AI meets academia: Revolutionizing business education for the future

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Trulaske Magazine.

There is no question that students graduating from college today will enter a workplace on the brink of a technological revolution. The swift progress of artificial intelligence has captivated the world and raised questions about its impact on jobs and the future of work. 

Students at the Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business are learning to embrace emerging technologies, like generative AI, while also honing essential workforce skills, such as critical thinking, analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility and lifelong learning. 

The goal? Prepare technologically proficient students who can confidently navigate the evolving workplace while understanding the importance of human connections.

In J. Scott Christianson’s Management 4710 class, students are learning to “think like scientists” when using AI in the classroom. 

“We are experimenting with using AI, seeing where it performs well, where it performs poorly and what we can replicate,” said Christianson, associate teaching professor and director of the college’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “Just like scientists who replicate their results, businesspeople and entrepreneurs want to have something that can be reliably replicated.”

Enhancing human expertise with AI

Historically, changes in technology have often automated physical tasks, such as those performed by factory workers. But AI mimics human brainpower and as a result, has raised concerns about “white collar” automation and the impact on professional and other office jobs. 

Christianson cautions that immediately cutting bottom-line labor costs can be dangerous when dealing with transformational technology for many reasons. He believes that while many jobs involve tasks that can be assisted by generative AI, it’s the worker’s expert judgment, synthesis and analysis that produces high-quality output. 

With that in mind, Christianson encourages his students to think of AI as a tool to enhance the workplace by using it to off-load formulaic tasks to free up workers for more human-to-human contact. 

“What can I do with AI that I haven’t been able to do before?” he said. “That’s the question that businesses can be asking. It’s not about reducing the bottom line; it’s about increasing the top line. What can I offer now that I couldn’t before?”

Empowering students with AI

In class, Christianson’s students spend several weeks trying out various generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, a virtual assistant trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed written response. 

“The caveat was the students had to write a reflection on their use of ChatGPT,” he said. “I wanted them to think about how they used it and how it responded.”

After learning more about the technology, students wrote an AI use policy for the class. They also learned how to develop a machine learning algorithm to classify different objects or images. Additionally, they used AI to assist with writing a computer code in class and explored AI’s integration into websites using WordPress, a web content management system that can be used to support publishing websites and online stores. 

“For entrepreneurs, e-commerce is often an important part of their business,” Christianson said. “So, the students have looked at how to use AI to help build out websites.”

Students in other business classes have used an AI-generated speech analyzer to perfect their sales pitches. The tool records the student’s pitch and then analyzes the speech for various abnormalities, providing immediate feedback on pronunciation, fluency and other speech traits. 

Balancing innovation and caution

Although AI is advancing rapidly, Christianson suggests that there is still a compelling reason to hold off on widespread adoption until we fully understand the complexities of deploying AI responsibly. He’s also concerned about the possible lack of diversity in the information that is used to train AI. As a result, the output from these systems could be biased towards a certain way of thinking. 

“It is not clear yet how to build AI into the current workflows for most businesses,” he said. “There may be some ways, but it’s going to take time. It’s like when the worldwide web came about. It took a long time before it was a useful tool for most people.”

To learn more, contact Christiansonjs@missouri.edu.

Student offers AI-driven solution at internship 

Like most of his peers, Seth Adams was already experimenting with generative artificial intelligence by the time he landed in J. Scott Christianson’s Management 4710 class last spring. 

But the opportunity to learn more about AI gave Adams, a senior with an emphasis in management, the confidence to use the technology at his internship, where he sends multiple emails to contact potential customers – just the type of formulaic task Christianson told students was prime for AI assistance.

“So, I started playing around with it,” he said. “Most of my friends are already using AI to help them with various tasks. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out.”

First, Adams used ChatGPT to help him craft the text of his email. Then, with the help of his roommate, a computer science major, he created a marketing strategy powered by generative AI that would automatically send his email to multiple potential customers. 

Eager to share his idea, Adams presented the AI-powered strategy to his supervisor. 

“Turns out, I wasn’t the only one with the idea,” said Adams, who was disappointed – but not surprised – that his idea had already been pitched. “I think a lot of people are getting curious about how this technology can help them.”

Adams was encouraged that his idea aligned with his company’s philosophy for using generative AI in the workplace. He’s also grateful his instructors at Trulaske are giving students opportunities to think critically about emerging technologies like AI.

“I think AI is going to help tremendously with productivity by removing redundancies and human error,” Adams said. “The way to beat the fear about AI is early exposure and understanding so we can adapt and know the risk factors to better prepare us for the workforce.”