The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence

Overview

AI is transforming the epistemic, interactional, and institutional foundations of contemporary organizations, yet management and organization studies are only beginning to theorize the implications of this shift. Existing research often treats "AI" as a singular construct, despite the fact that predictive, generative, agentic, and embodied systems rely on different logics and produce distinct organizational outcomes. This paper interrogates the limits of this conceptual flattening and argues that cumulative theorizing requires more precise specification of the technological systems under study.

Drawing on developments across the field, the paper demonstrates how different modes of AI reshape core organizational constructs — including expertise, judgment, coordination, authority, and institutional adaptation. The adoption of large language models has already outpaced the diffusion of the internet, and tools that were peripheral novelties are now central to organizational life. The speed and scope of this transformation increasingly challenge the adaptive capacity of existing organization and management theory to make sense of it.

Contribution to the Research Program

Within the Cyborg Entrepreneurship framework, this work provides the macro-institutional context for understanding the organizational consequences of AI integration. While much of the lab's research examines entrepreneurial decision-making at the individual or firm level, this paper steps back to map how AI is reshaping the broader structures within which entrepreneurship occurs — from how expertise is constituted and authority is conferred to how work itself is learned, reproduced, and rewarded. The paper's heuristic framework for differentiating among AI systems (predictive, generative, agentic, embodied) provides conceptual precision that strengthens the lab's work on the Ideator's Dilemma, the computability question, and human-AI collaboration more broadly.

Key Insights

• "AI" is not a monolithic construct — predictive, generative, agentic, and embodied systems operate on different logics and demand distinct theoretical treatment
• AI systems no longer merely support decision processes but actively participate in the symbolic and epistemic foundations of organizing
• Algorithms increasingly act as partners in organizational life, reshaping categories of judgment and conferring new forms of authority and legitimacy
• As AI-augmented entry points narrow, opportunities for skill development, mentorship, and career progression transform in ways that reshape professional identity
• The recursive interplay between AI artifacts and institutional meaning-making introduces agents that contribute to defining the problems organizations seek to solve
• A research agenda organized around more precise specification of AI systems will accelerate cumulative theorizing