Artificial Intelligence

Thinking outside the bot

Penn GSE professors Bodong Chen and Seiji Isotani discuss the AI Thinkery, a faculty working group where colleagues from across the School gather to discuss and collaborate on artificial intelligence.

2 min. read

COVID funding provided underfunded Philly-area schools with laptops. ‘RAMageddon’ might send them back in time

“The demand for memory chips and the extraordinary prices we’re seeing here — the profit margins that these companies are getting for these memory chips — are unprecedented,” says Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “I haven’t seen this for 20–30 years since I’ve started working in this space.”

Sometimes the best advice is ‘give it time,’ no matter what ChatGPT says

“Time can be an excellent diagnostic test,” writes Jeffrey Millstein of the Perelman School of Medicine in a guest essay, explaining that extensive diagnostic testing and scans can actually cloud a clinical picture more than help, despite advice that AI-powered chatbots tend to give.

Entrepreneurship is booming in the U.S. Gen Zers are leading the way.

Sync Labs, a healthcare startup founded by Melanie Herbert of the School of Engineering and Applied Science as an undergraduate, is highlighted. Lori Rosenkopf of the Wharton School discusses how AI lowers barriers to entry for young entrepreneurs.

AI surveillance is already here. Urban governance isn’t.

Eugénie L. Birch and Mauricio Rodas of the Weitzman School of Design write that, “52% of surveyed cities already use AI in some capacity and another 32% plan to, yet only 31% have established a formal ethics review process — even though 88% of them rate ethics as very or absolutely important.”

Fast-food execs keep pushing for more AI systems, but fail to see the big picture: Customers still want humans

“But we shouldn’t assume all customer interactions with people are 100% what we’d like them to be—or that replacing them automatically improves the experience,” says Jerry Jacobs of the Wharton School.

Aerial view of Penn’s campus with Huntsman Hall in focus

Penn partners in new National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation

From the teenage soccer player recovering from knee surgery to the grandparent relearning how to walk after a stroke, physical therapy plays a vital role in restoring mobility and helping people live independently—especially later in life.

3 min. read

A collage that merges circuit board patterns with textile motifs in a grid-like background of alternating black, grey, and white. Two hand-drawn arms are on each side of the image, positioned as if gently pulling on thin, white strings that cross the image diagonally. The hands appear soft and somewhat translucent, contrasting with the rigid lines of the circuit board patterns behind them. The strings are woven through both the hands and the background, symbolising the connection between traditional weaving

How basic persuasion can bypass AI safeguards

New research from Wharton’s Generative AI Labs suggests AI models may be vulnerable to many of the same persuasion tactics that influence people.

2 min. read

AI & Tech Brief: Governing Open AI

Kevin Werbach of the Wharton School explains the potential legal implications of AI “distillation”.

Why workers are nostalgic for life before AI

A study from the Wharton School found that “if you rely on ChatGPT as your only creative adviser, you’ll soon run out of ideas, because they’re too similar to each other”.

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