Implementing an Intelligent Collaborative Agent as Teammate in Collaborative Writing: toward a Synergy of Humans and AI

Abstract

This paper aims at implementing a hybrid form of group work through the incorporation of an intelligent collaborative agent into a Collaborative Writing process. With that it contributes to the overall research gap establishing acceptance of AI towards complementary hybrid work. To approach this aim, we follow a Design Science Research process. We identify requirements for the agent to be considered a teammate based on expert interviews in the light of Social Response Theory and the concept of the Uncanny Valley. Next, we derive design principles for the implementation of an agent as teammate from the collected requirements. For the evaluation of the design principles and the human teammates’ perception of the agent, we instantiate a Collaborative Writing process via a web-application incorporating the agent. The evaluation reveals the partly successful implementation of the developed design principles. Additionally, the results show the potential of hybrid collaboration teams accepting non-human teammates.