How is artificial intelligence (AI) changing the working world of tomorrow? At the Ladenburg Roundtable on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence in Companies,” under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Stefan Feuerriegel the participants discussed how AI technologies are changing the nature of decision-making among managers in companies.

The Ladenburg Roundtable brought together scientists at the interface of AI and business administration to discuss the implications for employees and society. While artificial intelligence offers immense advantages, such as the automation of processes or more precise predictions, it also presents challenges – especially in connection with the labor market. At present, it often remains unclear as to how humans and algorithms can work together effectively.

The scientific presentations at the Ladenburg Roundtable made it clear that despite the gains in efficiency brought about by AI, new requirements will be placed on the further education and retraining of employees. Ethics and data protection were discussed as further key challenges, particularly with a view to the error-prone nature of AI technologies. The participants agreed that AI-based systems should be explainable and readily comprehensible. In day-to-day business operations, however, they currently often function as so-called black boxes, since the decisions they make are unclear even to AI experts. In several lectures, methodological ideas were presented that suggest how new mathematical models could serve to develop understandable and above all easily comprehensible AI technologies. Building on this, experimental projects were discussed which show that humans and AI collaborate effectively as long as the algorithms’ decisions can be justified and any errors corrected.