From Tools to Teammates: Conceptualizing Humans’ Perception of Machines as Teammates with a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The accelerating capabilities of systems brought about by advances in Artificial Intelligence challenge the traditional notion of systems as tools. Systems’ increasingly agentic and collaborative character offers the potential for a new user-system interaction paradigm: Teaming replaces unidirectional system use. Yet, extant literature addresses the prerequisites for this new interaction paradigm inconsistently, often not even considering the foundations established in human teaming literature. To address this, this study utilizes a systematic literature review to conceptualize the drivers of the perception of systems as teammates instead of tools. Hereby, it integrates insights from the dispersed and interdisciplinary field of human-machine teaming with established human teaming principles. The creation of a team setting and a social entity, as well as specific configurations of the machine teammate’s collaborative behaviors, are identified as main drivers of the formation of impactful human-machine teams.