Smeal plans to instill skills in students that will help them ethically employ AI in the classroom and the workplace.
I recently participated in an international conference on the role of generative AI in education, presenting my own work on preparing students to be responsible users of — and learning from other leaders in academia and business about their experiences and challenges with — this increasingly present and transformative technology.
There, a consensus emerged: the skills we teach in business schools must evolve. AI excels at processing vast amounts of data, identifying patterns, and drawing insights, but evidence shows that humans + AI outperform either alone. Preparing students to use AI effectively, and adding value to its outputs, is becoming essential.
Similarly, we must explore the tools faculty can use to enhance what and how we teach. Yet, amid excitement about AI’s potential, there was also widespread concern about ethical issues surrounding its use.
Opportunities to leverage AI abound, but so do risks and uncertainties. Businesses already using AI face issues with truthfulness of outputs, transparency and trust with internal and external stakeholders. Higher education faces similar challenges.
As I write, AI can convincingly translate videos into 60 languages, using the speaker’s voice and video lip-syncing. Imagine how this could support the learning of our international students. Conversely, imagine how AI could manipulate videos to falsely depict students or faculty making offensive remarks. Similarly, AI can improve student deliverables, assisting with brainstorming, proofreading and more, but there’s a temptation to let AI think for students, leading to integrity violations and neglect of personal responsibility.
This tension between what we could do and what we should do with AI is complicated by minimal or nonexistent social guardrails. Given AI’s rapid development, any current guardrails may soon be outdated. We need a shared approach to responsible AI, but best practices are still emerging. To meet this challenge, we must equip people to ethically assess scenarios that today’s technology doesn’t even yet make possible. Smeal is well positioned to be a leader in this effort.
Teaching responsible AI, while challenging, aligns closely with teaching business ethics more generally. We need four key ingredients:
- Audience Receptivity: When I recently guest lectured in Dr. Ozge Pala’s MGMT 301 course, I asked students — without warning — whether there are ethical issues related to AI. Their immediate, insightful responses showed that the next generation is ready to become responsible leaders, if we support and guide their development.
- A Strategy for Developing Responsible Leaders: Smeal has a longstanding commitment to honor and integrity, and a tested strategy to build upon this commitment: we promote awareness of ethical dimensions, guide engagement with issues to build skills, and promote advocacy by creating opportunities for individuals to develop competencies for responsible leadership. We must now leverage this approach to engage and empower our stakeholders to address the breadth of ethical issues surrounding AI that have arisen or are on the horizon.
- Clear Learning Objectives: Our focus on ethics integration across the curriculum ensures students approach the topic of responsible business holistically while also exploring specific issues that are relevant to their specific career paths. My own current research is designed to complement these efforts, with the development of a framework that positions elements of Responsible AI into relationship with mechanisms for using AI in the classroom.
- Real-World Examples: At the recent Impact Smeal Day, alumni shared examples that highlight AI’s ethical challenges and opportunities. This collaboration is helping build a case library for faculty to bring relevant examples into the classroom. However, we need more. This is where YOU come in. Click here to submit your example to contribute to our shared understanding of Responsible AI.
The importance of responsible AI practices cannot be overstated. Smeal is poised to become a model for how business schools prepare leaders to integrate AI responsibly and, together, our community can explore this promising new frontier.
