Understanding Uncertainty: How Lay Decision-makers Perceive and Interpret Uncertainty in Human-AI Decision Making

Decision Support Systems (DSS) based on Machine Learning (ML) often aim to assist lay decision-makers, who are not math-savvy, in making high-stakes decisions. However, existing ML-based DSS are not always transparent about the probabilistic nature of ML predictions and how uncertain each prediction is. This lack of transparency could give lay decision-makers a false sense of reliability. Growing calls for AI transparency have led to increasing efforts to quantify and communicate model uncertainty. However, there are still gaps in knowledge regarding how and why the decision-makers utilize ML uncertainty information in their decision process. Here, we conducted a qualitative, think-aloud user study with 17 lay decision-makers who interacted with three different DSS: 1) interactive visualization, 2) DSS based on an ML model that provides predictions without uncertainty information, and 3) the same DSS with uncertainty information. Our qualitative analysis found that communicating uncertainty about ML predictions forced participants to slow down and think analytically about their decisions. This in turn made participants more vigilant, resulting in reduction in over-reliance on ML-based DSS. Our work contributes empirical knowledge on how lay decision-makers perceive, interpret, and make use of uncertainty information when interacting with DSS. Such foundational knowledge informs the design of future ML-based DSS that embrace transparent uncertainty communication.