Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AUGMENTED-HUMANS (Augmenting Human and Artificial Intelligence to Scale Innovation)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-08-31
The focus of the Augmented Humans project was to investigate how organisations can augment the best of human and artificial intelligence to improve business outcomes such as productivity, workforce engagement, and innovation. The project was developed in response to widespread industry concerns that organisations were experiencing low to no returns on their investment in AI technologies. The project was also responding to increasing concerns that Europe was losing its comparative advantage in the area of AI technology development, and that European businesses were sceptical about AI or reluctant to adopt the technology.
The aim of Augmented Humans was to ground-truth many of these concerns and investigate the research and capability gaps through (a) identifying the opportunities presented by AI technologies in terms of human-machine collaboration and problem solving, (b) understanding the challenges faced by organisations in adopting, integrating and enabling AI in business applications, and (c) developing best practice guidelines and practical tools and frameworks that enable organisations to take advantage of the promise offered by AI, while being mindful of the ethical and value-destruction challenges of the technology.
The aim of Augmented Humans was to ground-truth many of these concerns and investigate the research and capability gaps through (a) identifying the opportunities presented by AI technologies in terms of human-machine collaboration and problem solving, (b) understanding the challenges faced by organisations in adopting, integrating and enabling AI in business applications, and (c) developing best practice guidelines and practical tools and frameworks that enable organisations to take advantage of the promise offered by AI, while being mindful of the ethical and value-destruction challenges of the technology.
The project comprised of five Work Packages (WP) with each consisting of an objective, several research questions and significant tasks, and a key deliverable. The key achievements for each work package are as follows:
Work Package 1: Undertake a Systematic Literature Review
Results were published and presented as a full paper published and presented at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in Norway in 2023, which is one of the premier conferences in my domain of information systems:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., 2023. Human-AI Collaboration in Organizations: A Literature Review on Enabling Value Creation. The European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2023 Research Papers. Kristiansand, Norway.
We were also invited to participate at a panel session on human flourishing in the digital era with esteemed scholars in the domain at ECIS 2023. The resulting collaboration resulted in a panel publication in addition to the DoA:
Hylving, L., Koutsikouri, D., Ngwenyama, O., Raftopoulos, M., Rowe, F., and Tona, O. (2023) “Human Flourshing in the Digital Era – What Responsibility Does/Should Research(ers) Have?” ECIS 2023 Panels.
This collaboration continues with conducting further research in this field which resulted in a further journal publication the following year – this is presented under WP4 in this report.
Work Package 2: Industry Expert Interviews on Opportunities and Challenges
Results exceeded expectations for this work package as two publications were achieved. A full research paper on the expert interviews was published at one of the key information systems conferences, Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS) in 2024:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., (2024). Organizational Challenges in Adoption and Implementation of Artificial Intelligence. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2024, Waikiki, Hawaii, USA.
An additional piece of research work was undertaken in the form of an online survey to pursue a pressing research opportunity that emerged in the literature and in the interviews. This work led to an additional publication at AMCIS 2023:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., 2023. Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace: Implementation Challenges and Opportunities. The Americas’ Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2023, Panama City, Panama.
This research paper was identified by the conference organisers to be in the top 25% of papers at AMCIS 2023.
Work Package 3: Psychometric Survey on User Adoption of AI Technologies
These deliverables are completed in the form of two full research papers being currently under peer review; one as a journal article and the other as a book chapter. Best practice guidelines were prepared for dissemination and were the focus of various industry events and workshops. A culmination of the research completed to date has led to an additional journal publication with international colleagues on human flourishing in the digital era with a leading journal in information systems:
Hylving, L., Koutsikouri, D., Ngwenyama, O., Raftopoulos, M., Rowe, F., and Tona, O. (2024) “Human Flourshing in the Digital Era – What Responsibility Does/Should Research(ers) Have?” Communications of the Association for Information Systems.
Work Package 4: Participatory Design AI Futures
This Work Package was successfully completed with the development and testing of several AI design tools and frameworks which included:
• Three sets of conversation cards that explore AI functional design concepts, provocations on the dark side of AI, and human flourishing in the age of AI.
• A design card game called Creating Tiny Robots that engages stakeholders in the co-creation of rapid protypes of AI systems.
• An end-to-end design sprint process that utilizes the conversation cards and the Tiny Robots design card game in co-creation exercises.
This work led to the publication of a full research paper:
Raftopoulos, M. & Hamari. J. (2024). Designing Tiny Robots: Engaging Stakeholders in Collaborative Systems Design. In Proceedings of the 27th International Academic Mindtrek Conference (Academic Mindtrek ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.
Work Package 5: Public perceptions, ideas and preferences
The collective body of work on this project has made a contribution to various key theories in the information systems domain and are documented in the seven published plus the two that are still under peer review. A full book proposal is currently under peer review with a key academic publisher.
Work Package 1: Undertake a Systematic Literature Review
Results were published and presented as a full paper published and presented at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in Norway in 2023, which is one of the premier conferences in my domain of information systems:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., 2023. Human-AI Collaboration in Organizations: A Literature Review on Enabling Value Creation. The European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2023 Research Papers. Kristiansand, Norway.
We were also invited to participate at a panel session on human flourishing in the digital era with esteemed scholars in the domain at ECIS 2023. The resulting collaboration resulted in a panel publication in addition to the DoA:
Hylving, L., Koutsikouri, D., Ngwenyama, O., Raftopoulos, M., Rowe, F., and Tona, O. (2023) “Human Flourshing in the Digital Era – What Responsibility Does/Should Research(ers) Have?” ECIS 2023 Panels.
This collaboration continues with conducting further research in this field which resulted in a further journal publication the following year – this is presented under WP4 in this report.
Work Package 2: Industry Expert Interviews on Opportunities and Challenges
Results exceeded expectations for this work package as two publications were achieved. A full research paper on the expert interviews was published at one of the key information systems conferences, Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS) in 2024:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., (2024). Organizational Challenges in Adoption and Implementation of Artificial Intelligence. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2024, Waikiki, Hawaii, USA.
An additional piece of research work was undertaken in the form of an online survey to pursue a pressing research opportunity that emerged in the literature and in the interviews. This work led to an additional publication at AMCIS 2023:
Raftopoulos, M., and Hamari, J., 2023. Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace: Implementation Challenges and Opportunities. The Americas’ Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2023, Panama City, Panama.
This research paper was identified by the conference organisers to be in the top 25% of papers at AMCIS 2023.
Work Package 3: Psychometric Survey on User Adoption of AI Technologies
These deliverables are completed in the form of two full research papers being currently under peer review; one as a journal article and the other as a book chapter. Best practice guidelines were prepared for dissemination and were the focus of various industry events and workshops. A culmination of the research completed to date has led to an additional journal publication with international colleagues on human flourishing in the digital era with a leading journal in information systems:
Hylving, L., Koutsikouri, D., Ngwenyama, O., Raftopoulos, M., Rowe, F., and Tona, O. (2024) “Human Flourshing in the Digital Era – What Responsibility Does/Should Research(ers) Have?” Communications of the Association for Information Systems.
Work Package 4: Participatory Design AI Futures
This Work Package was successfully completed with the development and testing of several AI design tools and frameworks which included:
• Three sets of conversation cards that explore AI functional design concepts, provocations on the dark side of AI, and human flourishing in the age of AI.
• A design card game called Creating Tiny Robots that engages stakeholders in the co-creation of rapid protypes of AI systems.
• An end-to-end design sprint process that utilizes the conversation cards and the Tiny Robots design card game in co-creation exercises.
This work led to the publication of a full research paper:
Raftopoulos, M. & Hamari. J. (2024). Designing Tiny Robots: Engaging Stakeholders in Collaborative Systems Design. In Proceedings of the 27th International Academic Mindtrek Conference (Academic Mindtrek ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.
Work Package 5: Public perceptions, ideas and preferences
The collective body of work on this project has made a contribution to various key theories in the information systems domain and are documented in the seven published plus the two that are still under peer review. A full book proposal is currently under peer review with a key academic publisher.
Innovation capacity: The outcomes of the Augmented Humans research will have an impact on the innovation capacity of European organisations looking to invest in AI technologies. This will be in the form of garnering a better understanding of the opportunities and limitations of AI, and on how to better integrate and enable AI technologies in their organisations.
Products to be launched to the market: The outcomes of WP4 on the development of stakeholder co-creation methods, frameworks and tools from Creating Tiny Robots, has met with much industry interest in the form of requests for running this workshop in various academic and industry networks.
Contribution towards European policy objectives: The work of Augmented Humans contributes towards enabling the EU AI Act (2024) in terms of providing information and tools that assist organisations in building trustworthy AI, ensuring AI systems are safe and respect fundamental rights of values of EU society.
Dissemination and reach of results: The exploitation and dissemination of the results of Augmented Humans was undertaken with a rigorous campaign to share the research results. Presentations were made at 17 different conferences, seminars, and workshop sessions that reached a total number of 1,445 people in the audience. Another key measure of the dissemination and reach of Augmented Humans is the number of times the research was accessed. Using the data provided by researchgate.net and aisnet.org the research papers were accessed 8,416 times showing considerable interest and benefits to European and global stakeholders in this domain.
Products to be launched to the market: The outcomes of WP4 on the development of stakeholder co-creation methods, frameworks and tools from Creating Tiny Robots, has met with much industry interest in the form of requests for running this workshop in various academic and industry networks.
Contribution towards European policy objectives: The work of Augmented Humans contributes towards enabling the EU AI Act (2024) in terms of providing information and tools that assist organisations in building trustworthy AI, ensuring AI systems are safe and respect fundamental rights of values of EU society.
Dissemination and reach of results: The exploitation and dissemination of the results of Augmented Humans was undertaken with a rigorous campaign to share the research results. Presentations were made at 17 different conferences, seminars, and workshop sessions that reached a total number of 1,445 people in the audience. Another key measure of the dissemination and reach of Augmented Humans is the number of times the research was accessed. Using the data provided by researchgate.net and aisnet.org the research papers were accessed 8,416 times showing considerable interest and benefits to European and global stakeholders in this domain.