AImpact Center Seminar Series: Dashun Wang

Dashun Wang is the Kellogg Chair of Technology and Professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He is also affiliated with the McCormick School of Engineering and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. At Kellogg, he is the Founding Director of the Northwestern Innovation Institute, Founding Co-Director of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, and the Founding Director of the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI). Dashun is a recipient of numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the Advanced Science Young Innovator Award, AFOSR Young Investigator Award, Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 Professors, Erdos-Renyi Prize, and more.

Abstract:
Steve Jobs famously called computers “bicycles for the mind”—a metaphor for the personal-computing era, emphasizing tools that let individuals go farther and faster with less effort. Today, AI agents demand a new metaphor. They are airplanes for the mind: heavier-than-air machines that should not fly but do. These “airplanes” have the potential to dramatically extend the scale, speed, and coordination of human cognition, while introducing new challenges for science and discovery. This talk will focus on these “airplanes” and ask what changes for science when AI systems move from passive tools to active partners. Drawing on research from the science of science, I examine how advances in AI reshape discovery by surfacing overlooked ideas, reducing search and coordination costs, and revealing vast reservoirs of untapped innovative potential. I also show that scientific and technological progress is inherently punctuated, and discuss how these AI systems may alter incentives, attention, and pathways of collective scientific progress, raising new challenges for how science is conducted and evaluated. Throughout history, discoveries have been made by humans. As AI systems increasingly participate in discovery, the central question is not what machines can do alone, but how we design human–AI collaboration to make science more accountable, reproducible, and ultimately transformative. The question is not whether machines replace scientists, but what kind of scientist emerges when we learn to fly.

The AImpact Center is dedicated to exploring the effects of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on society. It aims to understand and address the ethical, social, and economic implications of these technologies, ensuring they benefit all members of society. The center is sponsored by the Department of Economics, School of Information Sciences, and Siebel School of Computing and Data Science.

Questions? Contact Allison Mette.