To Engage or Not to Engage with AI for Critical Judgments: How Professionals Deal with Opacity When Using AI for Medical Diagnosis

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies promise to transform how professionals conduct knowledge work by augmenting their capabilities for making professional judgments. We know little, however, about how human-AI augmentation takes place in practice. Yet, gaining this understanding is particularly important when professionals use AI tools to form judgments on critical decisions. We conducted an in-depth field study in a major U.S. hospital where AI tools were used in three departments by diagnostic radiologists making breast cancer, lung cancer, and bone age determinations. The study illustrates the hindering effects of opacity that professionals experienced when using AI tools and explores how these professionals grappled with it in practice. In all three departments, this opacity resulted in professionals experiencing increased uncertainty because AI tool results often diverged from their initial judgment without providing underlying reasoning. Only in one department (of the three) did professionals consistently incorporate AI results into their final judgments, achieving what we call engaged augmentation. These professionals invested in AI interrogation practices—practices enacted by human experts to relate their own knowledge claims to AI knowledge claims. Professionals in the other two departments did not enact such practices and did not incorporate AI inputs into their final decisions, which we call unengaged “augmentation.” Our study unpacks the challenges involved in augmenting professional judgment with powerful, yet opaque, technologies and contributes to literature on AI adoption in knowledge work.

Attended Process Automation in Audit: A Framework and A Demonstration

This study responds to an increasing need for research on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in external auditing, especially research that concerns auditors’ roles in an RPA-enabled audit workflow. Since more than half of the audit tasks require certain levels of auditors’ judgment and cannot be fully automated (e.g., Abdolmohammadi 1999), audit automation should include attended automation, in which auditors work alongside and interact with automation routines. This paper adopts the Design Science Research (DSR) approach and proposes an Attended Process Automation (APA) framework that guides the implementation of attended automation in audits. This paper also demonstrates the APA framework by applying it to the planning process for Single Audits, a government-required external audit for beneficiaries of funding. The APA framework emphasizes auditors' vital role in an automated audit workflow in providing professional judgments that are currently irreplaceable by automation.

Conflicts of Interest

This chapter defines the term “conflicts of interest,” which encompasses a wide spectrum of behaviors or actions potentially involving personal gain or financial interest. It explains that conflicts of interest are defined as circumstances that create a risk that professional judgments or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest. It also distinguishes between institutional and individual conflicts of interest, noting that the former is usually only of a financial nature, while individual conflicts of interest may also be non-financial. The chapter discusses how several eminent institutions have addressed conflicts of interest, some of whom have issued guidelines containing practical recommendations for handling both real and potential conflicts. It mentions the World Medical Association's statement that addresses the particular situation of a physician who both works in a clinical setting and engages in research, and reiterates the fundamental criterion that the well-being of the patient overrides all other interests.

The effect of attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions on professional and student risk judgments

Attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions is an area with growing research interest, but the effects of such attitudes on professional judgments is largely unexplored. What is known from the existing literature is that attitudes guide the interpretation of sexual crime related information, which cascade into potential biased or heuristically driven judgments. In this study we recruited samples of both students (n = 341) and forensic professionals (n = 186) to explore whether attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions predicted risk judgments of hypothetical sexual offense scenarios, and whether this relationship is moderated by professional status or perpetrator characteristics. Forensic professionals expressed more positive attitudes overall, but the significant effect of attitudes on risk judgments was consistent between participant groups and was not moderated by perpetrator age or sex. We suggest that relying on attitudes as a basis for risk judgments opens the door to incorrect (and potentially dangerous) decision-making and discuss our data in terms of their potential clinical implications.

INTEGRATED EVALUATION OF FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN UKRAINE

Low level of financial literacy and coverage of the population with banking services is one of the urgent problems of Ukrainian society. Methodical approaches to a comprehensive integrated assessment of the level of financial inclusion are proposed. The key components of financial inclusion (FI) have been identified, which include: welfare, awareness, accessibility, involvement and usage. Their economic meaning, logical sequence and interconnectedness are revealed. An algorithm for evaluation is proposed, which includes successive stages: substantiation of FI components; selection of analytical indicators for each component; calculation of sub-indexes of components and their normalization; weighing sub-indexes based on professional judgments; calculation of the resulting indicator — the integrated index of financial inclusion (IFI). For each component of financial inclusion, a primary set of analytical indicators-indicators is formed, which are divided into stimulators and disincentives. For all components, their standardized value and significance factor are calculated. A «thermal» mapping of the dynamics of sub-indexes by components for 2000—2019 was carried out. It was found that the intensification of the development of non-cash payments and digital banking services contributed to the growth of the component of usage, and the reduction in the number of banking institutions led to a decrease in the level of availability of banking services. A comprehensive economic and statistical assessment of the level of financial inclusion in Ukraine has been carried out. Integral IFI is calculated as the geometric mean of individual sub-indexes. A composite map of financial inclusion of the population of Ukraine is constructed. The map clearly shows the low indicators of the basic components of financial inclusion — well-being and awareness. The directions of improvement of the methodology by expanding the list of analytical indicators are substantiated. The main problems and destructive factors that reduce the level of financial inclusion in the country are highlighted. It is substantiated that the method of assessing the level of financial inclusion is necessary for monitoring and preventive identification of possible problems.Keywords: financial inclusion, components of financial inclusion, accessibility, involvement, usage, analytical indicators, indices of financial inclusion, map of financial inclusion, integrated indicator of financial inclusion. JEL Classification: D14, E21, G02, Е27 Formulas: 3; fig.: 4; tabl.: 2; bibl.: 20.

RooT37 – CUTA’s TRA Tool in Response to a Changing Threat Landscape

In this chapter the authors discuss the establishment of the Belgian ‘Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis’ (CUTA), its remits and fields of competence and how its scope was widened in the last few years because of changes in the threat landscape of problematic radicalization, extremism and terrorism and the changing tactics of the Belgian government to tackle them. In the second part of this chapter the authors elaborate on ‘RooT37’, a risk assessment tool that was tailor-made by CUTA to address its newly assigned tasks in the framework of the revised Belgian Action Plan on Radicalism. The tool takes several risk indicators into account to aid CUTA’s experts in making structured professional judgments about threats and risks posed by monitored individuals, and semi-automatically produces a threat level. Furthermore, it provides CUTA’s support agencies with clues for further investigation based on discovered information gaps through the assessment. Finally, it also points out opportunities for coordinated intervention by partner services to reduce the risk posed by monitored individuals. Certain characteristics of the methodology of the tool are described in more detail, as well as its advantages and some challenges for the future.

The Ethical Algorithm: Journalist/Whistleblower Relationships Explored Through the Lens of Social Exchange

This study examined the ethical and professional judgments journalists consider when deciding to trust a whistleblower and determined how whistleblowers influence ethical and newsgathering processes. With a qualitative study, this research uncovered common ethical and procedural considerations journalists, who are influenced by gatekeeping forces, make when presented with information from a whistleblower, with the goal to create a conceptual model—an “ethical algorithm”—that journalists employ when deciding to publish whistleblower disclosures. In addition, the decision to build a trust relationship with a whistleblower is examined from the frameworks of ethical considerations, professional standards, and ethics codes. Finally, the journalist–whistleblower relationship is considered as a form of social exchange, a negotiated relationship in which parties determine trust as a result of an exchange of mutually beneficial acts.