Strategic Management of AI

Catalog description

This course will take the manager’s perspective. Familiarity with any new technology is an important goal for managers, so that competitive and corporate strategies can be aligned to take advantage of potential new opportunities and guard against potential risks from the technology. But new technologies don’t appear in a vacuum. They are commercialized against a backdrop of macro-economic trends and cultural norms, and their adoption may depend on these factors as well as industry-specific and firm-specific factors. For example, a firm’s relationship with its employees may have direct consequences for the decision to adopt a new technology, or the manner in which a new technology is adopted. This course will provide students with a set of strategy and management frameworks that firms use when assessing how to implement AI in their own organizations, how to use AI as a competitive tool in the marketplace, and how to interact with government regulators and other stakeholders. To accomplish these goals, we will use a variety of popular press readings, academic research papers, cases, and in-class presentations from student groups as well as outside visitors.