AI isn’t everything: a call for human-centric service research

Purpose What is the purpose of service research? This call for more human-centric service research argues the ultimate goal of service research should be to benefit consumers and service providers but also humanity and the planet. To achieve this goal, a pluricentric understanding of service research is needed. However, the authors find that the opposite is happening within the service research domain. The rapid development of large language models (LLM), colloquially known as artificial intelligence (AI), has ushered in a surge in service research, and research overall, into AI and AI usage alongside wider research into service robots and technology. Design/methodology/approach The authors conceptualize the importance of human-centric services. In particular, the authors focus on services with humans as the central actors as well as services with humans as beneficiaries and further introduce 11 key areas for service research. Findings The authors recognize the relevance of this research but call for the importance of diversified service research for the academic service field to remain relevant. Although AI is an important and relevant topic, the field of service research benefits from diverse and broad service research of which AI is one important part, but not the only one. Seeing a rapidly increasing tendency of research into AI dominating service research at the expense of other research topics, the authors highlight the importance of human-centric service research. Originality/value To advance a human-centric research approach, the authors introduce and develop 11 research avenues for future service research and develop how each of the articles in this special issue contribute to that goal.