Participants in the Harnessing AI for Breakthrough Innovation and Strategic Impact program

Curriculum

Explore AI technologies, discover strategies and frameworks to gain a competitive edge, and evaluate ethical and social implications.

Artificial Intelligence is taking the world by storm, impacting everything from driving and diagnosing diseases to shopping, recruiting, and manufacturing. Harnessing AI for Breakthrough Innovation and Strategic Impact provides a truly interdisciplinary curriculum, exploring how this transformative technology is influencing business and society … and how you can leverage it most effectively to compete and succeed.

Over the course of this one-week AI program, you will learn from faculty, guest speakers, and each other.

  • Gain an understanding of key AI technologies — machine learning, perception, natural language processing, and autonomous systems.
  • Discover who and how organizations are using these technologies.
  • Explore and weigh the ethical, legal, economic, and social implications of AI.
  • Use design thinking methodology to develop potential AI applications for your organization.
  • Capture your learnings at the end of each day to review key takeaways and apply them to your organization.

Program Highlights

Below are just a few of the sessions you’ll attend as part of the program.

Crucial Questions for Success of AI Applications

In theory, AI algorithms can be applied to a wide set of problems of importance to humanity. In practice, however, technology itself is only a small portion of the overall success of an application.

In this session, we’ll discuss the crucial issues that must be addressed in most successful applications of AI, which include quality, robustness, usability, optimal mix of humans and automation, trust, evolution, and economics.

The Future of the Workplace

The only thing predictable about the future of work is that there will be lots of change. One day you read that there is a looming labor shortage as the population ages, the next you read that mass unemployment is right around the corner due to the advent of robots and other AI.

In this session, we’ll look at trends in the labor market and the future of work and consider how demographic changes present business and labor market opportunities, as well as challenges. Will the robots really come and, if so, what are the implications for today’s employers? We’ll discuss how the answers to these and related questions vary by labor market and by what expertise in AI your company needs. We’ll also consider how the nature of future working relationships will be different due to the disruptions caused by COVID, even when the pandemic is long gone.

Machine Learning Overview and Application

In these sessions, we will discuss a high-level overview of machine learning and its applications to AI. We’ll cover recent advances and how they relate to classic techniques in learning, discussing limitations and risks.

We will also review recent applications of AI, focusing on the challenges and pitfalls that arise when guiding and managing AI implementation and attempting to apply the technology “out of the box.”

Faculty Perspectives About the Program

Program Co-Director

“What excites me about this program is enabling leaders to leverage their expertise to develop strategies that take advantage of these powerful technologies. I think this program will give managers new insights on how to leverage AI for a competitive edge in a way that complements what they are already great at.”

Program Co-Director

“AI has been at the top of the headlines for a few years now and businesses have been investing heavily in its application, but it is often difficult to distinguish hype from reality. This executive education course will bring together world-class faculty from Stanford who are working at the forefront of AI to help organizational leaders understand the key underlying concepts of this technology and how it can be best used to achieve their goals.”

Explore Insights from Faculty Research

Contact

Associate Director, Programs Executive Education