Decision-making is a driving force – it initiates action: to what extent is a person willing to delegate decision-making to assisting technology?

Sirle Lumi, Junior Researcher and PhD Candidate at Estonian Business School
- Digitalization and Data

My research interest lies in exploring to what extent and how adequately technology can replace humans in making decisions. At the Estonian Business School, my doctoral thesis investigates the decision-making mechanisms of job portals and their suitability and impact on both job and service seekers and providers. This topic is particularly relevant given the extent to which services are already mediated through platform solutions, where algorithms decide which people to connect.

The pace of technological advancement continues at a rate that could not have been predicted 5 or 10 years ago. Increasingly, the question arises about the relationship between humans and technology and who directs whom. Will activities and trends be shaped by self-learning technology with minimal human intervention, or will humans maintain a leading position in making choices and decisions? Scientific research in this field is crucial, as it is otherwise difficult to determine the impact of technological development on people's well-being and societal processes.

Without understanding the impact of technological development, a situation may arise where people, out of convenience or ignorance, let automatic decisions shape their life's important choices. The issue is certainly broader than just the selection or recommendation of a product, service, or job by a machine. The question is whether, as a result of automatic choices, a person can fully realize themselves or whether they fall into a vicious cycle where each subsequent possible choice is based on previous history. This could exclude changes and make breaking out of ingrained patterns very difficult.