Decision support through knowledge management: the role of the artificial intelligence

TLDR

Knowledge management is gaining traction across academia and industry, its interdependence with decision support is recognized, yet the role of artificial intelligence as a key yet contested building block remains underexplored. This paper aims to improve understanding of AI’s role in knowledge management. The authors analyze basic AI technologies’ potential and limitations for supporting KM and propose directions for next‑generation decision support environments.

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) has recently received considerable attention in the computer information systems community and is continuously gaining interest in industry, enterprises and government. Decision support and KM processes are interdependent activities in many organisations. In all cases, decision makers always combine different types of data and knowledge available in various forms in the organisation. One of the key—but also criticised—building blocks for advancing this field of KM and consequently supporting the decision-making is artificial intelligence (AI). In this framework, this paper aims to improve the understanding of the role of AI towards KM. It examines and discusses both the potential and the limitations of basic AI technologies in terms of their capability to support the KM process and shares thoughts and estimations on further research on the development of the next generation decision support environments.