Ethan Mollick is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies artificial intelligence, work, entrepreneurship and education. He is also co-director of Wharton’s Generative AI Labs, which develop prototypes and research ways AI can help people while addressing its risks. His work connects academic evidence with practical experimentation.
Before entering academia, Mollick co-founded a startup. His subsequent research and teaching have examined entrepreneurial activity and the use of simulations in education. That background helps explain his interest in learning through direct engagement with a technology rather than leaving its interpretation entirely to specialists or abstract predictions.
His book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI explores what it means to use AI as a collaborator, teacher or coach while remembering that it remains a software system. He also writes for a wider audience through One Useful Thing, discussing how capabilities and limitations appear in real tasks and how people can develop more informed habits of use.
Mollick is a co-author of research on the jagged technological frontier: the observation that AI may perform strongly on one task while struggling with another that appears similar to a human. Experimental work with knowledge workers examines both the benefits and risks of assistance, cautioning against converting a result from one setting into a universal productivity promise. His education research also explores AI-supported practice and simulations.
For executive audiences, Mollick is particularly relevant when an AI strategy needs to connect the experience of using tools with evidence about their effects. A useful brief might concern how employees learn, what should be tested before deployment or how judgement changes when an apparently capable system can still be wrong. His perspective supports informed experimentation while keeping people responsible for the work and its consequences.
