— Registration Is Open —
May 20–21, 2026
The Wharton School
Philadelphia, PA
Wharton Human-AI Research hosts AI and the Future of Work, a two-day academic conference focused on how AI is reshaping the nature of work and employment. Taking place May 20–21, 2026 at the Wharton School, the conference will bring together leading scholars, industry researchers, and practitioners to examine emerging research, share empirical insights, and engage in critical dialogue on the evolving relationship between AI, organizations, and the workforce.
— Ticket Options —
University Affiliate Rate – $300
Current Faculty, PhD Students, Postdoctoral Fellows and University Staff
Industry Rate – $900
Industry practitioners, including government and nonprofit organizations
Your conference ticket includes access to all sessions, keynote presentations, light breakfast, lunch on both days, and an evening reception on May 20.
A limited number of discounted tickets are available for current PhD students, Postdoctoral Fellows, and government or nonprofit professionals. Apply for a discounted rate for the AI and the Future of Work Conference by completing this form.
— Agenda at a Glance —
Subject to change
Over two days, participants will engage in keynote presentations, research sessions, networking opportunities, and collaborative discussions designed to explore AI in the workplace.
Day 1 — May 20, 8:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
- 8:30 a.m.–9:15 a.m. Registration Check-In and Breakfast
- 9:15 a.m.–9:45 a.m. Welcome Remarks by Nancy Rothbard, Deputy Dean of The Wharton School
- 9:45 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions and Discussions
- 12:15 p.m.–1:30 p.m. Lunch and Networking
- 1:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m. Concurrent Sessions and Discussions
- 4:00 p.m.–4:10 p.m. Wharton AI and Analytics (WAIAI) Overview
- 4:10 p.m.–4:50 p.m. Poster Sessions
- 4:15 p.m.–6:00 p.m. Reception
Day 2 — May 21, 8:30 a.m. – 3:05 p.m.
- 8:30 a.m.–9:00 a.m. Registration Check-In and Breakfast
- 9:15 a.m.–12:55 p.m. Concurrent Sessions and Discussions
- 12:55 p.m.–2:10 p.m. Lunch and Networking
- 2:10 p.m.–2:55 p.m. Wharton / Gates Build-A-Thon: Lessons Learned
- 2:55 p.m.–3:05 p.m Closing Remarks
See the full agenda for details on sessions and presenters.
— Presenters —
Click Here to View the 2026 Presenters
David Almog
PhD Candidate, Kellogg School of Management
“Barriers to AI Adoption: Image Concerns at Work
James (Jim) Alvarez Mourey
Associate Professor of Marketing, Associate Dean of Graduate Programs, DePaul University
“The AI Acceptance Gap: Identity-Based Judgments of AI-Assisted Work”
Anirudh Bajaj
Product Manager, Microsoft
“What Every AI Job Study Gets Wrong: A Framework for Predicting How Much AI Will Actually Transform Each Occupation”
Matt Beane
Associate Professor, UC Santa Barbara
“Hedging with Talent: How Selection Under Uncertainty Reshapes Automation’s Workforce Effects”
Seth Gordon Benzell
Assistant Professor, Chapman University Argyros College of Business and Economics
“Automation Experiments and Inequality”
Anandhi Bharadwaj
Professor, Emory University
“Pricing of Multidimensional Skills in the IT Labor Market: Complementarities between AI and Traditional IT Skills”
Michael Blank
Assistant Professor of Finance, Stanford University
“The Household Impact of Generative AI: Evidence from Internet Browsing Behavior”
Tommaso Bondi
Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell University
“Skill Atrophy and AI Productivity Measurement”
Bharat Chandar
Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
“AI and Labor Around the World”
Wei Chen
Associate Professor, University of Connecticut
“The Missing Middle: Workflow Design as the Key to Effective AI Agents”
Kanghyun (Simon) Cho
PhD Candidate, Temple University
“When Code Writes the Coder: The Delegation-Validation Trap in Vibe Coding”
Sahiba Chopra
PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley
“Effort Opacity”
Andrea Contigiani
Assistant Professor, Ohio State University
“Entrepreneurship, Experimentation, and Generative AI: Evidence from ChatGPT”
Chris Dellarocas
Richard C. Shipley Professor of Information Systems, Boston University
“Does AI Reduce Employer Reliance on Master’s Degrees? Evidence from Labor Market Flows”
Paramveer Dhillon
Associate Professor, University of Michigan
“Readers Prefer Outputs of AI Trained on Copyrighted Books over Expert Human Writers”
Sorour Fatemi
Visiting Assistant Professor, Cal State Monterey Bay College of Business
“Do Large Language Models Gamble Like Humans? Risk Preferences, Episodic Memory, and Demographic Stereotypes in LLM Decision-Making”
Alex Fogelson
Research Assistant, MIT FutureTech
“The Rapid Growth of AI Foundation Model Usage in Science”
Morgan Frank
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
“AI-Exposed Jobs Deteriorated Before ChatGPT”
Matthew Gee
Director, U.S. Program Data, Gates Foundation
“Wharton / Gates Build-A-Thon: Lessons Learned”
Sanchaita Hazra
PhD Candidate, University of Utah
“Accepted with Minor Revisions: Value of AI-Assisted Scientific Writing”
Zezhen (Dawn) He
Postdoctoral Associate, Sloan School of Management, MIT
“Mental Models and Personalization of Model Selection”
David Holtz
Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School
“The Diffusion of ChatGPT Within Firms: Evidence from Enterprise Usage Data”
Moh Hosseinioun
Postdoctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
“Reorganization of Work: Evidence from Software Firms”
Xinlan (Emily) Hu
Postdoctoral Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Designing Optimal Human-AI Collaboration Processes for Complex Decision Tasks”
Ben Hyman
Economist, UCLA
“How Retrainable Are AI-Exposed Workers?”
Brian Jabarian
Marks Fellow and Incoming Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
“Choice as Signal: Designing AI Adoption in Labor Market Screening”
Xi Kang
Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University
“Working Alongside Algorithms: How Parallel AI Deployment Affects Mutual Fund Analysts’ Performance”
Sudhir Karunakaran
Professor, Yale School of Management
“The Production-to-Orchestration Shift: How Generative AI Reorganizes Knowledge Work”
Daniel Keum
Professor, Columbia Business School
“Automation and the Erosion of Firm-Employee Relations”
Samsun Knight
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
“The Effect of AI on Marketing Employment: Evidence from 90M+ Online Employment Records”
Aakriti Kumar
Postdoctoral Researcher, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
“Practicing with Language Models Cultivates Human Empathic Communication”
Jackie Lane
Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School
“Which Problems Does AI Make Worth Solving? Entrepreneurship, Human Needs, and the Direction of Innovation”
Kevin Lee
Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
“Agentic Interactions”
Brandon Lepine
PhD Candidate, UC Santa Barbara
“Precision Proactivity: Measuring Cognitive Load in Real-World AI-Assisted Work”
Junjie Luo
PhD Student, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
“Can Agentic AI Learn from Experimental Data to Design Superior Interventions? Evidence from Patient Messaging”
Dalbert Ma
PhD Student, London Business School
“The System-Level Cost of Algorithmic Coordination”
Benjamin Manning
PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“General Social Agents”
Cassandra Merritt
Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Notre Dame
“Managers as Gatekeepers in the Age of AI”
Leon Musolff
Assistant Professor, The Wharton School
“Coding Agents: Adoption, Learning, and Productivity Effects”
Aleksei Opacic
PhD Candidate, Harvard University
“Matchmakers and Gatekeepers: AI Recommendations and Racial Inequality in Hiring”
Jiarui (Jerry) Qian
PhD Candidate, University of Virginia
“AI in the Lab: AlphaFold2’s Impacts on Human-Produced Knowledge”
Adam Quinn
Postdoctoral Associate, Science History Institute
“The Past and Future of Digital Automation: AI’s Labor Impacts in Historical Context”
Neel Rakhola
Data Scientist, OpenAI
“The Diffusion of ChatGPT Within Firms: Evidence from Enterprise Usage Data”
Raphael Raux
Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Sloan
“Human Learning About AI”
Peyman Shahidi
PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Chaining Tasks, Redefining Work: A Theory of AI Automation”
Neha Sharma
Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
“Generative AI Shifts Technical Knowledge Production Toward Recombinant Novelty”
Fangchen Song
PhD Candidate, The University of Texas at Austin
“AI and the Skill Gap: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment”
Koleman Strumpf
Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University
“How AI Reshapes Human Content Creation: The Case of Wikipedia”
Michelle Vaccaro
PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Advancing AI Negotiations: A Large-Scale Autonomous Negotiation Competition”
Lei Wang
Assistant Professor, Indiana University Bloomington
“When AI Supports Emotionally Demanding Service Work: Experimental Evidence from Customer Service Interactions”
Qi Wang
Postdoctoral Associate, Questrom School of Business, Boston University
“When Does Clinical AI Substitute for Experience? AI Exposure, Medical Reasoning, and Workforce Flows in U.S. Hospitals”
Xiupeng Wang
Assistant Teaching, Professor D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University
“AI’s Job Shakeup: Analyzing the Uneven Impact of AI Adoption on Labor Demand”
Zachary Wojtowic
Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT
“Artificial Intelligence and the Reorganization of Work: Evidence from Software Firms”
Xingqi (Maggie) Ye
PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley
“Addicted to AI: How Generative AI Leads to Voluntary Work Intensification”
Alev Yildirim
Assistant Professor, Queens College, CUNY
“Organizational Exposure to Generative AI and Its Impact on Employee Satisfaction”
— Hotel Accommodations —
For overnight accommodations, we have secured a block of rooms at Homewood Suites by Hilton University City at a discounted rate for the convenience of our guests and speakers. Reserve Your Room at the Group Rate. For Additional Hotel Recommendations, please see the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative FAQ page.
— Experience Last Year’s Conference —
Explore keynote presentations and sessions from the 2025 AI and the Future of Work Conference.
— Chaired by Wharton Faculty —
Robert Meyer
Frederick H. Ecker/MetLife Insurance Professor, Professor of Marketing
Faculty Co-Director, WHAIR
Daniel Rock
Assistant Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions
Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe
Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions
Faculty Co-Director, WHAIR
— Conference Team —
Traci Doyle
Senior Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives
Carol Heller
Program Coordinator
Schotland McQuade
Assistant Director of Events and Engagement
Explore Sponsorship Opportunities
Event sponsorship opportunities are available. If you’re looking to elevate your brand and support our events, please contact Tania Rorke, Senior Associate Director of Corporate & Donor Engagement, for more information.
We would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our Corporate Members, who help make our events possible. To see the full list of companies, please visit our Corporate Member page.
