Public Decision Making: Connecting Artificial Intelligence and Crowds

The recent breakthrough of artificial intelligence, as well as the wide adoption of the wisdom of the crowd, also known as collective intelligence, across sectors, has received attention and excitement across disciplines. In addition to the scientific breakthrough, recent public sector studies recognize AI's potential contributions in public services, such as big data for decision making, the development of smart cities, and social and health care. Studies have also recognized crowdsourcing's potential for service provisions, innovation, information generation, and policymaking. However, we have only a limited understanding of the connections between these two types of intelligence and adoption conditions to properly utilize them for the public sector. To understand what roles AI and crowds can play in enhancing public services and policymaking, we adopt a bibliometric analysis to identify emerging themes and interconnections between these two streams of literature. Our study provides key themes and significance for each cluster. Our first examination of AI and crowd literature regarding connection to public values, complementary in public decision making, as well as future potential for joint adoption by governments provides some implications for future considerations.