About The A(I) List

The A(I) List is a community-curated directory of generative AI tools. It is anchored at Columbia Business School, and it is open to anyone trying to figure out what actually works.

Why this exists

A new AI tool launches every week. Most of them are forgettable. A few of them genuinely change how you work. The directory exists to help our community — students, faculty, alumni, and the broader AI-curious public — sort the second from the first, with real usage data and real reviews instead of marketing copy.

We started this because we kept getting the same question in office hours and over email: which tool should I use for X? A directory we trust felt more useful than answering that question one person at a time.

Founders

Malek Ben Sliman — Lecturer in the Marketing Division, Columbia Business School.
Olivier Toubia — Glaubinger Professor of Business in the Marketing Division, Columbia Business School.

Contributors

Matthew Manning

Collaborators

The directory is shaped by everyone who uses it. Reviewers, voters, commenters, and tool-suggesters all push the list toward something more useful than any one of us could build alone. If you would like to contribute directly — to research, curation, or the platform itself — reach out to either founder.

We are also indebted to the broader Columbia Business School research community, whose questions and feedback shape what the directory tracks.

How tools get listed

Anyone with an account can suggest a tool through the Add a Tool form. New submissions go through a moderation queue: we check that the tool is real, that it is not a duplicate of something already listed, and that the description fairly represents what the tool does. Approved listings get a logo, a description, use-case tags, and a permanent vote count.

Votes and comments come from signed-in members of the community. They are not anonymous and they are not bot-driven. We treat the rankings as a community signal, not a verdict.

CBS Corner

Members of the Columbia community (anyone with a @columbia.edu or @gsb.columbia.edu email) get access to CBS Corner, a private discussion space for questions and threads that are specific to our community. Everything else on the site is public.

Credits & sources

The site itself is built and maintained by Malek and Olivier, with assistance from the same generative AI tools we are reviewing — including ChatGPT and Claude. They help us write code, draft copy, and iterate on design faster than we otherwise could. We are responsible for any mistakes or issues.

Company logos and basic metadata for each listing originate from Brandfetch and from public company sources. If you are a tool owner and want a listing corrected, the Add a Tool form accepts updates as well as new submissions.

The platform is built on Next.js, Firebase, and Tailwind CSS, with interface tokens informed by Columbia Business School’s visual spec. The codebase is private; if you are interested in the implementation, reach out to either founder.

Contact

Found a bug, want to suggest a feature, or have a tool you think we should review? The Add a Tool form takes submissions. For everything else, reach Malek or Olivier through their faculty pages above.