Faculty Corner: Insights and views on AI and technology
Kellogg faculty, through their dedication to cutting-edge research across the business landscape, deliver timely, relevant insights on the most important business topics.
AI is quickly becoming a regular part of our everyday life. With each technological advancement, the world continues to unravel the interplay between AI, human creativity, business and beyond. Understanding these complexities can help society recognize both the benefits and challenges of technology and how to embrace technology while maintaining meaningful human connections.
Explore some of our faculty’s research and insights shedding light on the multifaceted dimensions of AI including approaching technologies with sensitivity and awareness, leveraging technology for scalable solutions and discerning reality in today's digital age.
On striking a balance in the era of AI
Associate professor Robert Bray’s research focuses on supply chain management, dynamic programming and empirical operations management.
Companies are adopting ChatGPT and other large-scale language models to help drive efficiency in internal operations, but how should managers adapt their roles to embrace the generative AI technology? Professor Bray has given this topic plenty of thought, and he offers four tips for leading a team in the current digital era. “ChatGPT enables a whole set of new things that you can do, but they’re very specific things, and they’re often kind of weird things that we never would’ve thought of before,” says Bray. “You need to actively go there and think about how to act.” Embrace learning through play, he says.
Associate professor Sébastien Martin's research is aimed at developing and optimizing algorithms within the public policy and transportation sectors.
Martin, along with UCLA Anderson assistant professor Francisco Castro and PhD student Jian Gao, recently explored the trade-off between efficiency and “fidelity,” or how faithfully the content matches what individuals would have produced themselves when using generative AI. They also investigated its impact on a broader societal level if everyone is using the same tools. “If the whole point is to work faster and to increase productivity, then it has to be that somewhere you’re letting go of something for the sake of speed,” says Martin.
On defining AI boundaries
Walter J. McNerney Professor of Health Industry Management and professor of strategy David Dranove focuses on researching problems in industrial organization and business strategy with an emphasis on the healthcare industry. He has published nearly 100 research articles and book chapters and written six books including “The Economic Evolution of American Healthcare,” “What’s Your Life Worth?” and “Big Med.”
The Herman R. Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services and professor of strategy Craig Garthwaite is an applied economist who examines the business of healthcare with a focus on the interaction between private firms and public policies. He also studies questions of pricing and innovation in the biopharmaceutical sector.
Dranove and Garthwaite recently looked at the implications of integrating AI into healthcare — specifically how such software would affect the central role of the physician. They found that AI is likely to remain as a complementary aspect — not a replacement — to the human touch of doctors.
Elinor and H. Wendell Hobbs Professor of Management Thomas Hubbard researches how information problems affect the organization of firms and markets, and ultimately, the structure of industries.
Clinical professor of strategy Sarit Markovich's work examines strategic interactions in two-sided markets and FinTech markets.
Assistant professor of management and organizations Hatim Rahman has focused his research on investigating how artificial intelligence impacts the nature of work and employment relationships in organizations and labor markets.
Hubbard, Markovich and Rahman weighed in on how companies should approach monitoring employee productivity and the pitfalls they should avoid. Making productivity monitoring a win-win for both parties is one major key to ensuring it is used effectively. And they encourage transparency in communicating productivity gains to help create buy-in.
On navigating the revolutionary AI frontier
Assistant professor of management and organizations William Brady studies and teaches on the dynamics of emotion at the social network level and their consequences for group behavior. A recent work of his explores how human psychology and AI-mediated social contexts interact to shape our emotions and intergroup attitudes.
With the explosion of AI, its ease to create texts, images and videos have opened the floodgates to misinformation. Given the speed of its advances, Brady’s latest insights debunks some common fears about AI-generated misinformation, so that humans and technology can coexist harmoniously. “We have to be careful not to get distracted by sci-fi issues and focus on concrete risks that are the most pressing,” says Brady.
On enlisting AI as a thought-partner
The Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and professor of sociology Brian Uzzi is a globally recognized scientist, teacher and consultant who focuses on examining the leadership, social networks and AI fields. He also co-directs the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO).
A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists showed the majority believe science is undergoing a “replication crisis,” where many published results can’t be reproduced. Without consistent data, scientists are having a harder time validating products or ideas aimed at improving people’s lives.
Uzzi collaborated with NICO colleague Wu You and former Kellogg research assistant Yang Yang to build an algorithm to help predict replicability. “We’ve created a powerful, efficient tool to help scientists, funding agencies, and the general public understand replicability and have more confidence in certain types of studies,” Uzzi says.
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