On May 2, UVA McIntire’s Center for the Management of IT (CMIT) presented its signature annual event, the Knowledge ∞ Continuum. This year’s edition, “The Future of Work in the Age of AI,” offered insightful, visionary thinking on the ways that artificial intelligence is reshaping the employment landscape, team dynamics, human achievement, learning, and more. Held in the expansive atrium of recently inaugurated Shumway Hall, the event offered a vibrant platform for attendees to engage in meaningful dialogue on pressing topics that were further enlivened by networking opportunities among a large crowd of enthusiastic UVA alumni, students, faculty, and distinguished guests.
Opening the Continuum, CMIT Director Ryan Nelson, Murray Family Eminent Professor of Commerce, welcomed attendees, underscoring the importance of continuous education, innovation, and the day’s topic. He highlighted how the event’s mission aligns with the spirit of lifelong learning championed by Thomas Jefferson and reinforced the strategic intersection between business and technology. Nelson also celebrated the new Shumway Hall as a testament to the School’s commitment to fostering innovative thought and collaboration. He then introduced Professor Brent Kitchens, Co-Director of McIntire’s Center for Business Analytics (CBA), who discussed how the two centers are collaborating on topics and working together with students and alumni.
Then began the morning’s keynote sessions, featuring talks from industry leaders Paul Daugherty, Tom Davenport, and Zack Kass, each offering unique perspectives on AI’s transformative potential.
Tom Davenport, Paul Daugherty, Zack Kass, Montana Showalter
Paul Daugherty, an angel investor, board and executive adviser, former Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at Accenture, and author of Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, articulated AI’s role in boosting human capabilities, discussing how AI augments and expands skills and our potential in the workplace. He noted how businesses need to think about that potential as opposed to a commonly held replacement concept of robots taking over most human employment. Daugherty stressed the need for organizations to reimagine roles and processes, saying that we are in an ever-unfolding era greatly impacted by both human-like technology and massive changes to consumer behavior. “This is the age of AI: This isn’t a moment, this isn’t a one-time transformation,” he says.
Building on Daugherty’s remarks, Bodily Centennial Professor of Analytics at the Darden Business School Tom Davenport discussed how the vast majority of companies have not yet embraced generative AI, or indeed, any other forms of AI, despite the potential upside. He discussed the challenges in working with unstructured data, noting that many firms realize that human review is often still necessary and warranted. The business writer and editor then delved into the importance of integrating AI with business strategies, emphasizing human-technology collaboration and suggesting that managers need to analyze results to determine if initiatives are worthwhile: “Educate your employees and allow individual experimentation, of course, but eventually try to see if there’s really value being created with measurement.”
Zack Kass, McIntire’s Executive-in-Residence, an AI Futurist, and former Head of GTM at OpenAI, stressed the ethical advancement and broader accessibility of AI technologies. He observed how machines are becoming much smarter and more efficient at an astounding rate. Kass explained that, as opposed to critical resources and older technologies that emerged in centuries and decades before AI, whose costs very slowly came down over time, AI has recently become both better and cheaper at an extremely rapid pace of change. “This is an incredible trend that I don’t think we appreciate enough, because it suggests that we are probably approaching a world that gets much less expensive across a lot of different dimensions,” he says.
Kass then explored societal thresholds for technology, remarking on the divide between what technology is capable of and what society wants it to do. Discussing the innate need that humans have for control as one reason for the slow adoption of driverless cars, Kass remarked how society must critically assess and decide on AI’s role in a plethora of areas while questioning the acceptance, rejection, and ethical implications of AI and other emerging technologies.
Following the three keynotes, McIntire alumna Montana Showalter (McIntire ’24) moderated a profound exchange of ideas on areas such as the factors separating companies exploring AI from those applying it to the core of their operations, the changing dynamics of all-human or human-AI-assisted teams, plans for educating young talent early in careers increasingly automated by AI, and what companies may do differently in order to succeed in a changing world.
In the following session, industry leaders responded to the discussions, offering practical insights into AI’s application across various sectors. Moderated by former McIntire faculty member Barb Wixom (A&S ’91), Principal Research Scientist, MIT CISR, the panel included Rob Alexander, Chief Information Officer, Capital One; Kelly Doney, Vice President & Chief Information Officer, UVA; and Shamim Mohammad, EVP and Chief Information and Technology Officer, CarMax, who explored more on the major topics of AI and business presented in the keynotes.
Kelly Doney, Barb Wixom, Rob Alexander, Shamim Mohammad
Immediately following the industry-focused session, Nelson presented two CMIT awards, celebrating notable achievements: Alexander received the CMIT IT Leadership Award for his pivotal contributions to IT and business innovation, and Pranet Pinnamaneni (McIntire ’25), a promising recent graduate, was honored with the CMIT Emerging Leader in IT Award, recognizing his exceptional academic accomplishments and potential as a contributor to the application of IT within business.
After a networking luncheon in Shumway Hall’s distinctive Grand Classroom, the afternoon sessions provided an intellectual deep dive into genAI applications and case studies at UVA and McIntire. Faculty members and students showcased groundbreaking projects highlighting the integration of AI across domains. Professor Ryan Wright presented a case study of diffusion on topics related to genAI expectations in the workplace, while Professors Sarah Lebovitz and Jingjing Li provided a case study on large-scale genAI deployment at UVA Health.
Students Pierce Brookins (A&S ’28) and Nathan Wang (Computer Science ’28) presented their GenAI Concept Competition for the Common Good-winning app, Accelerating Asylum, a tool leveraging advanced AI with RAG-driven case search and agentic automation to streamline U.S. asylum processing. Alexander Talreja (McIntire ’26, Computer Science ’26) explained Show Me A Sign, second-place winner of the CBA-sponsored HooHacks 2025 competition, his team’s innovative solution using computer vision and AI to do real-time translation of American Sign Language (ASL) into spoken English.
The day concluded with a session led by Professor Stefano Grazioli on genAI at scale, expanding attendees’ understanding of AI’s strategic implications in a customer service context for financial technology company Intuit Inc. Grazioli detailed the benefit to less skilled employees who rely on AI for new solutions, and with implementation of AI, an improvement in productivity, in the number of customers assisted, and of language fluency, as well as positive results for both customer sentiment and customer service agents.
A celebratory reception wrapped up the event, allowing participants to reflect on the day’s discoveries and forge valuable connections. The Knowledge ∞ Continuum embodied the collaborative essence needed to harness AI effectively, focusing on innovation, strategic foresight, and ethical responsibility as vital components for navigating the complexities of today’s business and technological environment.
