers instead. Of 101 people who completed screening and consent, 56 completed the full session, so the findings describe completers rather than everyone initially interested.[1]
Repeated exposure was associated with stronger intended delegation
Within the same participant, a one-step increase in post-interaction trust was associated with 14.97 times the odds of choosing a stronger delegation category, although the confidence interval was wide at 7.14 to 31.37. That odds ratio is not the percentage of people who delegated. Task order also mattered: each successive trial was associated with 1.22 times the odds of stronger intended delegation after adjustment for momentary trust, average participant trust, cohort and study condition.
Trust itself did not show the same session-wide rise. That leaves several possible explanations: people may have learned the task, become comfortable with the interface or grown tired of checking. The experiment cannot choose between them. Everyone saw the same seven analytic videos, early participants had a fixed order, later participants had randomised order, and assignment to four small interface groups used quota balancing rather than simple randomisation.[1]
The distinction that matters
Three different oversight choices
Participants selected one policy for a similar future task after every AI response.
Reject
Do the task without AI assistance
No control is transferred
Verify
Use the answer but check it independently
Assistance with retained oversight
Delegate
Rely on the AI for the task
Most control is transferred
The next study needs real handovers and recoveries
Half the participants saw editable graphs of the video's objects and relations; all 28 interacted with them and 16 changed at least one element. Graph access was exploratorily linked with greater intended delegation, but not with better alignment between trust and delegation. Small, uneven groups make that comparison especially uncertain. An explanation interface should therefore not be treated as proof that oversight improved.
The sample was young and technical: 45 of 56 studied computer science or engineering, participation was uncompensated, and the chosen policy had no consequence for the current task. The Italian ministry funded the work. The authors' useful proposal is to measure enacted delegation instead—what a person hands over, what they inspect and whether they recover control after an error. Evidence from consequential tasks, diverse workers and observable interventions would show whether repetition truly weakens oversight or merely changes stated preferences.[1]