American Family Insurance, CSAIL Alliances Affiliate, exists to protect what matters most to households and businesses across the country, using data science and applied AI.

This talk introduces MIT graduate students to insurance as a serious technology, data, and AI problem, not just a financial product. Insurance AI rarely means one model: many specialized systems — for risk, fraud, compliance, and claims — each with its own evaluation, quality gates, and human review. The speaker leads several applied AI initiatives at American Family and has worked hands-on across this ecosystem. The talk draws on that complexity, and on pressures like catastrophe risk, climate, cybersecurity, and responsible AI deployment, to explain why insurance sits at the center of some of today's hardest technology problems. It highlights AmFam's academic research partnerships — on severe weather and wildfire risk — as one model for how graduate research translates into real-world impact, and closes with internship and career opportunities for graduate students.