AI decision automation: Where it works, and where it doesn't

As artificial intelligence (AI) ascends in the marketplace, the burning question remains as to how far it can be trusted when it comes to the "last mile," the final decision that follows the analytics and recommendations that AI yields. In medicine, AI and analytics crunch through reams of data and scientific research to come up with a series of recommendations for a difficult diagnosis, but it is the expert medical practitioner who makes the final decision. In a loan-approval process, automated decision-making software reviews an application and third-party data to determine a lending decision, but the loan underwriter or supervisor makes the final decision. "Not all decisions in organizations can be fully automated, and some of these will require human intervention," said Arash Aghlara, CEO of Flexrule, which produces decision automation software. "Decision automation should allow scenarios in which fully automated decisions are not possible because of ambiguities, uncertainty, and so on regarding the decisions.