Exclusive: American University launches AI institute
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American University's business school is launching an Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence in an effort to weave AI into every aspect of the school, the university first shared with Axios.
The big picture: Some colleges and many high schools still ban ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, while others are going all in.
Zoom out: AI has long been a staple of STEM, especially in computer science. Now more business schools are also recognizing a need to teach generative AI.
- "Every student needs to be fluent in AI applications in order to be successful," David Marchick, the dean of American University's Kogod School of Business, told Axios.
Between the lines: Marchick says American's undergrad and grad business students will go on to use AI to do consumer research, design marketing campaigns, read balance sheets, write financial statements, underwrite investments and analyze financial risk factors.
- "It's not like we're trying to be a Stanford or Caltech in terms of producing programmers. We're producing business people," Marchick says.
- "When 18-year-olds show up here as first-years, we ask them, 'How many of your high school teachers told you not to use AI?' And most of them raise their hand. We say, 'Here, you're using AI, starting today.'"
- The Institute has 15 faculty members across the university and plans to hire more, Marchick says.
Zoom in: The new institute is only one piece of American's efforts to become a leader in AI education.
- Last month American partnered with AI startup Perplexity to give every student in the business school free access to Perplexity Enterprise Pro. Kogod is also piloting a new Perplexity product designed specifically for education.
Yes, but: Using AI for entry-level tasks could prevent students from building confidence and hands-on experience.
- A 2024 study from Deloitte found that early-career workers were concerned about the lack of on-the-job training due to the increase in AI use for foundational tasks like preparing reports, analyzing simple data sets and taking notes in meetings.
The bottom line: Business students must master AI, Marchick insists.
- The invention of the calculator didn't stop us from understanding math, Marchick says. And he doesn't think people should be using paper ledgers instead of Excel.
- "Students need to have the basic skills to understand the underlying work that we assign," Marchick told Axios. "But when they get in the real world, they're going to be using AI to do that work, and we want them to be better prepared."
