INN365 Artificial Intelligence from a Business Perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone explosive development in recent years and has become a central driver for innovation and efficiency in businesses all over the world. In business, we see more and more examples of how AI technologies are used to automate tasks, improve decision-making processes, analyse large amounts of data and facilitate personalized customer experiences.

To ensure that our students are equipped to face these changes, both as leaders and experts in their respective fields, it is crucial that they understand both the technological possibilities, its limitations, and the business implications of AI. This new subject will give students insight into how AI can be strategically integrated into various business functions and provide an understanding of the ethical, legal and organizational challenges linked to the implementation and use of AI in practice.

The course is roughly divided into three parts. The first will be dedicated to the technical dimension of AI. The students will learn to work actively with AI, they will test its capability for data analysis and will learn to create their own AI applications (e.g., chatbots, AI agents).

The second part will focus on the use of AI inside organizations (i.e., AI automation or augmentation). In particular, we will focus on how AI may increase productivity, improve decision making processes, and enable new business models. We will also discuss potential limitations of AI (e.g., difficulty in representing context and relationships) and negative effects of AI use in organizations (e.g., "cognitive offloading" and loss of human expertise):

The third part will focus on the societal impact of AI, with particular focus on the consequences for the labor market, ethics and inequality, and sustainability.

The purpose of incorporating these three perspectives is to examine AI as an emergent technology that has great potential but also poses several challenges for individuals, organizations, and society overall.

Knowledge:

After completing the course, the participant will have gained:

• thorough understanding of the origin and structure of classic AI and large language models (LLMs) and central trends in the technical development of new AI solutions
• knowledge about how AI can be used to automate tasks and augment decision-making processes,
• insight into organizational enablers and constraints that affect AI usage
• knowledge about the societal consequences of using AI (e.g., related to ethics, the labour force, and sustainability).

Skills:

After completing the course, the participant should be able to:

• identify which business processes or decisions to utilize AI most effectively
• plan and implement the use of AI in organizations
• apply basic tools and techniques to set up and adapt a language model (LLM) or train a simple chatbot, adapted to the needs of a business
• analyse how businesses can best utilize AI to improve productivity and create competitive advantages
• judge the organizational and ethical implications of AI usage
• evaluate the impact of AI on the environment and the labour market

General competence:

After completing the course, the participant should also be able to:

• effectively discuss issues (orally and in writing) related to AI in organizations and society
• identify and use both technical sources and relevant academic literature for further information and specialization
• work effectively in groups to plan and implement AI applications