ChatGPT passes MBA exam

Chatbot graded 'B to B-' on final exam paper, sparking fears that AI could undermine education

A professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in the US has found that the OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT can pass the final exam for the operations management course of the school's MBA programme, even outperforming some of the students.

Professor Christian Terwiesch published research detailing ChatGPT's performance on an Operations Management exam paper.

The research found that Chat GPT3 excels in answering basic questions about operations management and process analysis, particularly those that are based on case studies.

"Not only are the answers correct, but the explanations are excellent," Terwiesch states, adding that ChatGPT would have received a B to B- grade on the test.

However, the chatbot does have a few shortcomings, according to Terwiesch, such as the inability to answer questions on more complex process analysis.

The study also revealed that ChatGPT sometimes made surprising mistakes when doing very basic calculations at the level of sixth-grade mathematics.

"These mistakes can be massive in magnitude," reads the research paper.

But ChatGPT was found to be exceptionally good at modifying its answers in response to hints from human experts. After receiving a suitable hint, ChatGPT corrected itself in cases where it first failed to match the problem with the best solution technique.

The findings of Terwiesch's research come as educators are becoming more worried that AI chatbots may encourage cheating.

"This has important implications for business school education, including the need for exam policies, curriculum design focusing on collaboration between human and AI, opportunities to simulate real world decision making processes, the need to teach creative problem solving, improved teaching productivity, and more," the paper warns.

While chatbots are not a new invention, ChatGPT's human like responses sparked massive public interest late last year.

The New York City Department of Education announced earlier this month that ChatGPT would not allowed on any device or networks in its schools.

Many experts who work in the field of AI and education are worried that ChatGPT and other such bots may eventually harm education.

"I'm one of the alarmists," Professor Jerry Davis at the University of Michigan's Ross Business School, told the Financial Times.

"Our whole enterprise in education is being challenged by this, and it's only going to get more challenging. Time for a top-to-bottom rethink."

Francisco Veloso, dean of Imperial College Business School in London, said: "We are having serious discussions and a working group is analysing the implications of ChatGPT and other similar tools that we know our resourceful and inventive students are using, and we will be formulating policies around that soon."

Andrew Karolyi, dean of Cornell University's SC Johnson College of Business, believes AI tools like ChatGPT are here to stay.

"If anything, these AI techniques will continue to get better and better. Faculty and university administrators need to invest to educate themselves."

This assertion is supported by the fact that Microsoft announced on Monday that it would invest billions of dollars in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT.

In response to the competition, Google parent Alphabet is also investing more money in similar tools, concerned that any delay may undermine its dominance in search.