Assessing and managing business risks for Artificial Intelligence based business process automation

Abstract

Purpose – the number of projects and amount of investment into Artificial Intelligence (AI) based business process automation is increasing. To utilize the power of AI, business organizations shall achieve a certain level of digital maturity that enables of handling the risks arising from AI. AI brings new risk factors to their life that has to be reduced to an acceptable level. If risk mitigation procedures are not in place, then AI might cause a greater headache than a market advantage resulting in expensive implementation with no business benefit. Research methodology – the objective is to analyze what risk factors can AI bring with itself to the life of corporations by analyzing general IT risk assessment processes and the stages of AI development. Findings – We observed that current IT risk assessment methodologies don’t detail possible risk scenarios regarding intelligent applications and don’t extend their threat catalogs to help organizations consider threats related to AI. Research limitations – the research work details possible risks for general AI development that might differ across industries, business cases, specific algorithms etc. Practical implications – the research contributes to organizations to assess possible risks arising from the use of AI. Originality/Value – since AI based automation is the result of recent research work, analyzing risk management aspects of its use can be considered as a new field for further research.