Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Misty Blessley, who is Associate Professor of Statistics, Operations, and Data Science at Temple University
Astonishment best describes my initial reaction to hearing about ChatGPT, but this was mostly due to the reaction of all those people who asked me what I thought about ChatGPT in the month of December, 2022. “What do you think about ChatGPT?!!!”, I was asked, and this was not by people in our academic circle. Fresh off of the Annual DSI Conference and Thanksgiving, I was waist deep in all things December (i.e., wrapping up the semester, holidays, family, and etc.), but I could not shake the astonishment in everyone’s voices. Curious, I looked into what OpenAI, a San Francisco based firm with connections to Elon Musk and Microsoft Corporation, who launched the ChatGPT chatbot on November 30, 2022, had generally accomplished for the masses.
This month, ChatGPT hit close to home when I learned that it passed Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch’s final exam in his MBA level operations management class. To be clear, “An AI bot passed this Wharton professor’s exam,” writes the Philadelphia Inquirer (January 25, 2023). As mirrored by an OM colleague, my astonishment turned to excitement and terror. Digging into Terwiesch’s article (cited below), ChatGPT “has shown a remarkable ability to automate some of the skills of highly compensated knowledge workers”. However, it has also failed to handle some complex problems, made mistakes in simple math and benefitted by having a human to prompt after a failure.
Open AI states that: “Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” This chatbot can be used in many academic disciplines. A Wharton faculty member in innovation and entrepreneurship requires its use (see NPR, January 26, 2023). Let those of us in operations use it as a teaching tool, such that OpenAI’s mission is accomplished.
Here is the link to read the full article: Christian Terwiesch, “Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course”, Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2023
Classroom discussion questions:
1. How can students use ChatGPT to score big on operations exams taken on their own?
2. Given that ChatGPT benefits by having a human to provide hints after failing to solve a problem, what nuances do humans bring to the table that may be difficult to incorporate into a chatbot?