Promoting Trust – Overcoming Barriers to AI Adoption in Professional Service Firms

Abstract

To remain competitive, Professional Service Firms (PSFs) are increasingly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and incorporating this into their business models. AI offers opportunities to generate more value for the clients and simultaneously improves operational efficiency. However, as AI continues to evolve, offering more potential benefits for firms, it also brings greater risks and challenges for users. To ensure the successful adoption of AI, it is essential that users trust that technology will not fail them. Through the case study of two mid-size legal firms in the UK, this paper explores how to promote trust in the context of AI adoption in PSFs. Our findings can be classified in four main themes that influence trust in AI: (1) technology assurances (e.g., unpacking the black box of AI); (2) personal assurance (e.g., liability and agency); (3) internal influences (e.g., peers and leaders); and, (4) the external influences (e.g., social media, regulators, professional bodies). These themes provide a new understanding of facilitating factors that can influence the adoption of new technologies, such as AI, through trust. Our research contributes to the Digital Transformation literature by exploring how individual and contextual factors influence trust in technology in the context of human-machine interaction, all of which play a crucial role in determining technology adoption.

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