LBS launches new Data Science and AI Initiative
The Data Science and AI Initiative unites LBS faculty conducting research on AI, teaching AI, and teaching with AI, along with practitioners working in the AI field. This community of intellectually curious individuals will gather with questions and ideas to learn from one another and to help inform business leaders about the potential impact of these new technologies and the best ways to harness them for future growth.
Business leaders face several challenges: how can they balance generative AI with essential human skills such as empathy, decision-making and creativity? How can a leader ensure that when their workforce employs generative AI, they are not inadvertently diminishing skills and learning? Our research will focus on the genuine problems that companies and business leaders are contending with, examining implications for brand equity, customers, workforce, strategy, innovation and business models amid new technologies.
Dean Guriev explains why it was so important for LBS to be agile and launch this initiative:
“As a world-class business school, we need to provide our students with AI skills. We also need to provide the global community with research on how business can use AI to increase productivity. And we need to look into the risks that artificial intelligence involves.”
The School’s culture centres on relevance for today’s and tomorrow’s business, so it is essential that it, too, continually invests in adopting frontier technological innovations. In 2024, LBS became one of the first academic partners of OpenAI. In 2025, the School introduced an LBS AI app, offering students, faculty and staff secure access to multiple LLMs and opportunities to develop their own GPTs. Also in 2025, LBS launched the One-Year MBA, designed from first principles, integrating AI into every aspect of the programme.
To find out more, including the opportunities to support the work of the Initiative, please contact David Nicholson.
