The Haslam College of Business hosted the first AI for Business Research Workshop — a small, deliberately focused gathering of twenty researchers from seven universities. Six presentations. One long dinner at Calhoun’s on the River. A morning hike in the Smokies. And, by every account, some of the best academic conversations Knoxville has seen in a long time.
This workshop is the research community behind the kind of questions the AIWorks Distinguished Seminar Series is built to answer: not whether AI will transform business, but how humans and machines will work together inside it — and what that means for the firms, workforces, and public institutions that will have to manage the transition.
Six presentations, one thread
The topics spanned a wide band:
- AI and social search — how AI is reshaping how people discover, evaluate, and choose
- AI and ESG — measuring (and auditing) the sustainability claims that increasingly pass through AI systems
- Human-AI systems — the design of work in which people and models share a task, not just a workflow
- Workforce intelligence — anticipating the skills a business will need before it needs them
- Copyright auditing in LLMs — the legal and economic architecture of training on, and paying for, human knowledge
Diverse on the surface, but the common thread was clear and consequential: what does it mean for humans and AI to work together, and what does that mean for business in the future?
That question is the connective tissue of the AIWorks mission. The seminar series has convened industry and government leaders to talk about AI’s disruption of the federal workforce, of state business operations, and of the skill transformation every Tennessean will face. This workshop turned the same lens on the evidence — the research that will determine whether Tennessee can capture the value of AI while managing its risks.
Why small?
Twenty researchers. Seven universities. Six talks.
The format was intentional. Big conferences produce breadth; workshops produce depth. In a room this size, a presenter gets real pushback, a critique, a collaboration. The workshop was built to be the research engine that feeds the practice side of AIWorks — the seminars, the tutorials, the skill-transformation maps, and the resource hub for Tennessee businesses and public agencies.
What comes next
The workshop is the first of its kind. The second is already in planning.
If you are a researcher working on AI and business — human-AI systems, workforce intelligence, AI governance, AI and ESG, or the organizational design of AI-driven firms — and you would like to present, or to be part of the next gathering, reach out. The workshop is open to researchers from all seven (and beyond), and the goal is simple: make Tennessee the place where the research on AI and business happens, not just where it is applied.
Organized in partnership with the AI Tennessee Initiative and the Business Analytics and Statistics Department, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.