Beyond the loop: the possibility of AI-held accountability
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2025-07-10
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en
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This thesis redefines the practical application of accountability, based on AI-integrated
organizations and their implications for accounting. As AI systems increasingly operate in
organizations as independent actors, research shows that maintaining human oversight to
ensure accountability comes with significant challenges and inefficiencies. Therefore, this
thesis explores if AI, as an actor, can be held to account to avoid these problems. This thesis
shows that this consideration is often automatically dismissed by the literature through narrow
and one sided arguments. Instead, this thesis proposes, via a comprehensive analysis of the
philosophy of action, a multi-layered framework. This framework allows AI to meet the
identified prerequisites for holding accountability: intentionality, consciousness, and free will,
under different levels of interpretation. This has particularly significant implications for the
role of accounting within organizations. While accounting has traditionally been the primary
practice for structuring and enforcing organizational accountability, progressive literature
advocates for its replacement by informal practices, better suited to human nature. However,
this thesis claims that if AI can be held to account, traditional accounting practices are better
suited to govern such accountability. As a result, with the growing organizational presence of
AI, accounting may reclaim this central role.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen