Open research questions in Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
1,608 gap statements mined from Ethics and Social Impacts of AI papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 6,883 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.
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What the literature leaves open
The research highlights the need for project managers to develop AI-related competencies. The paper notes the challenge of balancing human and AI capabilities in project work.
Conceptualizing the AI Project Manager: Role Attributes and Competencies for Managing Projects in AI-Driven Organizations · 2026 · DOIThe literature lacks a clear definition of the AI project manager role. There is a gap in understanding the competency profile associated with this role. The study addresses this gap by exploring the role attributes and competencies through expert interviews.
Conceptualizing the AI Project Manager: Role Attributes and Competencies for Managing Projects in AI-Driven Organizations · 2026 · DOIThe need to ensure rigour in the interpretive tradition through reflexivity, transparency of coding decisions, and plausibility checks.
Link ethical debates to corporate governance and information asymmetry frameworks to address the accountability gap between organisations, employees, and technology vendors. Leverage cross-disciplinary theories to expand current understandings of inclusivity and well-being. Explore how DEI-driven human capital management, augmented by AI, affects organisational performance, employee well-being, and societal outcomes.
Artificial Intelligence and the Empowerment of Vulnerable and Minority Employees: A Systematic Review · 2026 · DOIThe lack of a systematic review of the emerging literature on AI and its impact on vulnerable and minority employees. The need to consider theoretical perspectives, such as congruity theory, social role theory, and feminist design thinking, in interpreting AI's organizational consequences. The importance of examining the intersection of AI and vulnerable and minority employees in the workplace.
Artificial Intelligence and the Empowerment of Vulnerable and Minority Employees: A Systematic Review · 2026 · DOIThe paper identifies a gap in the assessment of LLMs, which tends to focus on concerns over synthetic content and misinformation. It argues that a more profound threat lies in the disruption of the textual relationship between citizens and institutions. The paper fills this gap by developing a framework for evaluating the implications of LLMs on democratic systems.
Truth, text, and technology: critical reflections on the institutional implications of generative artificial intelligence · 2026 · DOIThe paper identifies the challenge of conducting research in a prison setting, where access and ethics can be complex issues. It highlights the need for researchers to be reflexive and aware of their own biases and assumptions when studying AI. The paper also notes the challenge of balancing the potential benefits of AI with the need for critical evaluation and contextualization.
Critical myths of AI: ethnographic reflections on tuberculosis diagnosis and care in Tacumbu Prison, Paraguay · 2026 · DOIThe need to balance statistical performance with fairness, as improving one often comes at the cost of the other.
It highlights the need to address the ethical implications of AI-enabled social engineering. The study notes the challenge of ensuring human autonomy in the face of emerging AI architectures.
Editorial: Integrating AI in social engineering: impacts and ethics across business, medicine, and industry · 2026 · DOIThe need to address the technical challenge of analyzing and comparing texts in multiple languages.
Who is feared and who is protected? A multilingual audit of gendered emotional framing of migrants in generative AI · 2026 · DOIThe lack of a controlled examination of the intersection of migration, gender, emotional framing, and multilingual generation. The need for a nuanced understanding of algorithmic counter-framing in migration communication. The gap in existing research on the emotional framing of migrants in generative AI.
Who is feared and who is protected? A multilingual audit of gendered emotional framing of migrants in generative AI · 2026 · DOIIt highlights the need to examine the governance discourses of these platforms and their impact on academic authorship and epistemic authority.
Governing the hybrid writer: ethics-washing discourse and algorithmic governmentality in academic AI platforms · 2026 · DOIIt notes the need to address ethical and regulatory concerns about relying on AI. The study highlights the importance of considering user characteristics, such as resistance to change and digital literacy.
The Proof Is in the Eating: Lessons Learnt from One Year of Generative AI Adoption in a Science-for-Policy Organisation · 2025 · DOIIt notes the lack of studies on the adoption of Generative AI in organisations. The study highlights the need for a conceptual framework to harness GenAI's potential while mitigating risks.
The Proof Is in the Eating: Lessons Learnt from One Year of Generative AI Adoption in a Science-for-Policy Organisation · 2025 · DOIThe associations between students' socio-economic background and their attitudes toward AI are not well understood. Prior research has shown inconclusive findings regarding the impact of socio-cultural factors on attitudes toward AI.
University Students’ Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence: An Exploratory Study of the Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioural Dimensions of AI Attitudes · 2024 · DOIThe lack of an age-and culturally-appropriate conceptual framework for early childhood AI literacy. The need for a framework that informs early AI educational initiatives.
Safety, Identity, Attitude, Cognition, and Capability: The ‘SIACC’ Framework of Early Childhood AI Literacy · 2024 · DOIHowever, the structural risks to human rights produced by accelerating technological change in sport – most notably the concentration of data power, the normalisation of surveillance, algorithmic inequality, and data commodification – remain insufficiently examined.
Datafied athletes and the limits of human rights in sport: Algorithmic governance and digital inequality in the Fourth Industrial Revolution · 2026 · DOIYet causal reasoning in sociotechnical systems remains uncertain: relevant confounders may be unobserved, causal directions contested, and conclusions sensitive to modeling assumptions and representational choices.
Causal Humility: Governing the Authority of Fairness Claims Under Causal Uncertainty · 2026Developing new fairness metrics that take into account the specific needs of different populations.
The potential risks of sourcing algorithms are little known. Current methods for evaluating discrimination in hiring may fail to detect the effects of discriminatory sourcing algorithms.
Sourcing algorithms: Rethinking fairness in hiring in the era of algorithmic recruitment · 2024 · DOIRevisiting one’s own AI ethnographies in light of contrasting cases is not only good scholarly practice but methodologically necessary in a rapidly changing technical…
Critical myths of AI: ethnographic reflections on tuberculosis diagnosis and care in Tacumbu Prison, Paraguay · 2026 · DOIInvestigate how decentralized AAI, locally adaptive autonomous systems, and multimodal AI acting on behalf of users can be designed to safeguard human autonomy and equitably amplify localized capabilities across diverse socio-economic…
Editorial: Integrating AI in social engineering: impacts and ethics across business, medicine, and industry · 2026 · DOIAdvance and coordinate AI safety science, - Develop practical techniques, tools, best practices, and technologies for designing and building safe AI systems, - Develop standards and conformity assessment mechanisms for safe…
Solutions for frontier AI safety: the case for science-driven international cooperation and standardization at a time of radical transformations · 2026 · DOIConduct longitudinal CDA to track discursive shifts - Employ digital ethnographic methods and systematic interface audits to study whether and how policies are materially enacted, and whether and how students negotiate them tactically - Explore the interplay between institutional, national, and platform governance layers - Investigate disciplinary differences in the uptake and interpretation of platform…
Governing the hybrid writer: ethics-washing discourse and algorithmic governmentality in academic AI platforms · 2026 · DOIFurther research is needed to examine the effects of sourcing algorithms in real-world hiring processes, - Research is needed to develop methods for evaluating discrimination in hiring that take into account the role of sourcing algorithms, - Studies should investigate the impact of sourcing algorithms on different demographic…
Sourcing algorithms: Rethinking fairness in hiring in the era of algorithmic recruitment · 2024 · DOI
Most-cited papers in Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning · ACM Computing Surveys · 2021 · 4,497 citations
- GPT-3: Its Nature, Scope, Limits, and Consequences · Minds and Machines · 2020 · 2,251 citations
- Artificial Intelligence and Management: The Automation–Augmentation Paradox · Academy of Management Review · 2021 · 1,776 citations
- Algorithm appreciation: People prefer algorithmic to human judgment · Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2019 · 1,740 citations
- Conceptualizing AI literacy: An exploratory review · Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence · 2021 · 1,727 citations
- Seeing without knowing: Limitations of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic accountability · New Media & Society · 2016 · 1,363 citations
- Artificial Intelligence and the Public Sector—Applications and Challenges · International Journal of Public Administration · 2018 · 1,073 citations
- In AI we trust? Perceptions about automated decision-making by artificial intelligence · AI & Society · 2020 · 910 citations
- Generative AI and the future of education: Ragnarök or reformation? A paradoxical perspective from management educators · The International Journal of Management Education · 2023 · 860 citations
- The ethics of AI in health care: A mapping review · Social Science & Medicine · 2020 · 844 citations
Most recent work
- Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence · Science · 2026
- Paper 4 — Role Society: Human Discretion, Accountability, and Non-Identifiable Role Coordination in the AGI Era · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- Paper 7 — AGI Output Governance: Candidate Outputs, Human Discretion, and Evidentiary Boundaries in the AGI Era · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- Paper 8 — HTS-Based Evidence Sealing in the AGI Era: Preserving Output History, Human Discretion, and Evidentiary References · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies · The Lancet Psychiatry · 2026
- Paper 11 - Structural Operating Framework for the AI+AGI Era · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence: Rethinking Organization and Work in an Era of Rapid Technological Change · Journal of Management Studies · 2026
- The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI · Management Science · 2026
- SΔϕ-57 — Lent Thought: Thought Ownership, World-Binding, and Cost Attribution in Human-AI Reasoning · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- Linking AI awareness with AI crafting: A dual-stage moderated mediation model · Current Psychology · 2026
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