Self++: Co-Determined Agency for Human--AI Symbiosis in Extended Reality

2026-03-30

AI Summary

This study addresses the risks of human overreliance, covert manipulation, and blurred accountability in AI-augmented extended reality (XR), which can undermine human agency. Integrating Self-Determination Theory with the Free Energy Principle, the authors propose a “co-decision” framework that structures human–AI coupling around transparency, adaptability, and negotiability. The framework features an innovative three-layer augmented architecture and nine depersonalized interaction role patterns, forming an activatable co-decision interaction model that empowers—without substituting—human judgment. It supports synergistic enhancement across the dimensions of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, offering a role-mapping toolkit for the design and evaluation of XR–AI systems. This approach safeguards human primacy and fosters symbiotic agency in work, learning, and social contexts.

Abstract

Self++ is a design blueprint for human-AI symbiosis in extended reality (XR) that preserves human authorship while still benefiting from increasingly capable AI agents. Because XR can shape both perceptual evidence and action, apparently 'helpful' assistance can drift into over-reliance, covert persuasion, and blurred responsibility. Self++ grounds interaction in two complementary theories: Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness) and the Free Energy Principle (predictive stability under uncertainty). It operationalises these foundations through co-determination, treating the human and the AI as a coupled system that must keep intent and limits legible, tune support over time, and preserve the user's right to endorse, contest, and override. These requirements are summarised as the co-determination principles (T.A.N.): Transparency, Adaptivity, and Negotiability. Self++ organises augmentation into three concurrently activatable overlays spanning sensorimotor competence support (Self: competence overlay), deliberative autonomy support (Self+: autonomy overlay), and social and long-horizon relatedness and purpose support (Self++: relatedness and purpose overlay). Across the overlays, it specifies nine role patterns (Tutor, Skill Builder, Coach; Choice Architect, Advisor, Agentic Worker; Contextual Interpreter, Social Facilitator, Purpose Amplifier) that can be implemented as interaction patterns, not personas. The contribution is a role-based map for designing and evaluating XR-AI systems that grow capability without replacing judgment, enabling symbiotic agency in work, learning, and social life and resilient human development.

Problem

• human-AI symbiosis
• extended reality
• agency
• over-reliance
• responsibility

Innovation

• co-determination
• extended reality
• human-AI symbiosis
• role-based design
• Self-Determination Theory