10 Oct 2025

Harvard Showcases Cutting-Edge AI Innovations During Boston AI Week

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by Kennedy Ryan

On October 1, Harvard Business School’s Digital Transformation (DTx) team hosted "AI Innovations at Harvard," a thought-provoking event (as part of Boston AI week) highlighting how artificial intelligence is reshaping learning, research, and operations across the University.

Held in Spangler Auditorium, the program featured opening remarks from Dean Srikant Datar, a keynote address from Senior Associate Dean Tsedal Neeley, and a diverse set of presentations spanning HBS IT, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Department of Physics, and DTx. The event drew an audience of faculty, staff, and students from across Harvard, along with attendees from schools and organizations throughout Boston. A lively networking reception capped off the day, fostering conversations and collaborations among Boston’s academic and innovation communities.

“Harvard is home to an incredible variety of AI innovation,” said Arnold Paul, senior managing director of Digital Transformation and interim head of DTx. "By bringing these stories together in one place, we hope to spark collaboration across disciplines and inspire the next wave of experimentation.”

Opening Remarks from Dean Datar
Dean Datar kicked off the event by highlighting the School’s commitment to supporting responsible, forward-looking AI initiatives. He emphasized how artificial intelligence is transforming business, education, and research—and how HBS is positioning itself to lead in this evolving landscape. Dean Datar’s remarks set an energizing tone for the afternoon, underscoring Harvard’s dedication to innovation, collaboration, and academic excellence in the AI era.

Highlights Across Harvard
The program formally began with a presentation Harvard Business School IT, showcasing how the team is using AI to improve operations and enhance learning experiences through three key initiatives:

-SophiAI, a GPT-powered assistant launched in the Executive Education Advanced Management Program, delivers 24/7 personalized guidance to executives, and has achieved a 94% adoption rate and logged 1,500+ conversations in three months.

-The Data Insights Analyst (DIA) chatbot transforms student evaluations into actionable insights for faculty through templatized prompts, greatly reducing the time and effort required to analyze hundreds of student comments.

-The HBS Live Online Classroom utilizes advances in AI video avatars, which have rapidly evolved from basic animations to film-like realism, creating new possibilities for immersive online classrooms.

Next, Devika Jain, a researcher at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, presented her groundbreaking work on the Geography of Human Flourishing project. Jain explored how spatial awareness and generative AI can be used to extract insights about human well-being from social media at scale, offering a new lens for understanding global patterns of prosperity.

Senior Lecturer Kelly Miller and lecturer Greg Kestin from Harvard University’s Physics Department followed with a compelling look at their PS2 Tutorbot project, a custom GPT designed to support physics education. Their work illustrated how generative models can deepen student understanding of complex concepts and complement traditional teaching methods.

Spotlight on Digital Transformation
DTx highlighted its role as a product development organization building innovative, foundational capabilities that, through experimentation and rapid prototyping, enable and accelerate AI adoption across the School and beyond. Rather than focusing on isolated tools, DTx is laying the groundwork for scalable capabilities that power teaching, learning, and research in the MBA Program, Executive Education, HBS Online, Foundry, Harvard Business Impact, and beyond.

Their work spans conversational AI, chat-based tutorbots, feedback agents, conversational search and recommendation systems, and real-time interactive voice and video simulations—capabilities that are transforming how students and educators engage with content. Through rapid prototyping and iterative design, DTx enables teams to experiment, test, and refine new applications quickly, while maintaining the robust infrastructure needed to bring these innovations to scale through stable, secure, and extensible production environments.

Closing Keynote and What’s Next
The event concluded with a keynote from Professor Neeley, a renowned expert on digital transformation. She offered a thought-provoking perspective on how AI is reshaping the way organizations work, communicate, and lead—setting the tone for the future of AI adoption at Harvard and beyond.

Neeley highlighted what she calls the “30 percent rule” as a practical framework for adapting to AI: Students and professionals do not need to be experts to use AI effectively; understanding roughly 30 percent of the technology, data, and algorithms is enough to meaningfully apply, contribute to, and lead with AI. She likened this knowledge to a curated pond rather than an endless ocean, underscoring that a focused understanding enables confident and strategic use of AI.

Building on the energy and engagement of this fall’s program, DTx plans to host another AI Innovations at Harvard event in the spring of 2026. This upcoming session will continue to spotlight new tools, research, and collaborations emerging across the Harvard community.

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