A Taxonomy of Questions for Critical Reflection in Machine-Assisted Decision-Making

Simon WS Fischer, Hanna Schraffenberger, Serge Thill, Pim Haselager

Abstract: Decision-makers run the risk of relying too much on machine recommendations, which is associated with lower cognitive engagement. Reflection has been shown to increase cognitive engagement and improve critical thinking and therefore decision-making. Questions are a means to stimulate reflection, but there is a research gap regarding the systematic creation and use of relevant questions for machine-assisted decision-making. We therefore present a taxonomy of questions aimed at promoting reflection and cognitive engagement in order to stimulate a deliberate decision-making process. Our taxonomy builds on the Socratic questioning method and a question bank for explainable AI. As a starting point, we focus on clinical decision-making. Brief discussions with two medical and three educational researchers provide feedback on the relevance and expected benefits of our taxonomy. Our work contributes to research on mitigating overreliance in human-AI interactions and aims to support effective human oversight as required by the European AI Act.