Addressing the Synergy Gap: The Six Elements of the Design Space

AI is now embedded in healthcare, finance, policy, and many other domains, yet genuine human-AI synergy - combined performance that exceeds what either party achieves alone - is uncommon. Meta-analyses show that AI assistance tends to improve human performance compared to working alone, but studies finding true synergy are scarce. We call this persistent shortfall the synergy gap. Most current work treats human-AI combination as an engineering problem and concentrates on interpretability, trust calibration, or interface design. These matter, but they cover only part of what determines whether combination works. Closing the synergy gap, we argue, requires explicit engagement with a wider design space. We map that space through six interconnected elements: sociotechnical context, decision-making frameworks, human decision participants, AI capabilities, interaction, and holistic evaluation. For each element, we describe what it covers, how it shapes the others in practice, and what it implies for design. The result is a shared vocabulary for practitioners building hybrid systems, an analytical lens for researchers studying combination patterns, and a starting point for evaluators interested in the full quality of human-AI decision-making rather than accuracy alone.

Talking Back -- human input and explanations to interactive AI systems

While XAI focuses on providing AI explanations to humans, can the reverse - humans explaining their judgments to AI - foster richer, synergistic human-AI systems? This paper explores various forms of human inputs to AI and examines how human explanations can guide machine learning models toward automated judgments and explanations that align more closely with human concepts.

Democratisation of Usable Machine Learning in Computer Vision

Many industries are now investing heavily in data science and automation to replace manual tasks and/or to help with decision making, especially in the realm of leveraging computer vision to automate many monitoring, inspection, and surveillance tasks. This has resulted in the emergence of the 'data scientist' who is conversant in statistical thinking, machine learning (ML), computer vision, and computer programming. However, as ML becomes more accessible to the general public and more aspects of ML become automated, applications leveraging computer vision are increasingly being created by non-experts with less opportunity for regulatory oversight. This points to the overall need for more educated responsibility for these lay-users of usable ML tools in order to mitigate potentially unethical ramifications. In this paper, we undertake a SWOT analysis to study the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of building usable ML tools for mass adoption for important areas leveraging ML such as computer vision. The paper proposes a set of data science literacy criteria for educating and supporting lay-users in the responsible development and deployment of ML applications.