Anand Rao

Biography

Anand Rao has focused on research, innovation, applications, business and societal adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence over his 35-year consulting, industry, and academic career. Anand was the Global... Artificial Intelligence Leader for PwC, a Partner in their Data, Analytics, and AI practice, and the Innovation lead for AI in PwC’s Products and Technology segment. Anand led a team of practitioners who advised C-level executives, develop, and implement advanced analytics and AI-based solutions across several industry sectors including financial services, insurance, healthcare, technology-media-telecommunications, retail, aerospace, and defense sectors. With his PhD and research career in Artificial Intelligence and his subsequent experience in management consulting he brings business domain knowledge, software engineering expertise, statistical expertise, and modeling expertise to generate unique insights into the practice of ‘data science’ and artificial intelligence.

Prior to joining management consulting, Anand was the Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute building agent-based models and simulation systems and conducting research in the theory and practice of multi-agent systems.

Anand’s current research interests include operationalizing AI, responsible AI, systems thinking, ROI of AI, theory and practice of building agent-based models and digital twins, behavioral economics, and human decision-making.

He has received widespread recognition for his extraordinary contributions in the field of consulting and Artificial Intelligence Research. He has received the Most Influential Paper Award for the Decade in 2007 from the Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems organization for his contribution on the Belief-Desire-Intention Architecture; MBA Award of Distinction from Melbourne Business School, 1997 and University Postgraduate Research Award (UPRA) from University of Sydney, 1985; Distinguished Alumnus Award from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India; He was recognized as one of Top 50 Data & Analytics professionals in USA and Canada by Corinium; one of Top 50 professionals in InsureTech; one of Top 25 Technology Leaders in Consulting; Top AI Leaders of 2024 by Rethink Retail; and has won a number of awards for his academic and business papers.

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Areas of Expertise (5)

Systems Dynamics for Policy Evaluation

Knowledge Graphs & Large Language Models

Operationalizing AI

Responsible AI

Agent-based Modeling

Media Appearances (6)

Google's breakup trial is turning into a fight for the future of AI

Yahoo! Finance  online

2025-04-27

AI competition is now central to the DOJ’s antitrust trial against Google, with rivals like OpenAI and Perplexity AI arguing that Google’s dominance in search unfairly hampers innovation in AI-driven search tools. “I don't think that they need all of the data that Google has. It's more the channel and the distribution that Chrome offers is probably what they would be interested in," explained Anand Rao (Heinz).

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Why Enterprises Struggle to Drive Value with AI

InformationWeek  online

2025-01-23

According to Anand Rao, distinguished service professor, applied data science and artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University, the top three challenges are ROI measurement, realization, and maintenance.

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How to apply responsible artificial intelligence in healthcare

Healthcare IT News  online

2024-10-02

We interviewed Rao to discuss responsible AI, how responsible AI should be applied in healthcare, how to combine responsible AI specifically with generative AI, and what society must understand about adopting responsible AI.

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In deploying AI, the Federal Aviation Administration faces unique challenges

FedScoop  online

2024-04-30

“It’s still very early days,” noted Anand Rao, a Carnegie Mellon data science and AI professor. “They’re taking a conservative, cautious approach.”

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Should Government Be Allowed to Regulate AI?

InformationWeek  online

2024-04-29

Anand S. Rao, service professor of AI at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, believes that government regulation will eventually be necessary to control AI abuse. "Imagine AI without any form of government oversight," he says. "It's akin to a car hurtling down the road without brakes or a steering wheel -- potentially chaotic and dangerous," he explains via email.

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For IT leaders, operationalized gen AI is still a moving target

CIO  online

2024-02-28

“It makes it challenging for organizations to operationalize generative AI,” says Anand Rao, AI professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “There are different tools, models, and vector databases evolving, and new papers coming out, which makes it very challenging for a company. They need stability. Tell me what to do for the next three months; don’t change everything every two weeks.”

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Media

Publications (4) Photos (1) Videos (2)

Publications:

Photos:

Videos:

Social

Industry Expertise (2)

Research

Education/Learning

Accomplishments (5)

Top AI Leaders of 2024 in the Research and Academia Category (professional)

Rethink Retail

Top 50 Data & Analytics professionals in USA and Canada (professional)

Corinium

Top 50 Innovators of Data & Analytics Professionals in USA and Canada (professional)

Corinium

Top 25 Technology Leaders in Consulting (professional)

Consulting Report

Enterprise CXO Leader of the Year (professional)

CogX

Education (3)

Melbourne Business School: MBA 1997

University of Sydney: Ph.D., Artificial Intelligence 1988

Birla Institute of Technology and Science: M.Sc., Computer Science 1984

Affiliations (5)

• Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI
• World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council
• OECD’s Network of Experts on AI (ONE)
• OECD’s AI Compute initiative
• International Congress for the Governance of AI

Links (1)

• Carnegie Mellon University Profile

Articles (1)

AI Specialization for Pathways of Economic Diversification

Scientific Reports

2023 The growth in AI is rapidly transforming the structure of economic production. However, very little is known about how within-AI specialization may relate to broad-based economic diversification. This paper provides a data-driven framework to integrate the interconnection between AI-based specialization with goods and services export specialization to help design future comparative advantage based on the inherent capabilities of nations. Using detailed data on private investment in AI and export specialization for more than 80 countries, we propose a systematic framework to help identify the connection from AI to goods and service sector specialization. The results are instructive for nations that aim to harness AI specialization to help guide sources of future competitive advantage. The operational framework could help inform the public and private sectors to uncover connections with nearby areas of specialization.

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