The intelligent interlocutor Chat GPT from the US company Open AI achieved grades B to B- in an important exam at the renowned Wharton Business School, which would roughly correspond to grade two in the German system. The German Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch had asked the bot some questions from the final exam of his “Operations Management” course, which he answered surprisingly well. You read the associated white paperthen there is still reason for human intelligence to hope.
On the one hand there is the content of the questions asked by Terwiesch. These are similar to material tasks in middle school. In this way, the students should find out at which point in an ore extraction process the bottleneck of a production plant is located. A little understanding of the text, a little mental arithmetic, done. No problem for Chat GPT. Although the students also have to know a complicated formula for calculating waiting times in another question for the perfect answer, those who, like artificial intelligence, do not know the formula right away and calculate reasonably correctly will still get a satisfactory one at the elite university Grade.
One of the questions on the Wharton School’s final exam in Operations Management. The AI passed with flying colours. The answer: The second reactor is the bottleneck of the plant.
(Photo: Screenshot: /https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/)
The frightening finding of Terwiesch’s study at this point has little to do with artificial intelligence. It reads: Every German student who has survived the middle school has a chance of passing the final exam of an important course in one of the most prestigious MBA programs in the USA.
If you don’t fail at the door, you get the degree
It is understandable that the case is making waves in the USA, because Wharton is a special case. The institute belongs to the University of Pennsylvania, one of the eight so-called “Ivy League” schools. The institute is considered one of the top addresses in the country for training the future business elite. CEOs, consultants, bankers. Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, SEC CEO Gary Gensler, Ivanka Trump to name a few. Her father, US President Donald Trump, was there once, but actually did not do an MBA, just a bachelor’s degree.
As with most elite institutions in the world, the same applies to the Ivy League schools in the USA: The toughest test is the door. Conversely, this means that whoever comes in has actually already made it. The most important thing that the school gives to its graduates is not the degree, but the alumni network of former students who today decide on lucrative jobs in government and companies. Incidentally, grades don’t really matter in Wharton. There is said to have been an agreement among students there that in later application processes the actual final grade would only be given in the greatest of emergencies. This should increase the willingness to experiment during your studies, but of course it can also encourage you not to study too conscientiously. It should come as no surprise that an artificial intelligence in this environment can also acquire a Master of Business Administration with a little support and goodwill.
So the Wharton story is hardly a good cause for alarmist comments about the decline of the education system. Nevertheless, it shows that artificial intelligence will also play a role in education in the future – and resourceful students will find a way to use it profitably or at least to save work. The question of how the artificial helpers should be used is therefore much more important. There is also input from Wharton for this, from a colleague of Terwiesch’s. Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick, who is responsible for start-ups, recently started writing in his courses the use of ChatGPT. In order to pass, students must use AI. But those who use them incorrectly or fail to recognize mistakes made by the assistants will have their points deducted. Mollick’s motto for the course: “We can’t defeat AI, but it doesn’t have to defeat us either.”