Press

At the Universo TOTVS 2026 event in São Paulo, senior lecturer George Westerman gave an interview to CNN Cast to discuss how artificial intelligence is affecting the corporate world and the job market. "AI doesn't produce value in companies on its own," he said. According to him, what AI does is enable businesses to operate differently — and that's the truly critical part of the transformation.

Distinguished senior lecturer Robert Pozen and co-author wrote: "The SEC is moving in the wrong direction by allowing mutual funds to charge one-sided performance fees and encouraging Wall Street to sell more private assets to unsophisticated buyers. Instead, the SEC should bolster investor protections by increasing the criteria for accredited investors to reflect inflation, and by ensuring all retail investors fully understand the risks in buying funds holding illiquid securities of private companies."

Professor of the practice Rama Ramakrishnan recommended breaking tasks up into small, discrete parts, and then considering the potential costs of using AI to do them. "Some tasks, like writing ad copy, product descriptions, or a movie plotline, have slightly more room for error. Uses that require logical reasoning or factual knowledge; encompass cause-and-effect relationships; or have high stakes, like medical care, demand more accuracy," he explained.

Professor Scott Stern explained that research accumulated over the past 20 years has shown that industrial clusters influence business activity, startups, innovation, and regional economic performance. However, he argued that the benefits of geographical proximity lead to actual growth not merely by gathering companies in one place, but only when people move within that space, technology and infrastructure are shared, and they become mutual customers and suppliers.

"I would encourage people to use AI to explain and define," said associate professor Taha Choukhmane. "If you're interested in knowing what the stock market is, what the difference between a mutual fund and an index fund is. Using AI to explain these concepts can be very useful because it can empower people to get the most out of these methods." Choukhmane also recommends asking AI to provide references to trusted sources to verify the information provided.

Research scientist Christian Catalini said: "The binding constraint on growth is no longer intelligence. It is human verification bandwidth. The only A.I. that's useful is the A.I. that is verified."