Decisions within Human-Machine Teaming: The Introduction of Decision Strings

We are increasingly confronted with teams that are a mix of both humans and machines, where collaboration is necessary in order to achieve an optimized solution. While Artificial Intelligence may be used to complete monotonous and complex specific tasks the human may concentrate on maintaining wider tactical awareness. In some instances the machine may even present the human with a decision to be approved or to select from a number of options created for them. The nature of decision making is therefore a critical component of this evolving interaction between human and machine. Within this paradigm a decision may be generated or owned by human or machine, and often shared. In many instances the complex interaction between both human and machine is required to step through a number of steps prior to a single presentation of what constitutes a decision. In this paper we will introduce the nature of how these decisions are constructed through the concept of decision strings. Through a number of examples we will demonstrate the complexity of how a human-machine team collaboration follows a pattern that allows us to better understand how the human can work closely with the machine in order to achieve effective decision-making.