Wharton AI & Analytics Insights

Why Better AI Tutors Aren’t About Better Answers

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Executives investing in AI-powered learning often focus on improving the chatbot: better explanations, more accurate answers, smarter prompts. But new research from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School suggests that’s not where the biggest gains come from.

The real opportunity isn’t in how AI responds, it’s in how AI guides.

Learn the latest from researchers Angel Tsai-Hsuan Chung, doctoral candidate in Wharton’s Operations, Information and Decisions (OID) department, Botong Zhang, software engineer with Amazon Web Services, Ling-Chieh Kung, associate professor with National Taiwan University’s College of Management, and Hamsa Bastani and Osbert Bastani, associate professors in OID.…Read More

Building AI Products That Last: Lessons from SXSW 2026

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At a packed session at SXSW this spring, Wharton Human-AI Research (WHAIR) faculty co-director Kartik Hosanagar and Microsoft chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada offered a candid and complementary set of lessons for builders navigating the fast-moving AI landscape. Their shared thesis: in AI product development, competitive advantage is both harder and easier to achieve than most people assume. …Read More

Stop Telling AI Who to Be: Why Personas Don’t Improve Accuracy

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Executives and operations leaders invest significant effort crafting AI prompts, and a common instinct is to assign the AI a persona: “act like a senior consultant,” “respond as a chemistry professor.” New research from the Wharton School’s Generative AI Labs tests whether that instinct actually pays off in accuracy. The findings may surprise you.…Read More

How Neuroscience and AI Could Reshape Leadership Pipelines

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For decades, leadership identification has relied on personality inventories, interviews, and performance history. These tools are valuable, but they often capture who people are, not how they think and adapt under pressure. New research from Elizabeth “Zab” Johnson (Executive Director) and Michael Platt (Faculty Director) of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative (WiN), Korn Ferry, and Lazul.ai, shows how neuroscience-informed, AI-enabled assessments can add a powerful new layer to leadership pipelines, especially at early career stages.…Read More

When Better AI Makes Oversight Harder

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New research from Hamsa Bastani, Associate Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions, and Gérard Cachon, Fred R. Sullivan Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at the Wharton School reveals a counterintuitive challenge: as AI systems become more reliable, organizations may find it increasingly difficult, and costly, to motivate humans to oversee them effectively.…Read More

When More Data Isn’t Better: Rethinking Granularity in Marketing Analytics

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Choosing the right level of detail when analyzing data—whether by time, geography, or customer segment—is a daily challenge for marketing leaders. New research, by Mingyung Kim (former Wharton PhD student) and her co-dissertation advisors, Eric Bradlow, Wharton Marketing Professor and Vice Dean for AI & Analytics at Wharton, and Raghu Iyengar, Faculty Director, Innovation, Experiential Learning and Research Initiatives, introduces a practical framework for making smarter choices about data aggregation and parameter granularity, with significant implications for forecasting, pricing, and segmentation.…Read More

Gen AI in the Enterprise: From Hype to Human Capital

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Generative AI has rapidly shifted from experimentation to everyday utility in large enterprises. In the final installment of our Fall 2025 AI Horizons webinar series, Wharton Human-AI Research Faculty Co-Directors Stefano Puntoni and Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe joined Jeremy Korst, Partner at GBK Collective, to share findings from the 2025 AI Adoption Report: GenAI Fast-Tracks into the Enterprise. Here are the key takeaways from their talk.…Read More

From Hype to Habit: How AI Is Actually Transforming Business

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AI is moving at a blistering pace, with new developments in models and their impact on the business world, it can be hard to keep up. Luckily, we have experts like Ritcha Ranjan, Senior Vice President of Product at Expedia Group and Advisory Board Member with the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative, to help us make sense of it all. In a recent interview with Eric Bradlow, Vice Dean of AI & Analytics at Wharton, the pair helped make sense of the current state of AI. Here are the key takeaways from their conversation.…Read More