91Ó°ÊÓ

Ravi Bapna, an AI and digital transformation scholar who has spent 25 years studying how platforms shape human behavior, from early internet auctions to online dating to AI, recently joined the Leavey School of Business as dean, arriving from the University of Minnesota. He is the co-author, with NYU's Anindya Ghose, of Thrive, a book on demystifying AI for general audiences. In his first few days on campus, Bapna sat down to talk about his research, his approach to AI and ethics at a Jesuit business school, and his priorities for Leavey.

You've spent much of your career studying platforms that shape human behavior: online dating, social media, freemium communities. What first drew you to that intersection of economics, data, and human behavior?

It goes back to my graduate training. My PhD was in the economics of internet auctions, right as eBay was getting started, when most research on the topic was still theoretical. I ended up being the first person in the information systems field to build a web-crawling agent to track live bidding behavior at scale, which gave us real behavioral data to validate theoretical models. That became my dissertation, and I carried the same approach into social media research: running large-scale field experiments with platforms to figure out whether people actually influence each other, or are just similar enough that they'd do the same thing anyway.

Digital transformation comes in waves. Starting with PCs and mainframes as wave one, large ERP systems, the dot-com era, social media and mobile, platforms and freemium models, and now we're squarely in wave seven: AI. Each of these waves has come with a new set of technology underneath it that people need to understand, and AI is no different, except that it's harder to see. A computer, you can touch. Electricity, you know what it's doing. AI is intangible: it's lurking in the background, deciding things like who you might match with or whether your resume gets past a screener, and people can't see it. That's partly why Anindya Ghose at NYU and I wrote our book, Thrive: to walk people through what's actually happening underneath AI, using everyday stories about healthcare, education, work, and relationships instead of corporate case studies.

How does your focus on AI's impact on ethics and human dignity shape your approach to AI at a business school at a Jesuit institution?

Like any powerful general-purpose technology, AI has real upside and real risk. Part of our job as educators is to teach students what's actually happening under the hood, so they can imagine solving problems we haven't even thought of yet, while making sure they're responsible users who know how to evaluate potential harms, like algorithmic bias.

When I think about human dignity, it comes down to a few things: a good job, a good education, a good family, a good community. Those are the building blocks. A lot of my current research is focused on how AI can positively influence education: bringing it into the classroom in a way that's coached rather than a crutch. Instead of cognitive surrender, what you want is cognitive amplification.

The other big opportunity is healthcare. We're launching a new medical school here at 91Ó°ÊÓ, and I think AI education will be integrated into it from the start, on both the clinical and operational sides of healthcare. If we focus our energy on educating people, making sure they're workforce-ready, and giving them access to high-quality, affordable healthcare, those are the real building blocks of human dignity. That's what's top of mind for me.

Leavey has strong momentum, with top-ranked MBA programs and our new MS in Sports Business. Where do you see the biggest opportunity to grow?

It's about making sure we live up to the idea that Silicon Valley is our classroom, for undergrads and for our master's programs alike. I see real opportunity to grow our executive education offering, because there's a real need in the industry to reskill a whole generation of the workforce, and I think the faculty and staff here have the capability to do that.

I'm also genuinely excited about our sports management program. I'm a big sports fan myself, and I think the analytics of sport, and the impact sport has on everyday life, is a compelling area. I'm glad our faculty designed this program, and I want to put my full energy behind supporting it and growing our cohorts.

We want this to be the place people choose to come learn how business is done in Silicon Valley, and that has relevance well beyond here. By extension, Silicon Valley is a lab for our faculty, too. Take something like the pros and cons of siting a new data center: I'm glad people here are already thinking about issues like that, and about the ethical questions around AI, not just the positive use cases. We have scholarship that speaks to that, and I want to encourage more of it.

What does success look like for Leavey graduates five years from now, in a market being reshaped by AI?

Three things, I think. First, you have to be genuinely proficient using AI within your domain: sports management, finance, information technology, whatever it is. There's a narrative that all coding jobs are going away, and the data doesn't actually support that. AI tools might get you started at a different level than you'd have been five years ago, but building a system that's robust (one that doesn't hallucinate, doesn't fail) still requires real software engineering insight. We're training our graduates to do that.

Second, just be really good within your own domain. If you're a supply chain major or an entrepreneurship major, understanding that deeply is what lets AI complement you well.

Third, double down on the humanistic values: the imagination it takes to solve problems we haven't even seen yet, whether that's discovering new drugs or building products nobody's imagined. Silicon Valley has the culture for that: the creativity, the empathy, the drive to make sure the innovation you're creating actually lifts everybody up, and that you're a good citizen while you do it.

I'd also tell graduates not to lose track of building real friendships and communities while they're here. College isn't just what happens in the classroom. I met my wife in college, and we've been together 31 years now. I know the value of that, and I want our students to remember it too.