From Information to Delegation: Mapping Human-AI Financial Decision Making

2026-08-03

AI Summary

This study addresses the need to quantify human information demands and delegation behaviors in financial decision-making involving artificial intelligence, thereby elucidating the mechanisms underlying human–AI allocation of decision authority. To this end, we propose a novel measurement framework that integrates intent recognition with actual delegation behavior, shifting the analytical focus from conversational content to observable authorization actions. Leveraging 1.5 million real-world interaction logs between users and high-autonomy AI systems—specifically ChatGPT and Gemini—we establish an empirical behavioral benchmark in contexts where AI exhibits substantial autonomy. Our findings reveal that users predominantly rely on AI for information acquisition and judgment support, yet rarely delegate actual execution of financial transactions, offering both empirical grounding and methodological innovation for understanding collaborative human–AI decision-making.

Abstract

As AI increasingly participates in human decision making, understanding how decision-making authority is distributed between humans and AI has become a fundamental behavioural question. We introduce a behavioural measurement framework combining intent and delegated decision authority to quantify what consumers seek from AI and how much decision-making authority they assign to it. Applied to 1.5 million real-world ChatGPT and Gemini interactions from 6,304 users in the United States and India, we find that financial services are already a substantial AI use case. Consumers overwhelmingly use AI to retrieve information and shape financial judgement, while delegation of financial execution remains rare. By shifting attention from conversation topics to delegated decision authority, this work establishes a behavioural baseline for measuring the transition to increasingly agentic AI.

Problem

• human-AI decision making
• delegation
• financial services
• decision authority
• AI agency

Innovation

• delegated decision authority
• human-AI collaboration
• behavioral measurement framework
• financial decision making
• agentic AI