In this study, we explore the future of work by examining differences in productivity when teams are composed of only humans or both humans and machine agents. Our objective was to characterize the similarities and differences between human and human–machine teams as they work to coordinate across their specialized roles. This form of research is increasingly important given that machine agents are becoming commonplace in sociotechnical systems and playing a more active role in collaborative work. One particular class of machine agents, bots, is being introduced to these systems to facilitate both taskwork and teamwork. We investigated the association between bots and productivity outcomes in open source software development through an analysis of hundreds of project teams. The presence of bots in teams was associated with higher levels of productivity and higher work centralization in addition to greater amounts of observed communication. The adoption of bots in software teams may have tradeoffs, in that doing so may increase productivity, but could also increase workload. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for advancing human–machine teaming research.

中文翻译：

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EveryBOTy Counts：检查开源软件开发中的人机团队

在这项研究中，我们通过检查团队仅由人类或人类和机器代理组成时的生产力差异来探索工作的未来。我们的目标是描述人类和人机团队在跨专业角色进行协调时的异同。鉴于机器代理在社会技术系统中变得司空见惯，并且在协作工作中发挥着更积极的作用，这种研究形式变得越来越重要。一类特殊的机器代理，机器人，被引入到这些系统中，以促进任务和团队合作。我们通过对数百个项目团队的分析，调查了开源软件开发中机器人与生产力结果之间的关联。除了观察到的更多交流外，团队中机器人的存在与更高水平的生产力和更高的工作集中度相关。在软件团队中采用机器人可能需要权衡取舍，因为这样做可能会提高生产力，但也可能会增加工作量。我们讨论了这些发现对推进人机协作研究的理论和实践意义。