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IT’s Impressive, but Sometimes Misleading Track Record

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Managing Knowledge in Organizations

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Abstract

In this chapter, technology’s (robotics, learning algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), etc.) impressive progress and inroads are briefly presented. Anthropomorphisms associated to AI and learning algorithms are then discussed, followed by AI’s current limitations regarding the Turing Test. Natural language conversation remains a human endeavor because of its messy, ambiguous, uncertain, and complex nature. Involving an entanglement of tacit, explicit, social, and individual dimensions, natural language’s success can only be achieved across mètis—which, in turn, and as we have argued in previous chapters, is a uniquely human capability. The chapter concludes, across arguments and justifications, how artificial systems which draw upon IT technologies such as robots and AI are powerful tools able to process a staggering quantity of data and data sources across manipulations and calculations which humans alone cannot handle. This is the stuff of defined complexity. On the other hand, such systems without human intervention can quickly lead to flawed decision outcomes and actions in the face of environments, which, more often than not, involve an intricate and interwoven combination of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

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  1. University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    W. David Holford

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Holford, W.D. (2020). IT’s Impressive, but Sometimes Misleading Track Record. In: Managing Knowledge in Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41156-5_4

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