At the Sam M. Walton College of Business, our vision is clear — we seek to be a thought leader in business and a catalyst for transforming lives in Arkansas and beyond.
Artificial intelligence represents one of the most transformative forces of our time. It’s reshaping how businesses operate, how leaders make decisions, and how we prepare our students for success. Understanding, using, and integrating AI is no longer optional — it’s essential.
Across the Walton College, we’re not simply talking about AI — we’re building the capacity to use it thoughtfully and responsibly. Our faculty are embedding AI into their teaching, enhancing student engagement and creativity. Our MBA and Ph.D. programs are equipping future leaders with the strategic understanding to harness AI ethically and effectively. Our researchers are exploring how large language models can accelerate discovery while maintaining the integrity that defines our scholarship.
We’ve invested in the infrastructure to make this possible — including our own local GPU cluster — so that faculty, students, and staff can experiment, learn, and innovate with AI tools in real-world ways.
We’re intentional in our approach. We want our graduates to be AI-fluent and human-centered — leaders who not only understand the technology but also know how it can applied in business settings to solve problems and enhance human productivity.
As we look ahead, we’ll continue to connect our efforts to those in industry, preparing students to be adaptive leaders in a rapidly changing world.
Brent Williams
Dean of Sam M. Walton College of Business
What is AI?
What is AI?
We've all heard the term, but what exactly is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science focused on building systems that can perform tasks that usually need human thinking, like recognizing patterns, making predictions, or choosing actions. Most modern AI is predictive: it looks at huge amounts of past data to guess what is most likely to come next — the next word in a sentence, the next best decision in a process, or the most relevant answer to a question. This is done through machine learning, where models “learn” statistical patterns rather than being coded step by step. Newer “agentic” systems go further by not just predicting, but also taking a series of actions on your behalf across tools and apps. These systems don’t truly understand the world like humans do, but they are increasingly powerful at narrow tasks, which is why you see them being woven into business, education, and everyday life.
Older than we think
Computer learning and our attempts to create smart machines have been around a lot longer than most people think. Since the 1950s, researchers have been asking a simple question: can we get computers to do things that look like thinking? Early work focused on logic and rules, trying to hand-code “intelligence” step by step. That ran into hard limits, so the field went through cycles of excitement and disappointment.
As computing power and data grew, AI shifted toward learning from examples instead of rules, leading to machine learning and later deep learning. Today’s generative and agent-like systems are the latest phase in that same long experiment. AI hasn’t suddenly appeared out of nowhere; it’s the result of decades of trial, error, optimism, and pushback about what it means to build something that can act intelligently.
Click on the timeline dates below to see a short history of key milestones over the past 75 years.
Current AI trends
In the past five or so years, AI development has jumped to the top of the priority list for big tech firms and startups alike. Instead of being a niche research topic, AI now sits inside tools you use every day: search, email, office software, creative apps, and the platforms businesses rely on. Modern systems can generate text, images, code, and data insights at a speed and scale that would have sounded ridiculous a decade ago.
At the same time, companies are racing to build “agentic” AI that doesn’t just predict answers, but also takes actions across multiple tools. For all of us, that means expectations about what software can do are shifting very quickly. Tasks that once felt like “real work” done only by humans are increasingly shared with, or offloaded to, AI systems — and that’s the reality we have to understand and prepare our students for today.
A short history of AI
Is AI Safe?
The ethics around AI
The University of Arkansas recognizes that Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way we learn, teach, research, and work. The campus maintains an AI website and has developed Guidelines for Acceptable Use of Artificial Intelligence. The introduction of AI does not change the fundamental obligations of academic integrity and professional integrity; rather, it adds new considerations for accountability and fairness. The ethical principles governing appropriate use of AI on campus include legal and policy compliance, integrity, transparency and accountability, and the avoidance of discrimination or harassment. At the Walton College, AI is broadly embedded in many courses to help students demystify AI and critically evaluate its applications. Some courses also specifically focus on the technical, legal, or ethical implications of AI use in both personal and organizational contexts.
In addition, many faculty members across the departments actively contribute to the college’s AI Taskforce, which monitors new AI tools and explores meaningful ways to integrate them into teaching and learning. Faculty also engage regularly with industry leaders - both inside and outside of the classroom through guest speakers, and presentations or workshops with practitioners - ensuring that students are well prepared for the job market. At the same time, faculty share insights from their research to inform and advance industry practices in the rapidly changing AI landscape.
AI fears
Here at Walton College, we are aware of the fears around the use of AI. We feel many of these concerns fall into a few clear themes: fear of the unknown and “black box” systems we can’t fully explain; fear that change is moving too fast for people, institutions, and laws to keep up; fear of job loss and economic disruption, especially in creative and knowledge-based work; and fear of misuse through deepfakes, cheating, privacy violations, data theft, and other harms. These are fair questions to ask of any powerful technology. Our response is not to step back, but to engage. We teach, research, and work directly with AI so that our students, faculty, and staff build the skills and judgement to use it responsibly. By learning how these tools work, where they fail, and how to design guardrails around them, we aim to move from feeling threatened to feeling prepared and empowered to shape AI’s impact on business and society. Ultimately, we choose to address and overcome our fears.
The university's policy
The University of Arkansas is committed to ensuring that Artificial Intelligence is used in ways that protect the privacy and security of student, faculty, and staff information. The campus maintains robust data-security practices and provides clear policies for data security in the Code of Computing Practices. The introduction of AI does not change the University’s longstanding obligations to safeguard sensitive data. AI introduces new opportunities to strengthen protection and resilience. The principles in the Data Management, Use and Protection policy governs the secure use of AI on campus include data-privacy compliance, secure data handling, protection against unauthorized access, and responsible management of any information used in AI-supported learning, teaching, and research.
How do we use AI?
AI Courses here
AI at Walton College is taught across undergrad, master’s, and PhD levels. Our students see AI in five main ways: as a business tool, an analytics engine, an ethical and policy challenge, a management issue, and a creative collaborator.
We offer courses in information systems, economics, accounting, marketing, and management where AI is used for data analysis, scenario simulation, presentations, and decision support. Honors and graduate seminars go deeper into LLMs, agentic workflows, AI strategy, and how AI reshapes firms, jobs, and innovation. Ethics runs through all this: AI and tech ethics, digital innovation, biometrics, and algorithmic fairness in lending give students a framework to talk about bias, power, and responsibility.
Beyond our courses, we have an internal dedicated AI server, and a student led AI Club which creates a space where students from any major can build real AI literacy.
Research with AI
AI is changing what we study and how we study it. Scholars such as Varun Grover and Rajiv Sahberwal have already published research on how generative AI is changing the business landscape, and researchers across the college are exploring how it may affect decision making, supply chains and organizational systems.
Generative AI is not only a subject of study, it is also a tool for conducting research that can accelerate every stage of the research process, from discovery to theory building, data collection, analysis and beyond. But it’s a tool that comes with risks, bias, and known issues with factual accuracy. AI raises philosophical and pragmatic concerns about plagiarism and accountability. Academic societies and journals are adapting policies and procedures to address these concerns and help ensure reasearch integrity. Here at Walton College, we have created a new doctoral seminar on scholarly uses of generative AI to prepare emerging researchers to use these new technologies. The course addresses the uses and limits of generative AI at every step of the research process.
University provided AI models
The University of Arkansas has rolled out several AI tools that our students, faculty and staff have access to, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The Sam M. Walton College of Business is also providing upgraded licenses to those who need more in depth research and usage.
We also recently announced that the university will join the first chohort of the Google AI for Education Accelerator program, a new initiative that provides free access to Google Career Certificates and AI Essentials training for students, faculty and staff at more than 100 public universities.
AI in our Future...
At Walton College, we will keep redefining what it means to prepare business graduates for a future where artificial intelligence expands the possibilities for innovation, insight, and impact. We see AI not as a shortcut, but as both a tool and a catalyst—one that will deepen learning, sharpen judgment, spark creativity, and inspire new ways to solve the challenges of business and society.
Students across every major will use it to think more critically and create more boldly through coursework and experiential learning. They will analyze its outputs, question its assumptions, and apply it ethically to extend human capability. We will champion the human skills AI cannot replace: ethical reasoning, communication, creativity, and leadership. The AI Club will further provide intentional learning experiences through educational workshops, hands-on projects, and additional industry exposure that help students use AI with real-world application.
We will also support faculty as they continue to integrate AI into the classroom—helping them elevate AI in assignments and projects, develop new courses and certificates, and continue partnerships with industry to create hands-on learning with real AI-enabled business challenges. This work will empower them to model responsible use, foster innovation, and ensure that teaching with AI remains grounded in ethical, human-centered learning.
Our research mission will remain bold. Walton faculty will lead in discovering how organizations harness AI to innovate, make strategic decisions, and create value responsibly. Supported by our GPU computing cluster, researchers will push boundaries while examining the ethical, legal, and societal dimensions of AI—ensuring progress is guided by purpose. Our scholars will continue clarifying the risks and societal implications of AI, offering evidence-based guidance on responsible adoption, governance, transparency, and human-centered design. This work ensures that the business community looks to us not only for talent, but also for insight.
Positioned within a dynamic ecosystem of commerce and innovation, Walton will remain at the forefront of AI fluency, human-centered innovation, and responsible leadership—equipping graduates not just to navigate the future of AI, but to lead and shape the connected commerce economy of tomorrow.
Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Curriculum Innovation and Teaching Effectiveness
Professor and Walmart Chair in Marketing
Head of Walton College AI Steering Committee