Top business schools in the United States have embraced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, teaching students how to automate workloads to stay competitive in corporate America.
Professor Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school, tells his students they should stay paranoid about what AI will do to their job security.
“You haven’t used AI until you’ve had an existential crisis,” he said to The Wall Street Journal when asked what he says in his course. “You need three sleepless nights.”
The Kogod School of Business at the American University is thoroughly implementing AI in its curriculum. This week, its professors began teaching AI tools to students in forensic accounting and marketing classes. Some 20 courses have incorporated AI into their lessons, including some brand-new courses dedicated specifically to AI.
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Other examples of AI school lessons include “text mining,” “predictive analytics,” and negotiation preparation with Language Learning Models (LLMs).
“Every young person needs to know how to use AI in whatever they do,” said David Marchick, Dean of Kogod. He described AI as a new fundamental skill, like writing or critical thinking.
Marchick uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create lecture notes and began ensuring his professors make use of similar programs when Swift Ventures financier Brett Wilson paid a visit to the school and delivered what he thought was a riveting talk on AI. He became convinced that the jobs arm race is not so much against AI itself but against competitors who use it more skillfully.
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Columbia Business School and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business are also jumping into the AI wave. Their administrations told the Journal that AI “fluency” will be crucial for their students’ success in finding and succeeding in management jobs.
The Graduate Management Admission Council found that roughly 40 percent of business school students said AI is central for a graduate business degree, representing a 29 percent increase since 2022.
Management consultancy Oliver Wyman projects that many of the jobs typically done by MBA grads could be replaced with AI technology in the coming years.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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