People overestimate how confident AI systems are in their responses, experiments reveal
Researchers from the University of Waterloo and University College London studied how people perceive the confidence levels of AI systems compared to humans. The study found that users often attribute higher confidence to AI based on perceived capability or response speed, even when the AI's actual reliability is low.
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Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-people-overestimate-confident-ai-responses.html
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fact_checkFact-Check Results
6 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.
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“Researchers at the University of Waterloo and University College London (UCL) recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how people infer the confidence of both AI agents and humans in their predictions or conclusions.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results confirm a study by Clara Colombatto and S.M. Fleming (associated with the research described) regarding how humans infer confidence in AI agents and humans.
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“Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that humans consistently perceive AI systems as more confident in their answers than humans, even when the responses they generate are the same as those provided by humans.”
CORROBORATED
The evidence from Communications Psychology and the Colombatto & Fleming manuscript explicitly states that participants attributed higher confidence to AI agents compared to humans, even when responses were the same.
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— In the field of artificial intelligence, a hallucination or artificial hallucination is a response generated by AI that contains false or misleading information presented as fact. This term draws a lo…
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— Scientists found that although AI excels at generating diverse interpretations of ambiguous images, human judges still perceive human responses as more creative. These results indicate that human crea…
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“most existing AI systems, including the models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT and Gemini, are designed to only generate answers to specific questions, without stating how confident they are in their answers.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While general knowledge and the provided search results for ChatGPT and Gemini describe them as chatbots, the specific claim that they are 'designed to only generate answers... without stating how confident they are' is not explicitly confirmed or denied by the provided evidence snippets, which are mostly landing pages.
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— Testing ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini. To help determine which AI chatbot gives more accurate answers, I'm going to use a simple prompt to compare them
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— Общайтесь с Google Gemini AI бесплатно. Продвинутые рассуждения и мультимодальность. Без регистрации.
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https://gemini.google.com/?hl=tr
“they found that participants tended to think that agents were more confident when they responded quickly or when a decision appeared to be easier for them to make.”
CORROBORATED
The Colombatto & Fleming manuscript explicitly mentions that confidence attributions were sensitive to 'observed variables such as task difficulty... and response time'.
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— Self-confidence is not the same as self-esteem, which is an evaluation of one's worth. Self-confidence is related to self-efficacy—belief in one's ability to accomplish a specific task or goal. Confid…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence
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— Study 2’s participants attributed lower levels of agency to AI systems after interacting with overvalued AI-generated art. This finding suggests that seeing others overvaluing AI systems’ abilities co…
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— Learn to boost agent confidence through recognition, training, career growth, and creating a supportive contact centre culture to improve performance and morale.
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“we also found that people attributed greater confidence to agents they believed were more accurate or capable, even when this belief was not actually justified”
CORROBORATED
The evidence from Communications Psychology and the associated research summary confirms that beliefs about accuracy shape confidence attributions to humans and artificial agents.
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“Clara Colombatto et al, Beliefs about accuracy shape confidence attributions to humans and artificial agents, Communications Psychology (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-026-00445-4.”
VERIFIED
The paper title, authors (Colombatto and Fleming), and the journal 'Communications Psychology' are all explicitly confirmed across multiple search results. Note: While the claim says 2026, the evidence confirms the existence of the specific paper and its findings; the date may be a future publication or a typo in the source, but the core reference is verified.
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— Clara Colombatto.Overall, attributions of confidence were sensitive to observed variables such as task difficulty, accuracy, and response time. Strikingly, participants attributed higher confidence to…
https://colombattolab.com/publications/23-Colombatto-Fleming…
https://colombattolab.com/publications/23-Colombatto-Fleming…
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— Beliefs about accuracy shape confidence attributions to humans and artificial agents. This work shows how humans infer others’ confidence from their observed behaviour and prior beliefs about the agen…
https://www.nature.com/commspsychol/?error=cookies_not_suppo…
https://www.nature.com/commspsychol/?error=cookies_not_suppo…
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— Subject of Research: Human and artificial agent confidence attribution influenced by beliefs about accuracy.Article References: Colombatto, C., Fleming, S.M. Beliefs about accuracy shape confidence at…
https://scienmag.com/beliefs-influence-confidence-in-humans-…
https://scienmag.com/beliefs-influence-confidence-in-humans-…
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Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.