Artificial Intelligence in Decision-Making: A Systematic Review of Methods, Applications, and Ethical Challenges

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly transforming decision-making across healthcare, finance, education, business, public administration, manufacturing, and other domains. This systematic review examines the methods, applications, benefits, limitations, and ethical challenges associated with AI-enabled decision-making. The review synthesizes evidence from relevant scholarly literature on machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, expert systems, predictive analytics, and other AI approaches used to support or automate decision processes. Findings indicate that AI can improve decision-making by enhancing predictive accuracy, processing large and complex datasets, identifying patterns, supporting risk assessment, and enabling faster and more consistent decisions. Applications are particularly evident in clinical diagnosis and treatment, financial risk assessment, fraud detection, recruitment, educational analytics, supply-chain management, and public-sector decision support. However, the review also identifies significant challenges involving algorithmic bias, lack of transparency and explainability, privacy and data protection, accountability, security, human oversight, and unequal access to AI technologies. The evidence suggests that AI should generally function as a decision-support mechanism rather than an unquestioned replacement for human judgment, particularly in high-stakes contexts. Effective governance therefore requires transparent model development, representative and high-quality data, explainability mechanisms, continuous monitoring, human oversight, and clearly defined accountability structures. The review concludes that the sustainable adoption of AI in decision-making depends not only on technological performance but also on ethical, legal, organizational, and societal safeguards that promote fairness, transparency, reliability, and responsible human–AI collaboration.