David Rand brings expertise on positive uses of generative AI

David Rand | Lecturer | Johnson School

Meet David Rand ‘04, one of our newest faculty members to join the Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business. He is also professor of information science and marketing & management communications in the Cornell University Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Rand earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in systems biology following his Bachelor’s of Arts at Cornell University in computational biology.

Joining the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Rand’s expertise is in computational social science to explore how dialogues between humans and generative AI models can be used to correct inaccurate beliefs, illuminate why people share inaccurate information online, understand political polarization and promote human cooperation.

Rand has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals such Nature, Science, PNAS, Psychological Science and Management Science, and his work has received widespread media attention.

Rand advises technology companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok in their efforts to inform users. He has also written for popular press outlets including the New York Times, Wired and New Scientist. He was named to Wired magazine’s Smart List 2012 of “50 people who will change the world,” chosen as a 2012 Pop!Tech Science Fellow, awarded the 2015 Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Research, chosen as fact-checking researcher of the year in 2017 by the Poytner Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network, awarded the 2020 FABBS Early Career Impact Award from the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and selected as a 2021 Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professor by Poets & Quants. Papers he has coauthored have been awarded Best Paper of the Year in Experimental Economics, Social Cognition, and Political Methodology.

What is a current issue in business or business education that you are interested in, and why is it important to you and your work?

“I am deeply interested in how generative AI is transforming society, for good and for ill. Much of my research agenda is aimed at findings ways to harness this technology to have positive societal impacts.”