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Harvard Business School Dean Srikant M. Datar said HBS faculty are using artificial intelligence to advise students and evaluate their work during a Boston AI Week event on Wednesday.
“When students prepare a spreadsheet or do some other work, we are able to give them very rapid feedback using AI tools,” Datar said.
Evaluating homework is just one of the many areas where Datar said HBS is experimenting with AI in the classroom. He pointed to initiatives like Foundry, an AI platform that allows entrepreneurs outside Harvard to access HBS entrepreneurial management content and use it to bolster their ventures.
“By doing so, we create this very wonderful, connected community, matching people, ideas and resources,” he said. “I think as we continue to build out Foundry, it’s going to be a huge impact on the world.”
Datar added that this connection has been accelerated by advances in AI. He said the process has become more seamless, creating a more “connected world,” and faculty have been taking advantage of those developments in both their research and teaching.
“Everytime you think something can’t be done, the next model shows that it can be done,” he said. “I think there will be a lot of opportunities for both Harvard and these other institutions to take advantage of these new developments, take advantage of insights, test ideas iteratively, and continue to enhance curricular and learning experiences in real time.”
HBS administrators who spoke at the talk said that the school is also using the technology to condense student feedback submitted to the Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning into “actionable insights” for professors.
“We want that to be a human-focused design, never to replace the work that the Christensen Center is doing, but to supplement it and make these conversations easier,” Fritz Jordan Kocher, an HBS Application Analyst, said of the initiative.
Matthew Negri, a member of the Digital Transformation Department at HBS, said the department’s goal with AI development is not to replace the traditional classroom experience, but to build on it.
“Nothing replaces our classroom experience here — the chalkboards, the sound, the faculty experience,” Negri said. “Learners learn in a lot of different ways, and sometimes at different times of night. So at least one of the ways that AI complements teaching and learning here is being always available 24/7.”
Negri added that usage of AI was especially high late at night, when faculty are not available.
Tsedal Neeley, the senior associate dean and chair of HBS’s MBA program, said that AI is leading to a digital transformation at HBS and within corporations. She stressed that AI is inseparable from change.
“When you say AI, you have to say change,” Neeley said.
Neeley said that she believes that the 30 percent rule, which is used by faculty and students, is an effective guide for adapting to AI. She said that students and users do not need to be experts in AI to use it as a tool; they only need to know about 30 percent of the core concepts.
“People imagine that it’s a whole ocean of knowledge. It’s actually not. It’s a pond. It’s a curated pond,” she said. “If you understand this curated pond, then you are able to work in AI, contribute with AI, lead AI.”
—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.
