Why do some firms perform digital transformation faster than others?
On Friday 6 December 2024 Lars Arvei Moen will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Students’ ecstatic after AI-course at NHH: ‘Amazing!'
Associate Professor Ingar Haaland underlines the importance of earning coding skills before entering the world of business.
This semester NHH students have been able to take a full course in artificial intelligence (AI).
Associate Professor Haaland´aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of how recent developments within AI and large language models (LLMs), will transform the business landscape, research and the labor market.
‘Although there is great demand from the business world, there are few courses in artificial intelligence (AI) at Norwegian institutions’, he says.
And the students are ecstatic:
‘Honestly, it has been amazing. This course is the best one I’ve had here at NHH and one of the most interesting courses I’ve ever had in my life’, says German exchange student Konstantin Fuss (24) and adds:
‘AI is going to be so important, and I cannot imagine my life without it. Also, Haaland is very enthusiastic and a great lecturer. He brings spirit into the class, and I greatly appreciate it’.
Lena Wasem (24) also from Germany, agrees:
‘This is something totally new and I’ve never done anything like it’.
This is the course
Through the fall semester, the master students have developed a research question in groups of three or four, which after being shaped and reshaped through coding in Python, has been analyzed using OpenAI AOI Platform, allowing the students to use Chat GPT at scale.
The results have then been analyzed and presented for the class for input. The course finishes with a paper on their findings.
‘There are many reasons for holding such AI courses at NHH. In general, it is about understanding the possibilities and limitations of various AI tools. Furthermore, several of our guest lectures from the business world also show us that AI is the future of business, whilde highlighting both opportunities and limitations of todays' models’, says Associate Professor Haaland.
The course is called Transforming business with AI: The power of large language models and is credted 7,5 points as a part of the MSc in Economics and Business administration.
Through the course, the students will learn how to explain the foundational concepts of AI and LLMs, identify applications and implications of AI in business and research, and recognize the ethical considerations, privacy outcomes, and risks associated with AI technology.
Leder - nyhetsbrev
This effort comes in response to the growing need to understand how organizations can create and capture sustainable value from AI technologies.
Trial and error
For their assignment, Fuss and Wasem have together with Steyn van Brakel (24) from the Netherlands and Anne Hohner (26) from Germany, looked at the sentiment in US congressional hearing speeches regarding nuclear energy over a span of more than 40 years.
‘Based on our interest and ideas we happened to look at the nuclear energy topic and saw that there was a lot of material to work with’, van Brakel says.
‘How did it go’?
‘Sometimes it was very difficult, but we had a lot of help from Chat GPT itself – so AI helped us to use AI. It is crazy what Chat GPT can do’, says Wasem.
‘I think the biggest challenge for us was that we were all new to Python, and we had to learn by doing it. We had one obstacle with the huge dataset and had to identify it and finetune the course back and forward to get it right, Hohner adds.
The students all agree upon the notion that “there always was a new problem they had to try to fix” during the process. This made them learn a lot.
‘It is quite time-consuming, especially during the final week before the presentation. But if you get a result or if the coding works it’s such a nice feeling! It finally works and it feels as if you’ve solved a riddle’, Wasem says and smiles.
recommending the course
Though the course has been challenging, the master students wholeheartedly recommend it to others:
‘Definitely’, they all say.
Van Brakel also praise the guest lecturers from the business world that visited the class:
‘It was great that top level executives from companies came here and told us how they are currently using and implementing AI-tools in their businesses. In that way wo got a great understanding of how you may encounter AI later in our careers’.