Topic: Can you Beat the Bot?—  A Creativity Showdown Between Humans and Large Language Models
Speaker: David Wang, The University of Hong Kong
Host: Song Wang, Zhejiang University
Time: 9:00–10:30 AM, August 27, 2026 (Beijing Time)
Language: Chinese
Venue: Zoom
Register Link: https://www.xcdsystem.com/iacmr/forms/index.cfm?ID=MHV96vb

Abstract

In today’s rapidly evolving age of AI, the question “Which jobs can AI replace?” has quietly shifted to “Which jobs will not be replaced by AI?” Even the creative and innovative work in which humans take the greatest pride now seems to be on the front line of this challenge. In a recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour, a leading international academic journal, Professor Dawei “David” Wang of HKU Business School staged an unprecedented creativity showdown between humans and AI.

In the study, around 10,000 human “contestants” from different countries, genders and age groups went head-to-head with nine mainstream large language models—including ChatGPT, ERNIE and DeepSeek. Together, the models completed more than 200,000 creativity tests, producing many unexpected findings. The results offer important insights into the future development of AI technology and related industries, reaffirm humans’ distinctive strengths in creativity, and provide powerful implications for digital transformation and talent development.

During this talk, Professor Wang will invite the audience to experience the same type of creativity test firsthand. Participants will not only need to listen carefully and watch closely, but also open their minds, think outside the box and actively join the challenge. Professor Wang will also share the journey behind the research and draw on his own experience to explore the trends and possibilities of a future co-created by humans and artificial intelligence.

Speaker’s Bio

Professor Dawei ‘David’ Wang is an Assistant Professor with joint appointments in Innovation and Information Management and Management and Strategy at HKU Business School, and an External Faculty member at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). He received his MSc and PhD in Management and Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. His interdisciplinary research combines experiments, big data and machine learning to study artificial intelligence, human decision-making and human–machine collaboration.

His work has appeared in Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Science. He and his team also developed Beat The Bot, an interactive learning simulation recognized with the HKU / HKU Business School 2024–25 Teaching Innovation Award.