The human side of AI
Shifting the conversation from governance and responsibility to the human side of how users encounter AI in their daily lives is another essential AI for Business course: AI in our lives: The behavioral science of autonomous technology. Taught by Professor Stefano Puntoni of the Department of Marketing, who is also co-director of the WHAIR Department, this course has become one of the program’s most popular courses available to MBA, EMBA, and undergraduate students.
“More than with other technologies, we need to overcome human psychological, cultural, and organizational barriers to reap the benefits of AI,” says Puntoni. “Students need to understand not just what AI can do, but what it means for them and their future careers.” Puntoni encourages students to approach the behavioral science of AI with “intellectual humility.”
For Manas Sharma, WG’27, that perspective was one of the main reasons he sought out Wharton. Prior to joining, he spent over eight years in product management, including building AI products at TikTok and Grab. But the real-life experience left him with new questions.
“I had spent years shipping AI capabilities, but I wanted to understand the second-order effects,” Sharma says. “How do these systems actually change behavior? What happens when AI handles tasks traditionally performed by humans? The AI for Business major provided a framework to seriously study these questions.”
In “AI in Our Lives,” Sharma found a course that draws on psychology, economics, philosophy, and even art and film to examine how AI impacts happiness, creativity, and social connection. In one standout assignment, students analyze a consumer AI product, use AI to create an analysis, and then critique the collaboration.
“This meta-layer forces us to think about what AI is good at, where it’s lacking, and how collaboration actually works in practice,” adds Sharma. His long-term goal is to work in product management at Frontier AI Labs, where deployments are particularly risky. “When you’re building a system that has the potential to replace an entire job or change the way people think, you need product leaders who understand what’s technically possible and what happens when users actually encounter it.”
