A comparative survey of artificial intelligence applications in finance: artificial neural networks, expert system and hybrid intelligent systems

How can AI-integrated applications affect the financial engineers' psychological safety and work-life balance: Chinese and Iranian financial engineers and administrators' perspectives

BACKGROUND

The integration of AI in finance has significantly reshaped the role of financial engineers, improving efficiency and decision-making. However, it also affects psychological safety and work-life balance. Financial engineers face increased pressure to keep up with evolving technologies, fear of job displacement due to automation, and blurred boundaries between work and personal life. Exploring the link between AI applications, psychological well-being, and work-life balance is crucial for optimizing individual performance and organizational success, ensuring a sustainable and supportive work environment.

OBJECTIVES

This qualitative study investigates how AI-integrated finance applications influence financial engineers' psychological safety and work-life balance. By exploring financial engineers' lived experiences and perceptions, the study seeks to provide insights into the human implications of AI adoption in finance.

METHODOLOGY

The study utilized qualitative research methods, specifically thematic analysis, to examine data from 20 informants selected through theoretical sampling. Thematic analysis techniques were employed to identify recurring patterns, themes, and meanings within the data, allowing for a rich exploration of the research questions.

FINDINGS

Data analysis revealed several themes related to the impact of AI-integrated applications on financial engineers' psychological safety and work-life balance. These themes include the perception of job security, the role of automation in workload management, and the implications of AI for professional identity and job satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS

This study's findings highlight the multifaceted effects of AI integration in finance, shedding light on the opportunities and challenges it presents for financial engineers. While AI offers potential benefits such as increased efficiency and productivity, it raises concerns about job security and work-related stress. Overall, the study underscores the importance of considering the human implications of AI adoption in finance and calls for proactive measures to support the well-being of financial professionals in an AI-driven environment.

The (Im)perfect Automation Schema: Who Is Trusted More, Automated or Human Decision Support?

OBJECTIVE

This study's purpose was to better understand the dynamics of trust attitude and behavior in human-agent interaction.

BACKGROUND

Whereas past research provided evidence for a perfect automation schema, more recent research has provided contradictory evidence.

METHOD

To disentangle these conflicting findings, we conducted an online experiment using a simulated medical X-ray task. We manipulated the framing of support agents (i.e., artificial intelligence (AI) versus expert versus novice) between-subjects and failure experience (i.e., perfect support, imperfect support, back-to-perfect support) within subjects. Trust attitude and behavior as well as perceived reliability served as dependent variables.

RESULTS

Trust attitude and perceived reliability were higher for the human expert than for the AI than for the human novice. Moreover, the results showed the typical pattern of trust formation, dissolution, and restoration for trust attitude and behavior as well as perceived reliability. Forgiveness after failure experience did not differ between agents.

CONCLUSION

The results strongly imply the existence of an imperfect automation schema. This illustrates the need to consider agent expertise for human-agent interaction.

APPLICATION

When replacing human experts with AI as support agents, the challenge of lower trust attitude towards the novel agent might arise.

The application of artificial intelligence in health financing: a scoping review

INTRODUCTION

Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a significant advancement in technology, and it is crucial for policymakers to incorporate AI thinking into policies and to fully explore, analyze and utilize massive data and conduct AI-related policies. AI has the potential to optimize healthcare financing systems. This study provides an overview of the AI application domains in healthcare financing.

METHOD

We conducted a scoping review in six steps: formulating research questions, identifying relevant studies by conducting a comprehensive literature search using appropriate keywords, screening titles and abstracts for relevance, reviewing full texts of relevant articles, charting extracted data, and compiling and summarizing findings. Specifically, the research question sought to identify the applications of artificial intelligence in health financing supported by the published literature and explore potential future applications. PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched between 2000 and 2023.

RESULTS

We discovered that AI has a significant impact on various aspects of health financing, such as governance, revenue raising, pooling, and strategic purchasing. We provide evidence-based recommendations for establishing and improving the health financing system based on AI.

CONCLUSIONS

To ensure that vulnerable groups face minimum challenges and benefit from improved health financing, we urge national and international institutions worldwide to use and adopt AI tools and applications.

DEBI-NN: Distance-encoding biomorphic-informational neural networks for minimizing the number of trainable parameters

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) approaches mainly rely on neural network (NN) or deep NN methodologies. However, these approaches require large amounts of data to train, given, that the number of their trainable parameters has a polynomial relationship to their neuron counts. This property renders deep NNs challenging to apply in fields operating with small, albeit representative datasets such as healthcare. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network architecture which trains spatial positions of neural soma and axon pairs, where weights are calculated by axon-soma distances of connected neurons. We refer to this method as distance-encoding biomorphic-informational (DEBI) neural network. This concept significantly minimizes the number of trainable parameters compared to conventional neural networks. We demonstrate that DEBI models can yield comparable predictive performance in tabular and imaging datasets, where they require a fraction of trainable parameters compared to conventional NNs, resulting in a highly scalable solution.

Application of artificial intelligence to corelate food formulations to disease risk prediction: a comprehensive review

Clinicians and administrators are applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) Techniques widely as the promising results of their applications in the healthcare have been established. The meaningful impact of the AI applications will be limited unless it is coherently applied with human diagnosis and inputs from specialist clinician. This will help to address limitations and take advantage of the promises of the AI techniques. Machine Learning is one of the AI technique that finds high relevance in the medicine and health care. This review provides an overall glimpse of current practices and research outcomes of the application of the AI techniques in the healthcare and medical practices. It further describes Machine Learning Techniques in disease prediction and scope for food formulations for combatting disease.

Calibrating a Transformer-Based Model's Confidence on Community-Engaged Research Studies: Decision Support Evaluation Study

BACKGROUND

Deep learning offers great benefits in classification tasks such as medical imaging diagnostics or stock trading, especially when compared with human-level performances, and can be a viable option for classifying distinct levels within community-engaged research (CEnR). CEnR is a collaborative approach between academics and community partners with the aim of conducting research that is relevant to community needs while incorporating diverse forms of expertise. In the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI), training multiple models to obtain the highest validation accuracy is common practice; however, it can overfit toward that specific data set and not generalize well to a real-world population, which creates issues of bias and potentially dangerous algorithmic decisions. Consequently, if we plan on automating human decision-making, there is a need for creating techniques and exhaustive evaluative processes for these powerful unexplainable models to ensure that we do not incorporate and blindly trust poor AI models to make real-world decisions.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to conduct an evaluation study to see whether our most accurate transformer-based models derived from previous studies could emulate our own classification spectrum for tracking CEnR studies as well as whether the use of calibrated confidence scores was meaningful.

METHODS

We compared the results from 3 domain experts, who classified a sample of 45 studies derived from our university's institutional review board database, with those from 3 previously trained transformer-based models, as well as investigated whether calibrated confidence scores can be a viable technique for using AI in a support role for complex decision-making systems.

RESULTS

Our findings reveal that certain models exhibit an overestimation of their performance through high confidence scores, despite not achieving the highest validation accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS

Future studies should be conducted with larger sample sizes to generalize the results more effectively. Although our study addresses the concerns of bias and overfitting in deep learning models, there is a need to further explore methods that allow domain experts to trust our models more. The use of a calibrated confidence score can be a misleading metric when determining our AI model's level of competency.

Validity and reliability of the Chinese version of Threats of Artificial Intelligence Scale (TAI) in Chinese adults

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely used in fields such as medical treatment, while the threat of artificial intelligence has also received extensive attention. However, this topic has been only limitedly explored in China. To provide a measurement tool for AI threat research in China, this study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of the Threats of Artificial Intelligence Scale (TAI) in two Chinese samples of adults (N1 = 654, N2 = 1483). Results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggested that the one-factor model of TAI as the best fitting model. Furthermore, the Chinese TAI was significantly related to Positive and Negative Affect Scale and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, proving good criterion-related validity of the Chinese TAI. In sum, this study suggested the Chinese version of the TAI as a reliable and effective tool in assessing AI threat in the Chinese context. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Reinforcement Learning for Quantitative Trading

Quantitative trading (QT), which refers to the usage of mathematical models and data-driven techniques in analyzing the financial market, has been a popular topic in both academia and financial industry since 1970s. In the last decade, reinforcement learning (RL) has garnered significant interest in many domains such as robotics and video games, owing to its outstanding ability on solving complex sequential decision making problems. RL’s impact is pervasive, recently demonstrating its ability to conquer many challenging QT tasks. It is a flourishing research direction to explore RL techniques’ potential on QT tasks. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive survey of research efforts on RL-based methods for QT tasks. More concretely, we devise a taxonomy of RL-based QT models, along with a comprehensive summary of the state of the art. Finally, we discuss current challenges and propose future research directions in this exciting field.

The Future Is Coming: Artificial Intelligence in the Treatment of Infertility Could Improve Assisted Reproduction Outcomes-The Value of Regulatory Frameworks

Infertility is a global health issue affecting women and men of reproductive age with increasing incidence worldwide, in part due to greater awareness and better diagnosis. Assisted reproduction technologies (ART) are considered the ultimate step in the treatment of infertility. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has been progressively used in the many fields of medicine, integrating knowledge and computer science through machine learning algorithms. AI has the potential to improve infertility diagnosis and ART outcomes estimated as pregnancy and/or live birth rate, especially with recurrent ART failure. A broad-ranging review has been conducted, focusing on clinical AI applications up until September 2022, which could be estimated in terms of possible applications, such as ultrasound monitoring of folliculogenesis, endometrial receptivity, embryo selection based on quality and viability, and prediction of post implantation embryo development, in order to eliminate potential contributing risk factors. Oocyte morphology assessment is highly relevant in terms of successful fertilization rate, as well as during oocyte freezing for fertility preservation, and substantially valuable in oocyte donation cycles. AI has great implications in the assessment of male infertility, with computerised semen analysis systems already in use and a broad spectrum of possible AI-based applications in environmental and lifestyle evaluation to predict semen quality. In addition, considerable progress has been made in terms of harnessing AI in cases of idiopathic infertility, to improve the stratification of infertile/fertile couples based on their biological and clinical signatures. With AI as a very powerful tool of the future, our review is meant to summarise current AI applications and investigations in contemporary reproduction medicine, mainly focusing on the nonsurgical aspects of it; in addition, the authors have briefly explored the frames of reference and guiding principles for the definition and implementation of legal, regulatory, and ethical standards for AI in healthcare.

A convolutional neural network based approach to financial time series prediction

Financial time series are chaotic that, in turn, leads their predictability to be complex and challenging. This paper presents a novel financial time series prediction hybrid that involves Chaos Theory, Convolutional neural network (CNN), and Polynomial Regression (PR). The financial time series is first checked in this hybrid for the presence of chaos. The chaos in the series of times is later modeled using Chaos Theory. The modeled time series is input to CNN to obtain initial predictions. The error series obtained from CNN predictions is fit by PR to get error predictions. The error predictions and initial predictions from CNN are added to obtain the final predictions of the hybrid model. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid (Chaos+CNN+PR) is tested by using three types of Foreign exchange rates of financial time series (INR/USD, JPY/USD, SGD/USD), commodity prices (Gold, Crude Oil, Soya beans), and stock market indices (S&P 500, Nifty 50, Shanghai Composite). The proposed hybrid is superior to Auto-regressive integrated moving averages (ARIMA), Prophet, Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Random Forest (RF), CNN, Chaos+CART, Chaos+RF and Chaos+CNN in terms of MSE, MAPE, Dstat, and Theil’s U.

Challenging presumed technological superiority when working with (artificial) colleagues

Technological advancements are ubiquitously supporting or even replacing humans in all areas of life, bringing the potential for human-technology symbiosis but also novel challenges. To address these challenges, we conducted three experiments in different task contexts ranging from loan assignment over X-Ray evaluation to process industry. Specifically, we investigated the impact of support agent (artificial intelligence, decision support system, or human) and failure experience (one vs. none) on trust-related aspects of human-agent interaction. This included not only the subjective evaluation of the respective agent in terms of trust, reliability, and responsibility, when working together, but also a change in perspective to the willingness to be assessed oneself by the agent. In contrast to a presumed technological superiority, we show a general advantage with regard to trust and responsibility of human support over both technical support systems (i.e., artificial intelligence and decision support system), regardless of task context from the collaborative perspective. This effect reversed to a preference for technical systems when switching the perspective to being assessed. These findings illustrate an imperfect automation schema from the perspective of the advice-taker and demonstrate the importance of perspective when working with or being assessed by machine intelligence.

An Overview of Medical Electronic Hardware Security and Emerging Solutions

Electronic healthcare technology is widespread around the world and creates massive potential to improve clinical outcomes and transform care delivery. However, there are increasing concerns with respect to the cyber vulnerabilities of medical tools, malicious medical errors, and security attacks on healthcare data and devices. Increased connectivity to existing computer networks has exposed the medical devices/systems and their communicating data to new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Adversaries leverage the state-of-the-art technologies, in particular artificial intelligence and computer vision-based techniques, in order to launch stronger and more detrimental attacks on the medical targets. The medical domain is an attractive area for cybercrimes for two fundamental reasons: (a) it is rich resource of valuable and sensitive data; and (b) its protection and defensive mechanisms are weak and ineffective. The attacks aim to steal health information from the patients, manipulate the medical information and queries, maliciously change the medical diagnosis, decisions, and prescriptions, etc. A successful attack in the medical domain causes serious damage to the patient’s health and even death. Therefore, cybersecurity is critical to patient safety and every aspect of the medical domain, while it has not been studied sufficiently. To tackle this problem, new human- and computer-based countermeasures are researched and proposed for medical attacks using the most effective software and hardware technologies, such as artificial intelligence and computer vision. This review provides insights to the novel and existing solutions in the literature that mitigate cyber risks, errors, damage, and threats in the medical domain. We have performed a scoping review analyzing the four major elements in this area (in order from a medical perspective): (1) medical errors; (2) security weaknesses of medical devices at software- and hardware-level; (3) artificial intelligence and/or computer vision in medical applications; and (4) cyber attacks and defenses in the medical domain. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and computer vision are key topics in this review and their usage in all these four elements are discussed. The review outcome delivers the solutions through building and evaluating the connections among these elements in order to serve as a beneficial guideline for medical electronic hardware security.

Forecasting Bitcoin price using time opinion mining and bi-directional GRU

Bitcoin is an innovative decentralized digital currency without intermediaries. Bitcoin price prediction is a demanding need in the present situation. This paper makes an investigation on the Bitcoin price forecast with a Bi-directional Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) time series method, combined with opinion mining based on Twitter and Reddit feeds. An hourly basis sentimental analysis through the implementation of Natural Language Processing presents a positive impact of sentimental analysis on the Bitcoin price prediction. For prediction, RNN, long-short memory, GRU has been utilized. Unidirectional and Bi-directional versions of all three networks with and without sentimental analysis were implemented for comparison. Of all the techniques implemented Bi-directional GRU along with sentimental analysis gives a minimum RMSE and Minimum absolute percentage error of 1108.33 and 7.384%. Thus, the framework including Bi-Directional GRU along with Sentimental Analysis provides better results than the State-of-art methods.

Machine learning provides an accurate prognostication model for refractory overactive bladder treatment response and is noninferior to human experts

OBJECTIVE

The increasing wealth of clinical data may become unmanageable for a physician to assimilate into optimal decision-making without assistance. Utilizing a novel machine learning (ML) approach, we sought to develop algorithms to predict patient outcomes following the overactive bladder treatments OnabotulinumtoxinA (OBTX-A) injection and sacral neuromodulation (SNM).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

ROSETTA datasets for overactive bladder patients randomized to OBTX-A or SNM were obtained. Novel ML algorithms, using reproducing kernel techniques were developed and tasked to predict outcomes including treatment response and decrease in urge urinary incontinence episodes in both the OBTX-A and SNM cohorts, in validation and test sets. Blinded expert urologists also predicted outcomes. Receiver operating characteristic curves were generated and AUCs calculated for comparison to lines of ignorance and the expert urologists' predictions.

RESULTS

Trained algorithms demonstrated outstanding accuracy in predicting treatment response (OBTX-A: AUC 0.95; SNM: 0.88). Algorithms accurately predicted mean decrease in urge urinary incontinence episodes (MSE < 0.15) in OBTX-A and SNM. Algorithms were superior to human experts in response prediction for OBTX-A, and noninferior to human experts in response prediction for SNM.

CONCLUSIONS

Novel ML algorithms were accurate, superior to expert urologists in predicting OBTX-A outcomes, and noninferior to expert urologists in predicting SNM outcomes. Some aspects of the physician-patient interaction are subtle and uncomputable, and thus ML may complement, but not supplant, a physician's judgment.

Improving Time Series Prediction With Feature Selection Using a Velocity-Enhanced Whale Optimization Algorithm

The nonlinearity and uncertain behavior of many recent financial applications is increasing rapidly. Thus, it is important to resolve the rapid growth of time-variant problems with the help of artificial intelligence methods. In this paper, a hybridized method is used to predict four types of financial datasets: absenteeism at work, blog feedback data, currency exchange rate, and energy consumption. The prediction accuracy is improved with feature selection techniques. During the use of feature selection methods, only related features are carefully chosen and then fed to the neural network algorithm for prediction. In this research, the previous year data is taken for training and recent year data is taken for testing. Finally, the results of the velocity enhanced whale optimization algorithm (VEWOA) is compared with other methods like local linear wavelet neural network (LLWNN) and local linear radial basis functional neural network (LLRBFNN).

FOREX rate prediction improved by Elliott waves patterns based on neural networks

Financial market predictions represent a complex problem. Most prediction systems work with the term time window, which is represented by exchange rate values of a real financial commodity. Such values (time window) provide the base for prediction of future values. Real situations, however, prove that prediction of only a single time-series trend is insufficient. This article aims at suggesting a novelty and unconventional approach based on the use of several neural networks predicting probable courses of a future trend defined in a prediction time window. The basis of the proposed approach is a suitable representation of the training-set input data into the neural networks. It uses selected FFT coefficients as well as robust output indicators based on a histogram of the predicted course of the selected currency pair. At the same time, the given currency pair enters the prediction in a combination with another three mutually interconnected currency pairs. A significant output of the articles is, apart from the proposed methodology, confirmation that the Elliott wave theory is beneficial in the trading environment and provides a substantial profit compared with conventional prediction techniques. That was proved in the performed experimental study.

Application of Artificial Intelligence in Stock Market Forecasting: A Critique, Review, and Research Agenda

The stock market is characterized by extreme fluctuations, non-linearity, and shifts in internal and external environmental variables. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can detect such non-linearity, resulting in much-improved forecast results. This paper reviews 148 studies utilizing neural and hybrid-neuro techniques to predict stock markets, categorized based on 43 auto-coded themes obtained using NVivo 12 software. We group the surveyed articles based on two major categories, namely, study characteristics and model characteristics, where ‘study characteristics’ are further categorized as the stock market covered, input data, and nature of the study; and ‘model characteristics’ are classified as data pre-processing, artificial intelligence technique, training algorithm, and performance measure. Our findings highlight that AI techniques can be used successfully to study and analyze stock market activity. We conclude by establishing a research agenda for potential financial market analysts, artificial intelligence, and soft computing scholarship.

The application of industry 4.0 technologies in pandemic management: Literature review and case study

The Covid-19 pandemic impact on people's lives has been devastating. Around the world, people have been forced to stay home, resorting to the use of digital technologies in an effort to continue their life and work as best they can. Covid-19 has thus accelerated society's digital transformation towards Industry 4.0 (the fourth industrial revolution). Using scientometric analysis, this study presents a systematic literature review of the themes within Industry 4.0. Thematic analysis reveals that the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud computing, Machine learning, Security, Big Data, Blockchain, Deep learning, Digitalization, and Cyber-physical system (CPS) to be the key technologies associated with Industry 4.0. Subsequently, a case study using Industry 4.0 technologies to manage the Covid-19 pandemic is discussed. In conclusion, Covid-19,is clearly shown to be an accelerant in the progression towards Industry 4.0. Moreover, the technologies of this digital transformation can be expected to be invoked in the management of future pandemics.

Moody’s Ratings Statistical Forecasting for Industrial and Retail Firms

Long-term ratings of companies are obtained from public data plus some additional nondisclosed information. A model based on data from firms’ public accounts is proposed to directly obtain these ratings, showing fairly close similitude with published results from Credit Rating Agencies. The rating models used to assess the creditworthiness of a firm may involve some possible conflicts of interest, as companies pay for most of the rating process and are, thus, clients of the rating firms. Such loss of faith among investors and criticism toward the rating agencies were especially severe during the financial crisis in 2008. To overcome this issue, several alternatives are addressed; in particular, the focus is on elaborating a rating model for Moody’s long-term companies’ ratings for industrial and retailing firms that could be useful as an external check of published rates. Statistical and artificial intelligence methods are used to obtain direct prediction of awarded rates in these sectors, without aggregating adjacent classes, which is usual in previous literature. This approach achieves an easy-to-replicate methodology for real rating forecasts based only on public available data, without incurring the costs associated with the rating process, while achieving a higher accuracy. With additional sampling information, these models can be extended to other sectors.

The AI Methods, Capabilities and Criticality Grid

Many artificial intelligence (AI) technologies developed over the past decades have reached market maturity and are now being commercially distributed in digital products and services. Therefore, national and international AI standards are currently being developed in order to achieve technical interoperability as well as reliability and transparency. To this end, we propose to classify AI applications in terms of the algorithmic methods used, the capabilities to be achieved and the level of criticality. The resulting three-dimensional classification scheme, termed the AI Methods, Capabilities and Criticality (AI-$$\hbox {MC}^2$$ MC 2 ) Grid, combines current recommendations of the EU Commission with an ethical dimension proposed by the Data Ethics Commission of the German Federal Government (Datenethikkommission der Bundesregierung: Gutachten. Berlin, 2019). As a whole, the AI-$$\hbox {MC}^2$$ MC 2 Grid allows not only to gain an overview of the implications of a given AI application as well as to compare efficiently different AI applications within a given market or implemented by different AI technologies. It is designed as a core tool to define and manage norms, standards and compliance of AI applications, but helps to manage AI solutions in general as well.

Harnessing artificial intelligence for the next generation of 3D printed medicines

Artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining how we exist in the world. In almost every sector of society, AI is performing tasks with super-human speed and intellect; from the prediction of stock market trends to driverless vehicles, diagnosis of disease, and robotic surgery. Despite this growing success, the pharmaceutical field is yet to truly harness AI. Development and manufacture of medicines remains largely in a 'one size fits all' paradigm, in which mass-produced, identical formulations are expected to meet individual patient needs. Recently, 3D printing (3DP) has illuminated a path for on-demand production of fully customisable medicines. Due to its flexibility, pharmaceutical 3DP presents innumerable options during formulation development that generally require expert navigation. Leveraging AI within pharmaceutical 3DP removes the need for human expertise, as optimal process parameters can be accurately predicted by machine learning. AI can also be incorporated into a pharmaceutical 3DP 'Internet of Things', moving the personalised production of medicines into an intelligent, streamlined, and autonomous pipeline. Supportive infrastructure, such as The Cloud and blockchain, will also play a vital role. Crucially, these technologies will expedite the use of pharmaceutical 3DP in clinical settings and drive the global movement towards personalised medicine and Industry 4.0.

A Back Propagation Neural Network-Based Method for Intelligent Decision-Making

A shortage or backlog of inventory can easily occur due to the backward forecasting method typically used, which will affect the normal flow of funds in pharmacies. This paper proposes a replenishment decision model with back propagation neural network multivariate regression analysis methods. With the regular pattern between sales and individual variables, supplemented with the safety stock empirical formula, an accurate replenishment quantity can be obtained. In the case analysis, this paper takes the sales situation of a pharmacy as an example and tests the accuracy and stability of the model. The results show that the model has good prediction accuracy which can be introduced into the intelligent pharmacy system and used in the replenishment of the intelligent pharmacy to prevent overstocking or a shortage of stock, thus improving the financial situation, reducing the manpower burden of typical retail pharmacy, and helping residents buy medicines.

Artificial Intelligence: A Clarification of Misconceptions, Myths and Desired Status

The field artificial intelligence (AI) was founded over 65 years ago. Starting with great hopes and ambitious goals the field progressed through various stages of popularity and has recently undergone a revival through the introduction of deep neural networks. Some problems of AI are that, so far, neither the "intelligence" nor the goals of AI are formally defined causing confusion when comparing AI to other fields. In this paper, we present a perspective on the desired and current status of AI in relation to machine learning and statistics and clarify common misconceptions and myths. Our discussion is intended to lift the veil of vagueness surrounding AI to reveal its true countenance.

Technical trends of artificial intelligence in standard-essential patents

Purpose

Defining key artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is especially fundamental because AI applications involve the development of multiple technical fields and have the potential to generate numerous business opportunities in the future. However, most related studies have examined patent grants granted by or patent applications filed to major patent offices; few studies have employed the perspective of standard-essential patents (SEPs) from a holistic technical view. In addition, because few studies have explored the status signals of countries in relation to SEPs, the present study integrated “country” into the model and determined differences among countries in terms of their technological focus.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, through patent technological network analysis in various periods, the author not only observed the focus fields of AI-related SEPs but also examined temporal trends to determine technical development trends.

Findings

This study identified technologies that have been key players in the SEP network in recent years; these technologies were centered on electric digital data processing, recognition of data and transmission of digital information. Moreover, many of these technologies have been applied in areas such as management and commerce and radio navigation. Furthermore, the USA plays a crucial role in the global development of AI technical network.

Originality/value

This study constructs a technical network model to identify key technologies and trends that can serve as a reference for national research and development resource allocation.

Artificial intelligence in the workplace – A double-edged sword

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to outline how artificial intelligence (AI) can augment learning process in the workplace and where there are limitations.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a theoretical-based outline with reference to individual and organizational learning theory, which are related to machine learning methods as they are currently in use in the workplace. Based on these theoretical insights, the paper presents a qualitative evaluation of the augmentation potential of AI to assist individual and organizational learning in the workplace.

Findings

The core outcome is that there is an augmentation potential of AI to enhance individual learning and development in the workplace, which however should not be overestimated. AI has a complementarity to individual intelligence, which can lead to an advancement, especially in quality, accuracy and precision. Moreover, AI has a potential to support individual competence development and organizational learning processes. However, a further outcome is that AI in the workplace is a double-edged sword, as it easily shows reinforcement effects in individual and organizational learning, which have a backside of unintended effects.

Research limitations/implications

The conceptual outline makes use of examples for illustrating phenomenon but needs further empirical analysis. The research focus on the meso level of the workplace does not fully refer to macro level outcomes.

Practical implications

The practical implication is that it is a matter of socio-technical job design to integrate AI in the workplace in a valuable manner. There is a need to keep the human-in-the-loop and to complement AI-based learning approaches with non-AI counterparts to reach augmentation.

Originality/value

The paper faces workplace learning from an interdisciplinary perspective and bridges insights from learning theory with methods from the machine learning community. It directs the social science discourse on AI, which is often on macro level to the meso level of the workplace and related issues for job design and therefore provides a complementary perspective.

Evaluating artificial intelligence in medicine: phases of clinical research

Increased scrutiny of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare highlights the need for real-world evaluations for effectiveness and unintended consequences. The complexity of healthcare, compounded by the user- and context-dependent nature of AI applications, calls for a multifaceted approach beyond traditional in silico evaluation of AI. We propose an interdisciplinary, phased research framework for evaluation of AI implementations in healthcare. We draw analogies to and highlight differences from the clinical trial phases for drugs and medical devices, and we present study design and methodological guidance for each stage.

A Normative Approach to Artificial Moral Agency

This paper proposes a methodological redirection of the philosophical debate on artificial moral agency (AMA) in view of increasingly pressing practical needs due to technological development. This “normative approach” suggests abandoning theoretical discussions about what conditions may hold for moral agency and to what extent these may be met by artificial entities such as AI systems and robots. Instead, the debate should focus on how and to what extent such entities should be included in human practices normally assuming moral agency and responsibility of participants. The proposal is backed up by an analysis of the AMA debate, which is found to be overly caught in the opposition between so-called standard and functionalist conceptions of moral agency, conceptually confused and practically inert. Additionally, we outline some main themes of research in need of attention in light of the suggested normative approach to AMA.

Evaluation and Research on Financial Competitiveness of Innovation-Driven Enterprises Based on Interval Data Mining

By studying the issue of evaluating the financial competitiveness of innovation-driven enterprises, the author proposed a new financial competitiveness evaluation method based on interval data mining. First, in order to effectively utilize the evaluation information that is provided by experts, the author suggested that the 95% confidence interval of the expert group’s evaluation information should be used as the interval evaluation data. Hence, the uncertainty of the evaluation process was effectively reduced, and the reliability of the evaluation results was improved. Then, empirical analysis was conducted on the financial competitiveness of an innovation-driven enterprise and its competitors using the interval data as the mining object, and a financial competitiveness evaluation method was given. The financial competitiveness level of this innovation-driven enterprise was analyzed according to the influence factors and overall situations, and suggestions to improve the innovation-driven enterprise’s financial competitiveness were provided in a targeted way. Finally, a discussion was made on how to strengthen the financial competitiveness of the innovation-driven enterprise with respect to five aspects.

Asset Allocation Model for a Robo-Advisor Using the Financial Market Instability Index and Genetic Algorithms

There has been a growing demand for portfolio management using robo-advisors, and hence, research on the automation of portfolio composition has been increasing. In this study, we propose a model that automates the portfolio structure by using the instability index of the financial time series and genetic algorithms (GAs). We use the instability index to filter the investment assets and optimize the threshold value used as a filtering criterion by applying a GA. For an empirical analysis, we use stocks, bonds, commodities exchange traded funds (ETFs), and exchange rate. We compare the performance of our model with that of risk parity and mean-variance models and find our model has better performance. Several additional experiments with our model using various internal parameters are conducted, and the proposed model with a one-month test period after one year of learning is found to provide the highest Sharpe ratio.

Application of Neural Networks to Explore Manufacturing Sales Prediction

Manufacturing sales prediction is an important measure of national economic development trends. The plastic injection molding machine industry has its own independent R and D energy and mass production technology, with all products sold globally through international brands. However, most previous injection molding machine studies have focused on R and D, production processes, and maintenance, with little consideration of sales activity. With the development and transformation of Industry 4.0 and the impact of the global economy, Taiwan’s injection molding machine industry growth rate has gradually flattened or even declined, with company sales and profits falling below expectations. Therefore, this study collected key indicators for Taiwan’s export economy from 2008 to 2017 to help understand the impact of economic indicators on injection molding sales. We collected 35 indicators, including net entry rate of employees into manufacturing industries, trend indices, manufacturing industry sales volume indices, and customs export values. We used correlation analysis to select variables affecting plastic injection machine sales and artificial neural networks (ANN) were applied to predict injection molding machine sales at each level. Prediction results were verified against the correlation indicators, and seven key external economic factors were identified to predict accurate changes in company annual sales prediction, which will be helpful for effective resource and risk management.

Fuzzy Logic and Its Uses in Finance: A Systematic Review Exploring Its Potential to Deal with Banking Crises

The major success of fuzzy logic in the field of remote control opened the door to its application in many other fields, including finance. However, there has not been an updated and comprehensive literature review on the uses of fuzzy logic in the financial field. For that reason, this study attempts to critically examine fuzzy logic as an effective, useful method to be applied to financial research and, particularly, to the management of banking crises. The data sources were Web of Science and Scopus, followed by an assessment of the records according to pre-established criteria and an arrangement of the information in two main axes: financial markets and corporate finance. A major finding of this analysis is that fuzzy logic has not yet been used to address banking crises or as an alternative to ensure the resolvability of banks while minimizing the impact on the real economy. Therefore, we consider this article relevant for supervisory and regulatory bodies, as well as for banks and academic researchers, since it opens the door to several new research axes on banking crisis analyses using artificial intelligence techniques.

A Study Concerning Soft Computing Approaches for Stock Price Forecasting

Financial time-series are well known for their non-linearity and non-stationarity nature. The application of conventional econometric models in prediction can incur significant errors. The fast advancement of soft computing techniques provides an alternative approach for estimating and forecasting volatile stock prices. Soft computing approaches exploit tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, and partial truth to progressively and adaptively solve practical problems. In this study, a comprehensive review of latest soft computing tools is given. Then, examples incorporating a series of machine learning models, including both single and hybrid models, to predict prices of two representative indexes and one stock in Hong Kong’s market are undertaken. The prediction performances of different models are evaluated and compared. The effects of the training sample size and stock patterns (viz. momentum and mean reversion) on model prediction are also investigated. Results indicate that artificial neural network (ANN)-based models yield the highest prediction accuracy. It was also found that the determination of optimal training sample size should take the pattern and volatility of stocks into consideration. Large prediction errors could be incurred when stocks exhibit a transition between mean reversion and momentum trend.

Prediction of Business Failure with Fuzzy Models

This paper extends the theory of fuzzy diseases predictions in order to detect the causes of business failure. This extension is justified through the advantages of the reference model and its originality. Moreover, the fuzzy model is completed by this proposal and some parts of it have been published in isolated articles. For this purpose, the fuzzy theory is combined with the OWA operators to identify the factors that generate problems in firms. Also, a goodness index to validate its functionality and prediction capacity is introduced. The model estimates a matrix of economic- financial knowledge based on matrices of causes and symptoms. Knowing the symptoms makes it possible to estimate the causes, and managing them properly, allows monitoring and improving the company’s financial situation and forecasting its future. Also with this extension, the model can be useful to develop suitable computer systems for monitoring companies’ problems, warning of failures and facilitating decision-making.