AI and Uncertainty in Organizing

Abstract

This chapter discusses how deploying artificial intelligence (AI) systems in three core organizing activities—decision-making, coordination, and control—impacts uncertainty. It identifies three core capabilities of AI—recognizing, predicting, and effectuating—that are consequential for organizing and may reduce uncertainty. Deploying AI can improve the basis of decision-making by incorporating richer and more diverse sources of data, expanding and automating coordination, and providing continuous and more granular forms of control and surveillance. Yet, deploying AI can generate new forms of uncertainty because it can inadvertently reproduce inherent biases, be blind to ethical considerations, blackbox the workings of the technology, and render organizational processes opaque. More importantly, it can simultaneously lead to increasing and decreasing uncertainty when working conditions radically change or when considering how it impacts different stakeholders differently.