The Role of The AI Availability and Perceived Risks on AI Adoption and Organizational Values

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence in various machines which are programmed to think like humans. AI could have many forms, such as Natural language Processing (NLP), expert systems, unsupervised learning, content extraction, question answering, image recognition, machine vision, speech to text and machine translation, and Robotics. Despite the potential of AI technologies, little is known about their adoption by organizations worldwide, and especially in the Arab World and the Middle East. Thus, this research intends to investigate the relationships and the impact of the availability of AI technologies and the associated perceived risks on AI adoption in organizations and its perceived organizational values, and also considering two mediating variables: AI replacing humans and AI creating jobs, in one Arab and Gulf country, the UAE. By reviewing the literature and describing the AI applications and services available in UAE, a research model was proposed and tested quantitatively on a sample of 150 employees who are familiar with organizational AI technologies. The results revealed that the availability of AI technologies significantly impacts organizations’ decisions to adopt those technologies in the UAE. In addition, the more the AI applications are available, the more the AI will be replacing humans in job positions and opportunities. On the other hand, perceived security, privacy, and technical risks can significantly influence organizations’ intentions to adopt AI technologies, and can, surprisingly, contribute to creating new job opportunities which serve the human side positively. The research concludes with some implications, limitations, and future directions.