Unplanned effects of intelligent agents on Internet use: a social informatics approach

This paper instigates a discourse on the unplanned effects of intelligent agents in the context of their use on the Internet. By utilizing a social informatics framework as a lens of analysis, the study identifies several unanticipated consequences of using intelligent agents for information- and commerce-based tasks on the Internet. The effects include those that transpire over time at the organizational level, such as e-commerce transformation, operational encumbrance and security overload, as well as those that emerge on a cultural level, such as trust affliction, skills erosion, privacy attrition and social detachment. Furthermore, three types of impacts are identified: economic, policy, and social. The discussion contends that economic impacts occur on the organizational level, social effects transpire on a cultural level, and policy impacts take place on both levels. These effects of the use of intelligent agents have seldom been predicted and discussed by visionaries, rese...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: AIS
• Authors: Alexander Serenko, Umar Ruhi, Mihail Cocosila
• Keywords: AIS 2007, Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Agents, Organizational Level, Social