About the project
This project explores how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance decision-making in complex, high-stakes settings while preserving human judgement. Drawing on human factors, cognitive psychology, and human-computer interaction, the research examines trust, transparency, workload, and accountability to inform safer, more explainable, human-centred AI systems.
Across domains such as transport, healthcare, emergency management, defence, and critical infrastructure, human operators often face an overwhelming volume of information and must make rapid, accurate decisions under uncertainty, time pressure, and high cognitive demand, where decision errors can have significant operational, societal, or life-threatening consequences.
While advances in AI, including machine learning and large language models, offer new opportunities to support human decision-making, effectively integrating AI into such complex, high-stakes decision-making environments while preserving human judgement remains a major challenge. This interdisciplinary project will focus on the human aspects of this challenge, investigating how AI system design can best foster collaboration that supports, rather than replaces, the human decision-maker.
Drawing on theories and methods from human factors, cognitive psychology, and human-computer interaction (HCI), the research will investigate the cognitive mechanisms underpinning human-AI collaboration. Research questions are likely to include how AI explanations influence trust and reliance, how system transparency affects operator understanding, and how AI support impacts cognitive workload, situation awareness, decision confidence, and accountability for the human decision-maker.
Ultimately, the aim is to develop evidence-based principles to inform the design of trustworthy and explainable AI systems that enhance human decision-making. The outcomes will support the safe, ethical deployment of AI technologies in high-stakes settings, ensuring intelligent systems remain aligned with human needs, capabilities, and values.
The School of Engineering is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.
