A Situation Awareness Perspective on Human-Agent Collaboration: Tensions and Opportunities

The rise of automation and artificial intelligence within the organization has come with many benefits. However, in conjunction with these benefits have come various concerns related to user empowerment (e.g., over-reliance, loss of human agency, lack of trust). Human-Computer Interaction researchers are seeking ways to address these concerns by informing user interface and task design. However, an overarching framework providing a holistic perspective is needed to guide such effort. We propose that for the intelligent agents to be utilized optimally within the organization, a contextual perspective is needed to capture various factors related to the user, task, technology, and environment, which can inform the value proposition of human-agent collaboration in the organization. To this end, we propose a situation awareness (SA) approach as a promising lens, which would in turn promote a human-centered artificial intelligence design and development perspective. This paper introduces the theoretical basis for SA and discusses three major tensions and the associated opportunities for developing SA in human-agent collaboration.