Feb 12, 2026, cs.GTJ/K move · Enter open · S save
Kehang Zhu, Nithum Thain, Vivian Tsai, James Wexler+1
Harvard University, United States · Google DeepMind, Canada · Google DeepMind, United States+1
As AI usage becomes more prevalent in social contexts, understanding agent-user interaction is critical to designing systems that imp rove both individual and group outcomes. We present an online behavioral experiment (N=243) in which participants play three multi-tu rn bargaining games in groups of three. Each game, presented in randomized order, grants access to a single LLM assistance modality: proactive recommendations from an Advisor, reactive feedback from a Coach, or autonomous execution by a Delegate. All three modalitie s are powered by an LLM with super-human performance within this negotiation setting. On each turn, participants privately decide whe ther to act manually or use the AI modality available in that game. We document a preference-performance misalignment: participants s trongly prefer the higher-control Advisor (44%) over the Delegate (19%), yet groups only significantly increase collective surplus un der Delegate access. Adjusting for voluntary non-compliance, delegating to the AI yields suggestive individual welfare gains, roughly 1.5x the intent-to-treat estimate. A mechanism analysis traces this gap to a human filter: AI-generated proposals create more joint surplus than manual proposals across all conditions, but in the Advisor and Coach modes users modify, override, or ignore the AI's su ggestions, reverting toward human-baseline trade patterns. The Delegate advantage arises not from a different AI capability but from bypassing this filtering step altogether. Realizing these welfare gains depends not only on model capability, but on the interaction structure through which that capability is delivered. We argue that assistance modalities should be designed as mechanisms with endog enous participation; adoption-compatible interaction rules are a prerequisite to improving welfare with automated assistance.