Do humans get lazier when robots help with tasks?

'Social loafing' is a phenomenon which happens when members of a team start to put less effort in because they know others will cover for them. Scientists investigating whether this happens in teams which combine work by robots and humans found that humans carrying out quality assurance tasks spotted fewer errors when they had been told that robots had already checked a piece, suggesting they relied on the robots and paid less attention to the work. Now that improvements in technology mean that some robots work alongside humans, there is evidence that those humans have learned to see them as team-mates -- and teamwork can have negative as well as positive effects on people's performance. People sometimes relax, letting their colleagues do the work instead. This is called'social loafing', and it's common where people know their contribution won't be noticed or they've acclimatized to another team member's high performance.