We’re living in a pivotal time in history. As artificial intelligence touches nearly every aspect of our lives, researchers in the sciences, humanities, and medicine are navigating a rapidly changing landscape.

The AI era is especially monumental for statisticians, said Xuming He, the Kotzubei-Beckmann Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Statistics and Data Science. During the Spring 2026 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture, He outlined the many ways AI and statistics have become intertwined and interdependent, a union that will largely drive his department’s agenda for the foreseeable future. “It’s not really a question of AI for statistics or statistics for AI,” he said. “They aren’t separate. They’re quietly walking toward a wedding.”

AI has already fundamentally altered the practice of statistics, He said. Instead of relying solely on data sets collected by humans or extracted from designed experiments, statisticians are increasingly working with so-called synthetic data generated by AI. Given a limited data set — whether a small set of results from an income surveyor a handful of satellite images showing rainforest loss — a large language model can generate further data points, opening new possibilities for statistical analysis.

The challenge, He said, is to ensure the addition of synthetic data makes the statistical analysis more robust and reliable, not less so. “The end result could be very wrong because the predicted values aren’t necessarily the same as real values,” He said. To prevent bias, statisticians must calibrate the analysis by comparing the observed data points with those predicted by AI.

“This cannot be done automatically,” He said. “You still need statisticians, because in each individual setting, you need to understand how to characterize the bias and how to calibrate the statistical analysis. Statisticians are leading the efforts to develop trustworthy, data-driven analysis with synthetic data.”

The Department of Statistics and Data Science, established in 2023, is uniquely positioned to address the challenges raised by new technologies, He said. “We’re more AI-ready than most other departments in the country. Our faculty are experts in many areas fundamental to AI research and applications, including causal inference, Bayesian computation, machine learning, reinforcement learning, and uncertainty quantification. And they’re happy to collaborate with other researchers on campus.”

He, previously the H.C. Carver Collegiate Professor of Statistics at the University of Michigan, joined WashU in 2023 as the inaugural chair of the Department of Statistics and Data Science. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, he has already been at the forefront of conversations about the intersection of AI and statistics.

As He noted in his lecture, his arrival at WashU coincided with dizzying developments in AI. “The year of 2022 felt like a new beginning, a time of disbelief and amazement,” he said. “I see 2026 as a year of science. The whole process is going to bring huge things to science and scientific discoveries.”

Looking forward, He predicted that 2027 will see an AI revolution in education. “It will be a year for teaching and learning,” he said. “We will see profound changes that we have to embrace, and university campuses will have to adapt.”

He is the third faculty member to deliver an address as part of the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series. In spring 2024, Carl Phillips, professor emeritus of English and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, delivered a talk titled “Pressure Against Emptiness: Some Thoughts on Making.” In fall 2024, Diana Z. O’Brien, a professor of political science, presented “The Causes & Consequences of Women's Political Representation.”

The lecture series was established by Feng Sheng Hu, the Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences and the Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, to showcase outstanding Arts & Sciences faculty and give them an opportunity to share their scholarship with the WashU community.