Artificial intelligence for decision making in the era of Big Data – evolution, challenges and research agenda

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in existence for over six decades and has experienced AI winters and springs. The rise of super computing power and Big Data technologies appear to have empowered AI in recent years. The new generation of AI is rapidly expanding and has again become an attractive topic for research. This paper aims to identify the challenges associated with the use and impact of revitalised AI based systems for decision making and offer a set of research propositions for information systems (IS) researchers. The paper first provides a view of the history of AI through the relevant papers published in the International Journal of Information Management (IJIM). It then discusses AI for decision making in general and the specific issues regarding the interaction and integration of AI to support or replace human decision makers in particular. To advance research on the use of AI for decision making in the era of Big Data, the paper offers twelve research propositions for IS researchers in terms of conceptual and theoretical development, AI technology-human interaction, and AI implementation.