Alignment-Process-Outcome: Rethinking How AIs and Humans Collaborate

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Li, Haichang, Zhu, Anjun, Narechania, Arpit
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918381785972736
author Li, Haichang
Zhu, Anjun
Narechania, Arpit
author_facet Li, Haichang
Zhu, Anjun
Narechania, Arpit
contents In real-world collaboration, alignment, process structure, and outcome quality do not exhibit a simple linear or one-to-one correspondence: similar alignment may accompany either rapid convergence or extensive multi-branch exploration, and lead to different results. Existing accounts often isolate these dimensions or focus on specific participant types, limiting structural accounts of collaboration. We reconceptualize collaboration through two complementary lenses. The task lens models collaboration as trajectory evolution in a structured task space, revealing patterns such as advancement, branching, and backtracking. The intent lens examines how individual intents are expressed within shared contexts and enter situated decisions. Together, these lenses clarify the structural relationships among alignment, decision-making, and trajectory structure. Rather than reducing collaboration to outcome quality or treating alignment as the sole objective, we propose a unified dynamic view of the relationships among alignment, process, and outcome, and use it to re-examine collaboration structure across Human-Human, AI-AI, and Human-AI settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_08017
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Alignment-Process-Outcome: Rethinking How AIs and Humans Collaborate
Li, Haichang
Zhu, Anjun
Narechania, Arpit
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
In real-world collaboration, alignment, process structure, and outcome quality do not exhibit a simple linear or one-to-one correspondence: similar alignment may accompany either rapid convergence or extensive multi-branch exploration, and lead to different results. Existing accounts often isolate these dimensions or focus on specific participant types, limiting structural accounts of collaboration. We reconceptualize collaboration through two complementary lenses. The task lens models collaboration as trajectory evolution in a structured task space, revealing patterns such as advancement, branching, and backtracking. The intent lens examines how individual intents are expressed within shared contexts and enter situated decisions. Together, these lenses clarify the structural relationships among alignment, decision-making, and trajectory structure. Rather than reducing collaboration to outcome quality or treating alignment as the sole objective, we propose a unified dynamic view of the relationships among alignment, process, and outcome, and use it to re-examine collaboration structure across Human-Human, AI-AI, and Human-AI settings.
title Alignment-Process-Outcome: Rethinking How AIs and Humans Collaborate
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08017