Digital Transformation

What is the word-of-machine effect? Professor Luca Cian writes for Harvard Business Review (TAG) on his recent research highlighting when people prefer AI recommendations over human ones.

Long before the coronavirus pandemic, advances in information technology were already fueling the rise of a handful of superstar firms that dominate the economy. COVID-19 has greatly accelerated that trend. Darden Professor Anton Korinek explores the implications of the superstar phenomenon for overall economic efficiency and, by extension, policy.

Long before the coronavirus pandemic, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) were already causing unprecedented changes in work and business. Now, the world’s top thinkers on the economics of AI — Daron Acemoğlu, Diane Coyle, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz — are drawing new lessons from today’s crisis.

The old normal is history. But the world will not stay still, and technology will advance, its adoption even accelerated due to COVID-19. Ed Hess discusses the need for democratization of technology and its potential to address societal challenges including income inequality, low social mobility, the expense of health care and access to education.

Humanity is a social species — yet the coronavirus pandemic requires that we reduce physical contact. Here are actionable suggestions for effective interactions to help balance efficiency and connectedness, as modern technology helps us move our interactions to the virtual world and avoid significant social isolation.

MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal, a keynote speaker at a recent Psychology of Technology Conference led by Darden Professor Roshni Raveendhran, shares insights about a new generation of social robots and their impact on human flourishing.

Is coding an essential job skill of the future? Should MBA students learn to code? Darden Professor Alex Cowan answers five questions on the building blocks of much of our digital world.

Technology is reshaping the way we live, work, play and interact. Darden Professor Roshni Raveendhran, whose research sits at the intersection of psychology and technology, shares her insights about the opportunities novel technologies, such as artificial intelligence, create for humanity and the risks they pose.

Sixty years ago, famous American economist Leonid Hurwicz did groundbreaking research about the economic mechanisms theory. Today, Darden expert is interested in designing mechanisms to solve big challenges like energy usage and traffic flows.

Darden Professor Rajkumar Venkatesan proposes four steps for marketers to develop an AI “canvas,” through which they can deploy machine learning technologies to compete for customer attention.