How Agentic AI is Reshaping Science, Education, and the Economy | Karthik Duraisamy at the University of Michigan
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 109 minutes
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Summary
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: https://aero.engin.umich.edu/people/duraisamy-karthik/
Institute for Agentic Computing: https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-launches-institute-for-agentic-computing/
ClawCon Announcement:
OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/
ScienceClaw: http://scienceclaw.science/
MIT OpenCourseWare: https://ocw.mit.edu/
ASU iPhone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfk7-3iN-U
Follow Karthik
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-duraisamy-66705025
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Carthic, welcome to the show. |
| 0:04.2 | Happy to we hear. |
| 0:05.2 | Yeah, thanks for coming on. |
| 0:06.7 | I think it's going to be fun. |
| 0:07.7 | You guys just announced a bunch of things at the University of Michigan. |
| 0:11.1 | We're going to talk about that and then also talk a little bit about how AI is changing, |
| 0:14.4 | research, education, I think like finding a job, the economy a little bit too. |
| 0:19.8 | But to kick things off, what did you guys just announce at the university? |
| 0:23.2 | So first of all, I think it's an incredibly exciting time to be alive, given all these |
| 0:28.5 | things that are happening, not just around AI, but in science, research, and all of these |
| 0:32.4 | things you just spoke about. |
| 0:34.2 | So at the clock on, we announced the Institute for Agentic Computing, which is a partnership |
| 0:40.2 | between the OpenCla Foundation and the University of Michigan. So the goal of the Institute will be to |
| 0:45.9 | develop responsibly powerful agentic frameworks that people can use for a wide range of things. |
| 0:53.6 | Again, we can talk more about what those things are. |
| 0:56.5 | So there'll be a core development of agentic infrastructures, |
| 1:00.0 | and then a large number of people working with those developers |
| 1:03.6 | to apply those agentic frameworks to very many different fields. |
| 1:08.3 | Any field that humans have ever touched, I think will be identified. |
| 1:12.4 | And how did this come about just the creation and the thinking around starting this? |
| 1:18.7 | Yeah. So first of all, I think OpenClaw is one of the most popular software frameworks that |
| 1:26.5 | is out there, right? And what is OpenClaught for someone who doesn't know? |
... |
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