Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already influencing every aspect of our society and the economy, and the ways in which we make decisions, distribute resources, and offer services. Like many people and organisations across the world, the Operational Research (OR) Society has been debating the role that we should play within the evolving AI landscape – asking not just what AI can do for OR, but what OR can do for AI.

The OR Society is already supporting members to engage with AI through a growing programme of events and training. This includes dedicated courses such as AI and OR, alongside practical sessions on applying AI within the OR toolkit, and exploring how AI can support modelling, analysis, and decision-making. We are also looking forward to launching an AI Assurance Masterclass shortly with ValidateAI and Imperial College London. These activities are designed to build confidence, strengthen capability, and ensure members can apply AI in a structured and informed way in their work. Alongside this, the Society has delivered a range of events focusing on AI, including sessions on AI and ethics, responsible use, and real-world applications. AI has also been integrated into conference programmes, with themed streams, talks, and discussions that bring together perspectives from academia, industry, and government. This ensures that members are exposed to current developments while engaging critically with the challenges and opportunities AI presents for the OR profession.

We are also keen to align with the current and fast-moving goals of the UK Government in terms of AI skills and are seeking to explore opportunities for AI-related apprenticeship offerings, and to contribute to the AI skills debate at a national level.

The relationship between OR and AI has been the topic of several discussions at meetings of the Board and General Council. More recently, the Research and Education Committees of the Board have prepared two positioning statements (included below) that set out the opportunities and challenges that AI presents for OR, and the role that the Society should take in tackling them.

Earlier in March, General Council approved a proposal to establish an AI taskforce to provide guidance on building AI capability within the activities of the OR Society and its members. The taskforce is a fixed-term strategic body designed to scope out and develop the foundations to explore the impact of AI within the OR profession, and its role in optimal decision making. Its members are involved in cutting-edge research in AI, OR, and data-driven systems and will span academia, business, industry and government.

The taskforce will focus on the following four high-priority areas:

1. OR enabled AI - understanding the relationship between OR and AI; promoting OR methods in enhancing AI systems delivery; and encouraging case studies demonstrating OR-enhanced AI development.
2. Trustworthy AI - developing training and guidance on AI risk modelling, validation, and assurance; embedding OR methods to enhance trustworthy AI; and aligning with national AI assurance and governance initiatives in professionalisation.
3. AI ready workforce - assessing AI literacy needs; identifying emerging AI competencies for OR Professionals; developing occupational and apprenticeship opportunities, CPD pathways, skills, certification and assurance pathways; and supporting the pipeline of talent into OR and AI via schools outreach.
4. Emerging technologies and research – considering emerging technologies; developing relevant publications; engaging with key stakeholders; building academic and industry partnerships and representing OR in national forums discussing AI.

The AI taskforce, and other groups within the Society, will be working hard to deliver on the four priority areas and will also work closely with other external stakeholders in the UK who are tackling similar opportunities and challenges. In addition to ValidateAI, this includes the Academy for Mathematical Sciences, the other learned societies in Mathematics, the Alliance for Data Science Professionals, and the Science Council.

We are also keen to explore what opportunities there are for international collaboration on the topic and hope to join discussions with INFORMS and MORS in the US, and EURO and IFORS. Please do get in touch if your organisation would be interested in collaborating with us. We are also particularly keen to include more representatives from business, industry and government on the AI Taskforce. If you might be able to help, please contact me at [email protected].

Research Committee OR and AI positioning statement

The OR Society recognises that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to shape the future of society, influencing science, engineering, and many sectors of the economy, and, more broadly, the ways in which society organises decisions, resources, and services.

The accelerating pace of AI progress opens new opportunities for Operational Research (OR) expertise to guide the development of emerging approaches, with the synergies between the two fields, enabling tools that are both innovative and firmly rooted in rigorous analytical foundations. As these technologies advance, OR has a vital role in guiding their responsible development and deployment, and the OR Society is committed to showcasing the evolving connections between OR and AI. AI and OR share deep foundations in optimisation, decision-making under uncertainty, and the modelling and learning of complex systems and data. OR’s rigorous analytical foundations and systems perspective provide the structure and interpretability that AI systems increasingly require, ensuring transparency, fairness, and trustworthiness. In turn, AI offers new tools for OR—enhancing how we teach, learn, and practise OR, and supporting the development of new methods, problem selection, and hybrid modelling approaches that combine data-driven learning with mathematical reasoning.

The OR Society is keen to raise awareness of, and to clarify, the role of AI within OR, to democratise access to OR - particularly in resource-constrained settings - and to strengthen the use of OR in shaping and evaluating AI technologies. We encourage close collaboration between the OR and AI communities to build capacity, share expertise, and promote responsible innovation across academia, industry, civic society, and policy. By championing the role of OR in the AI era, the OR Society helps ensuring that rigorous and evidence-based reasoning guides the technologies shaping our future, while recognising the growing potential of AI to support and enrich OR research, practice, and education.

Education Committee OR and AI positioning statement

The Education Committee of the ORS recognises that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping both the way OR is taught and how the field is evolving. It is increasingly important to equip learners with the skills and understanding required to navigate this evolving landscape.

Operational Research has a critical and distinctive role to play in the AI era. AI offers powerful tools to accelerate tasks such as data analysis, modelling, and idea generation, but it is OR that provides the skills to define those problems in the first place. Skills in model formation, problem structuring, and critical evaluation, which are central to OR, are essential to ensuring AI is developed and applied both responsibly and effectively.

Key principles guiding our position:

1. OR as Foundational to Problem Definition The Committee emphasises the importance of highlighting these skills throughout education – from schools to universities – to help students develop the necessary foundation for responsible and effective use of AI. AI requires well formulated problems to be effective. OR provides methods to structure complex problems, identify and select relevant data, and design models that AI can then help solve. This positions OR not as a competitor to AI, but as a foundational discipline that supports its successful application.
2. Critical Evaluation and Ethical Judgement This includes equipping students with skills in ethical reasoning, model validation, and understanding the limits of AI-generated outputs – competencies that are vital in a world where AI will be increasingly relied upon to inform decisions. Human judgement is becoming even more important in an age of AI. Learners must be able to critically interpret and challenge the outputs AI systems produce. This includes ensuring that outputs align with both organisational goals and wider ethical standards. Despite the rapid advances in AI, the fundamentals of OR remain vital. The Committee agree that education in this field must continue to focus on core techniques. These provide students and professionals with the ability to design, interrogate and deploy AI tools in ways that are meaningful, rigorous and accountable. There is also a broader opportunity for OR to shape how AI is used in society – particularly by engaging earlier in the educational pipeline and promoting critical thinking about what AI can and cannot do. As AI becomes more embedded in workplaces and society, OR offers a framework to ensure human judgment, transparency and rigour remain at the centre of decision-making. Rather than positioning AI as a standalone solution, the message should be that it is a tool that requires human insight and sound judgement to be used effectively, and OR provides those essential foundations.
3. Educational Engagement Across the Pipeline While current national policy focuses on AI talent at the endpoint of the pipeline (e.g., engineering and technical skills) we see a gap and an opportunity earlier in the pipeline. OR should be embedded into education at school and university levels to foster a deeper understanding of how AI fits into a broader problem-solving and decision-making process. This also includes helping learners grapple with questions such as ‘will AI take my job’ and shifting towards a more nuanced understanding of human-AI collaborations.
4. Raising Awareness of OR’s Role OR should be visible within the AI education conversation. Raising awareness of OR as a vital skillset – particularly in schools - is essential to developing the next generation of critical, ethical, and systems-aware decision-makers.

We are also working in collaboration with the Alliance for Data Science Professionals to promote shared standards in data and AI literacy. This partnership strengthens our ability to advocate for OR as a crucial component of future education and professional development.