Events

Speakers: Prof. Rahul De' and Sai Dattathrani, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Bio: Dr. Rahul De' is Dean (Programmes) and Professor of Information Systems at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His research interests are in AI, ICT for Development, Open Source and e-Government Systems. He has published 5 books and 75 articles in international peer-reviewed research outlets. He serves on the editorial boards of 5 international research journals. He has received numerous awards for research and teaching. He was recently recognized by Analytics India magazine as one of the top 10 AI researchers in India.

Sai Dattathrani is a doctoral student in the Information Systems area at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. AI and ethics are her areas of interest. She worked in the IT industry before pursuing her doctoral degree. She has a bachelor's degree in Engineering and master's in education technology.

Topic: The Concept of Agency in the Era of AI
Date: 16 February 2022
Abstract: With increasing computing power and technologies such as big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has automated some non-trivial decisions, usually considered the forte of humans. For example, AI is now being used to automate cancer detection, nursing, student essay grading, and car driving. In these scenarios, AI seems to "act on its own" like humans. However, the ability of AI to act on its own is varied. Some AI systems provide recommendations based on expert knowledge created by humans, while others can automatically categorize multi-media inputs without human intervention. The ability of AI to "act on its own" challenges our assumptions about capabilities of technology and humans. The Information Systems discipline investigates the actions of technology and humans under the topic of 'agency'. We present the existing theories and paradigms of agency in the Information Systems discipline and discuss the challenges that technologies such as AI pose to these framings of agency