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Annie Ruygt
Trust calibration is a concept from the world of human-machine interaction design, one that is super relevant to AI software builders. Trust calibration is the practice of aligning the level of trust that users have in our products with its actual capabilities.
If we build things that our users trust too blindly, we risk facilitating dangerous or destructive interactions that can permanently turn users off. If they don’t trust our product enough, it will feel useless or less capable than it actually is.
So what does trust calibration look like in practice and how do we achieve it? A 2023 study reviewed over 1000 papers on trust and trust calibration in human / automated systems (properly referenced at the end of this article). It holds some pretty eye-opening insights – and some inconvenient truths – for people building AI software. I’ve tried to extract just the juicy bits below.
