NICE: A Theory-Grounded Diagnostic Benchmark for Social Intelligence of LLMs

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied in social contexts such as emotional companionship and customer service, measuring their social intelligence has become critical to the quality and safety of human-AI interaction. However, existing social intelligence benchmarks lack a unified framework that organizes social abilities into a unified structure, and therefore cannot enable fine-grained diagnosis. To build the first holistic diagnostic evaluation grounded in social theory, we first construct a social intelligence framework through a literature review and multi-stage expert validation guided by psychometric principles. The resulting framework includes 4 categories and 11 dimensions, each further specified by fine-grained capability facets. Building on this framework, we introduce NICE (Norm, Interaction, Cognition, Experience), a diagnostic benchmark of 137 items operationalized through representative Chinese contexts. Across 5 frontier LLMs and a human reference group, models score higher in aggregate accuracy yet show a consistent weakness in Communication, which the framework localizes to 3 specific capability facets: multi-turn communication, nonverbal communication, and synchrony. NICE thus reframes social intelligence evaluation toward theory-grounded diagnosis of socially consequential weaknesses in LLMs.

Human-Centered Human-AI Collaboration (HCHAC)

In the intelligent era, the interaction between humans and intelligent systems fundamentally involves collaboration with autonomous intelligent agents. Human-AI Collaboration (HAC) represents a novel type of human-machine relationship facilitated by autonomous intelligent machines equipped with AI technologies. In this paradigm, AI agents serve not only as auxiliary tools but also as active teammates, partnering with humans to accomplish tasks collaboratively. Human-centered AI (HCAI) emphasizes that humans play critical leadership roles in the collaboration. This human-led collaboration imparts new dimensions to the human-machine relationship, necessitating innovative research perspectives, paradigms, and agenda to address the unique challenges posed by HAC. This chapter delves into the essence of HAC from the human-centered perspective, outlining its core concepts and distinguishing features. It reviews the current research methodologies and research agenda within the HAC field from the HCAI perspective, highlighting advancements and ongoing studies. Furthermore, a framework for human-centered HAC (HCHAC) is proposed by integrating these reviews and analyses. A case study of HAC in the context of autonomous vehicles is provided, illustrating practical applications and the synergistic interactions between humans and AI agents. Finally, it identifies potential future research directions aimed at enhancing the effectiveness, reliability, and ethical integration of human-centered HAC systems in diverse domains.