Special Issue: Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and business analytics create opportunities and unintended or negative consequences for individuals and society (cf. Ransbotham et al., 2016; Majchrzak et al., 2016). These opportunities and consequences have not been evenly distributed.

Despite the many personal, economic, and societal benefits offered by AI and analytics, their use raises a variety of ethical concerns. Ethics permeates the entire analytics process, from what data to use, to how to represent the extracted knowledge and exploit the insights to create economic and social value. Ethical concerns (i.e., illegitimate surveillance, invasion of privacy, unemployment, malicious use etc.) are frequently used to portray AI and analytics as ‘a danger to humanity’. These concerns warrant the attention of the academic community to ensure the information society is built on a foundation in which integrity and rigour for good science will promote quality systems and good ethics will promote good professional practice (Calzarossa et al., 2009). Hence, in order to be able to practice in an ethical manner, professionals must see vistas beyond technology (Stoodley et al., 2009).

At the same time, AI and analytics has opened new domains of exclusion and privilege for some, leaving some individuals and communities excluded from the digitized society. For example, digital exclusion is part of the overall challenge of exclusion, a growing phenomenon which carries with it a series of deteriorations in life paths (i.e., poor lifelong earnings and an increased risk of marginalisation).

AI and business analytics have received signification attention from the academic community. However, their value and benefits to business and society as a whole still remain largely unexplored, with many questions being unanswered regarding their role in an ethical and inclusive digitized society. This special issue aims to add in this direction and therefore we are interested in studies using any of the full range of investigative methodologies qualitative and quantitative, with raw data and/or data collected by surveys, experiments, interviews, observations, and so forth. We welcome the spectrum philosophical approaches, from positivist to interpretivist. As we see this as an emerging area of inquiry, we are particularly interested in theory-building studies and empirical-based frameworks related to how we can assess the responsible use of AI and Analytics.

This Special Issue aims to bring together contributions from a variety of perspectives, disciplines and communities for the advancement of knowledge regarding responsible AI and Analytics for an ethical and inclusive digitized society. Some organizations focus on driving business value and keeping ahead of competitors. At the same time others can have a view of facilitating societal change, generating value that impacts both them and the society overall. We seek interdisciplinary papers that can bridge various domains including information systems, organizational science, strategic management, and information science.

Topics of submission include, but are not limited to:

• Societal impact of AI and Analytics

• AI and the future of work

• Ethical issues related to AI and Analytics

• Strategies (e.g. best practices, policies, and governance mechanisms) for addressing the unintended consequences of AI and Analytics

• Implications of collaborative analytics in a digitized society

• The role of AI and Analytics in social and educational inclusion/exclusion

• The role of AI and Analytics in fraud detection and other illegal activities

• Methods, approaches and frameworks to assess the ethical use of AI and Analytics

Forms of Submission

This Special Issue will consist of: (1) the best submissions from an open Call for Papers, selected on a competitive basis; and (2) invited papers that are extended or modified versions of selected papers accepted at the 20th IFIP I3E Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E2021) (I3E2021), Galway, Ireland. In the latter case, the submission will be a substantial revision of the conference publication, and the authors will be required to submit a letter detailing the difference between their conference paper and the new version. All submitted papers and invited papers will go through peer review; if an invited conference paper does not receive a satisfactory review, the paper will not be considered for the Special Issue.

Submission Instruction

Manuscripts must be submitted in PDF format to the ISF-Springer online submission system at https://www.editorialmanager.com/isfi and the authors need to select "Special Issue: Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society" during the submission process. Paper submissions must conform to the format guidelines of Information Systems Frontiers available at https://www.springer.com/journal/10796/submission-guidelines

Submissions should be approximately 32 pages double spaced including references.

Important dates

§ Submission deadline: 31st October 2021

§ Notification of first round reviews: 13th December 2021

§ Revised Manuscripts due: 31st January 2022

§ Notification of second round reviews: 14th March 2022

§ Final Version Due: 25th April 2022

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