What does it mean to name a disease, make a diagnosis, or truly understand what is wrong with someone? This talk explores those questions through a wide-ranging and accessible story about medicine, technology, and the changing nature of medical knowledge. Over the past two centuries, medicine has moved from bedside observation and the study of symptoms, to statistics and population health, to computers designed to assist with diagnosis. Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, we are once again being asked to rethink what medical expertise is and how it should be used.

Rather than offering a narrowly technical account, this lecture invites a broader reflection on how medicine has tried to bring order to the uncertainty of illness. Why have doctors and scientists repeatedly turned to new tools in the hope of making care more accurate, more rational, and more humane? What has been gained, and what has been lost, along the way?

The second half of the talk turns to the present moment. It offers a balanced introduction to modern medical AI, including its genuine strengths, its important limitations, and the risks of relying on it too easily. The session will conclude with practical suggestions for how older adults can use AI tools to better understand health information, prepare for medical visits, and take a more active role in their own care.

Adam Rodman is a general internis­­­t and medical educator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of AI Programs for the Carl J. Shapiro Center for Education and Research, and he leads the steering group for integration of AI into the medical school curriculum. He is also an associate editor at NEJM AI, as well as a visiting researcher at Google DeepMind. His research focuses on medical education, clinical reasoning, integration of digital technologies, and human-computer interaction, especially with AI. His first book is entitled Short Cuts: Medicine, and he is the host of the American College of Physicians podcast Bedside Rounds. 

Adam completed his residency in internal medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR, and his fellowship in global health at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center while practicing in Molepolole, Botswana. He lives in Boston with his wife and two young sons.

This session will discuss the moderator's take on AI from several perspectives: fastgrowing applications; problematic uses; political and financial considerations; and his own experience with this transformational technology. Importantly, he will examine the massive energy and water demands of the AI data centers and how to address them. At the same time, Dan will consider ways that AI might accelerate the clean energy transition—and help address climate change—by improving electric grid operations, increasing industrial energy efficiency, and managing building energy use.

Dan Reicher is an entrepreneur, investor, lawyer, policymaker, and educator whose work focuses on clean energy and climate change. He has served three U.S. presidents, testified before Congress more than 50 times, led Google’s climate and clean energy initiatives, and oversaw a $1.2 billion annual clean energy research and development budget as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy. He has also held leadership roles at Stanford, Dartmouth, and in renewable energy finance, including co-founding the nation’s first investment firm focused exclusively on renewable energy project finance. Reicher holds degrees from Dartmouth and Stanford and has been widely recognized for his influence in U.S. clean energy policy and innovation.

Artificial intelligence represents a transformation comparable in scale to electricity or the internet, yet most business leaders are approaching it as simply another productivity tool. Wheeler will argue this is a fundamental strategic error with consequences extending far beyond individual companies to the broader economy and workforce. Drawing on his experience living through the internet transformation—where companies like Amazon reimagined everything while others like Sears merely optimized existing models—Wheeler will examine why the current moment demands urgent rethinking, what’s at stake when leaders prioritize short-term efficiency over long-term transformation, and what becomes possible when change is embraced correctly. He will explore specific examples across industries, discuss implications for the next generation entering the workforce, and explain why the choices being made today will determine economic outcomes for decades to come.

Patrick Wheeler serves as Executive Director of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he has established himself as a pioneering force in artificial intelligence education and technology leadership development. As an early advocate for AI education in business schools, Wheeler launched Dartmouth's first generative AI programming in early 2022 and co-created Tuck's inaugural AI-focused course in 2023. He founded and leads the Dartmouth AI Conference, now entering its fourth year in 2026 as it celebrates the 70th anniversary of AI being established as a field at Dartmouth, growing from 150 to 400 attendees.

Wheeler's teaching philosophy emphasizes that organizations must fundamentally rethink their strategy and operations for AI rather than simply applying it for efficiency gains—a perspective informed by his experience navigating the early internet transformation and cloud revolution. He leads comprehensive AI education initiatives teaching MBA students and undergraduates, conducting hands-on workshops where students build technology products using AI tools, and developing practical applications. Since 2018, he has educated hundreds of participants through programming that combines theoretical understanding with practical strategy development.

Wheeler's impact extends beyond campus through his advisory work on AI strategy with CEOs, private sector organizations, and federal government entities. He frequently moderates panels at industry conferences and has facilitated discussions with experts from organizations including Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. His ability to forge meaningful partnerships has resulted in collaborative research with Google and immersive learning experiences in technology ecosystems worldwide.

Prior to joining Tuck, Wheeler built a diverse career spanning consulting, technology, and innovation across four continents. At CEB (now Gartner), he created a low-code e-learning product that generated multi-million dollar revenue within its first year. He also served as a trusted aide to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Wheeler holds a BA in Political Science from St. Michael's College. His areas of expertise include artificial intelligence strategy, digital transformation, technology education, and strategic program development.

AI lies at the heart of the strategic competition between the U.S. and China, including the use of AI in intelligence, cyber and military operations. As AI adoption accelerates in the national security space, the American people and their elected representatives must grapple with a number of critical questions: How will AI change the future of deterrence and warfare? What ethical issues will the use of AI in national security raise? What norms or principles should serve as guardrails for the use of AI? How do we get other nations to embrace these norms? And how do we train a whole generation of military officers to ensure human accountability for AI-driven outcomes on the battlefield?

Michèle Flournoy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of WestExec Advisors and Co-Founder and Chair of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). She served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012, where she was the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on national security and defense policy and led development of the Department of Defense’s 2012 Strategic Guidance. Flournoy has also held leadership roles on numerous boards and advisory groups in national security, defense, and public policy. She holds degrees from Harvard University and Balliol College, Oxford.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now being used to make many life-changing decisions in medicine, law, transportation, the military, business, and other areas. Critics object that using AI in these areas is inhumane and too likely to lead to harm, unfairness, and other moral wrongs. I will admit these dangers, but reply that these decisions can be made safer and more ethical by building human moral values into the AI decisionmaker. Our team does this by surveying human moral judgments at two levels and then correcting for ignorance, confusion, and partiality. To show how our methods work in practice, I will demonstrate our websites, report initial empirical findings for kidney allocation and dementia, and finally discuss potential future applications to criminal law, transportation, business, and the military.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Distinguished Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University, with appointments in philosophy, law, psychology, and neuroscience. A former Dartmouth professor, he is a widely published scholar whose work focuses on ethics, moral psychology, and moral artificial intelligence. He has written numerous books and articles, including Morality Without God?, Think Again, and Moral AI and How We Get There. He also co-teaches the popular Coursera course Think Again, which has reached more than a million learners.