Algorithmic decision-making? The user interface and its role for human involvement in decisions supported by artificial intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence can provide organizations with prescriptive options for decision-making. Based on the notions of algorithmic decision-making and user involvement, we assess the role of artificial intelligence in workplace decisions. Using a case study on the implementation and use of cognitive software in a telecommunications company, we address how actors can become distanced from or remain involved in decision-making. Our results show that humans are increasingly detached from decision-making spatially as well as temporally and in terms of rational distancing and cognitive displacement. At the same time, they remain attached to decision-making because of accidental and infrastructural proximity, imposed engagement, and affective adhesion. When human and algorithmic intelligence become unbalanced in regard to humans’ attachment to decision-making, three performative effects result: deferred decisions, workarounds, and (data) manipulations. We conceptualize the user interface that presents decisions to humans as a mediator between human detachment and attachment and, thus, between algorithmic and humans’ decisions. These findings contrast the traditional view of automated media as diminishing user involvement and have useful implications for research on artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making in organizations.