By Tripp Henderson | Staff Writer
The artificial intelligence landscape is ever-changing. To keep pace, the Hankamer School of Business is committed to incorporating AI into learning while keeping ethics and values at the forefront.
Dr. Anthony Lapes, who has served at Baylor for almost 36 years, is the Assistant Dean for AI and Business Technology. His primary role is to help students, staff and faculty work with AI technology and provide what they need to succeed.
Lapes said the business school will be highly affected by AI and that it is “embracing AI as a core service, not a side service.”
“Some industries are going to be affected much more deeply than others in that process, and my sense is that the business school will tend to be certainly on the higher end of that,” Lapes said. “I think in light of that we have a responsibility to prepare our students.”
Some of the ways Lapes and the business school have implemented this practice include rolling out initiatives to educate students and faculty on effective AI use.
Lapes said EDUCAUSE, an organization that focuses on strategic technology use in higher education, has provided AI training for both faculty and staff. Additionally, Lapes said the business school has partnered with the university’s Academy for Teaching and Learning to give teachers an intensive course on how to “develop a framework for modifying assignments to be more AI-aware.”
The technology department also provides AI sandboxes where students can interact in depth with different models. If they have difficulties using the technology, they also have access to newly instituted AI peer consultants who can help them while they work in the sandbox.
As the department charges forward with AI integration, ethical and moral issues naturally arise. Those concerns help shape how the business department adopts the practice.
“One of the challenges when you have AI in your title is the assumption that everyone thinks you’re a cheerleader for AI or that I might not see the downside of AI,” Lapes said. “Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Lapes said artificial intelligence can affect the world in positive and negative ways.
“It has tremendous potential to help humanity, but it also has tremendous potential to harm humanity,” Lapes said.
Because of this, Lapes believes the university has a duty to teach students to use AI responsibly. He feels as though Baylor is well positioned to navigate those uncertainties, and whatever the business school deals with, ethics are “at the forefront.”
Dr. Matthew A. Douglas’ capstone course for the supply chain management major is working on implementing AI ethically. Douglas, who is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs, has his students create a mock coffee business with a supply chain.
Before students even get into the project details, Douglas first has them use AI to draft a mission statement.
“At the very beginning, they had to create a mission, vision, values document to guide them on how they conducted business in all those areas throughout the entire project,” he said.
Douglas said students could “bake in” these values, allowing them to redirect AI when it proposed business decisions that would create max efficiency at the expense of crossing ethical lines.
AI increased efficiency by taking what would usually take a full year of work and condensing it into one semester, all while, if used properly, abiding by a strong set of morals and ethics.
While Douglas and Lapes both believe AI expands what society can accomplish, they also emphasize that, because of the business school’s ethical foundation, a human touch remains necessary.
“There is a role for the human that no AI is going to take the place of,” Lapes said. “I want students to understand that their role and importance cannot be replaced by AI.”
