The Influence of Artificial Intelligence on Project Management Decision-Making: Opportunities and Risks

Abstract

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) transforming the field of project management by many folds, there are ways in which it can transform the project management industry by streamlining each process, enhance predictive analytics as well as better decisions regarding every step. This thesis provides an investigation into the effects of AI on project management decision making based on its opportunities and risks. The research surveys 100 project managers in order to uncover the effect of AI informed predictive analytics, algorithmic AI based process automation, algorithmic risks of ethical bias. Amongst the results, positive view of AI’s role in helping to inform decisions can be seen, and significant contribution of AI tools in delivering better project outcomes. However, if decision-makers regarded ethical issues, especially algorithmic bias and data privacy, to be a major problem; then significantly lower levels of behaviors affecting decision making, especially automation, use of data, and availability of information were found. Consequently, while AI offers useful tools for maximizing project management efficiency, the prevailing avenues of endeavor in ethics are being encouraged to address the ethical challenges of optimizing project management.