How Agentic AI is Reshaping Science, Education, and the Economy | Karthik Duraisamy at the University of Michigan

Karthik Duraisamy is a professor at the University of Michigan.

He is co-leading U of M's newly created Institute of Agentic Computing, the first of its kind. The institute will serve researchers and developers building agentic AI infrastructure to advance scientific discovery, engineering, and the knowledge economy. It will also be a central node for managing developers and maintainers of the OpenClaw platform.

Karthik's research spans a broad spectrum of computational science and engineering, including new modeling approaches for complex physical systems, numerical methods, algorithms and uncertainty quantification.

This is the first conversation Karthik’s had going deep on the institute. We talk about using AI to advance scientific research, two new discoveries announced yesterday, how universities work, how AI is impacting students and education, and his advice for young people.

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Timestamps:
(0:25) The Institute for Agentic Computing
(4:27) OpenClaw Foundation and Lobster Compute Company
(8:19) How Universities actually work
(12:33) ClawCon in Ann Arbor
(15:24) Two scientific discoveries made with ScienceClaw
(20:06) How AI is speeding up scientific discovery
(25:42) Supporting AI and OpenClaw development
(29:55) Why universities function like VC funds
(34:29) How Universities get money from the government
(40:55) Why some academics believe AI is a fad
(46:17) Biggest bottlenecks in AI today
(49:26) How AI will change the world
(53:10) Karthik's Code Red advice for students
(59:19) Separating learning and doing
(1:03:10) Ways COVID and AI impacted college students
(1:14:53) How the role of universities is changing
(1:23:21) Why college classes suffered from grade inflation
(1:26:05) How AI is actually impacting the job market
(1:32:49) Karthik’s advice for students
(1:39:16) Winning two NCAA basketball national championships
(1:43:04) Almost dying in the Grand Teton National Park

Referenced
More on Karthik: aero.engin.umich.edu/people/duraisamy-karthik
Institute for Agentic Computing: record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-launches-institu…
ClawCon Announcement:
OpenClaw: openclaw.ai
ScienceClaw: scienceclaw.science
MIT OpenCourseWare: ocw.mit.edu
ASU iPhone video: youtube.com/watch?v=qqfk7-3iN-U

Follow Karthik
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karthik-duraisamy-66705025

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