This fall, Professor Pieter Vanderwerf is taking the reins of a transformative course at the Boston College MBA program for students eager to delve into a subject that has ignited both fascination and trepidation across the globe—Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Titled “Machine Learning for Business Intelligence,” the course aims to equip BC MBA students with cutting-edge knowledge on machine learning, a key component to understanding AI principles. This course offering, along with the BC MBA’s core data analytics sequence, underscores the program’s commitment to staying ahead of the curve and keeping its students’ skills current and relevant in the rapidly changing landscape of business and technology.
Why is it important to take a machine learning class as part of the BC MBA program?
Pieter Vanderwerf (PV): Machine Learning has become so useful and widespread to business that having a basic understanding of it can be equated with a basic understanding of a fundamental subject, like accounting for example. Employers look for it, and employees conversant in how machine learning works and how it can provide benefits have a strong advantage.
What are the most valuable skills students come away with from taking this course and how can it lead to better career opportunities?
PV: The point is not so much to be able to build big data models yourself as it is to understand them and communicate their meaning to other business people. Students savvy in machine learning bring value because they can work with data scientists to make models relevant to the business, they can understand what the models are telling you to do and why, and they can translate all of this in a meaningful way to the rest of management.
The majority of the older generations have only a general idea of the field, leaving them to rely on younger managers to interpret for them. This provides an opportunity for visibility and advancement.
What excites, and worries, you the most about machine learning?
PV: The power to make predictions with uncanny accuracy about consumers, employees, markets, machines–really any group of entities that we can gather data about–brings excitement. With advances in social media, data warehousing, sensors, and recording, we can gather an awful lot of data about a multitude of things.
On the other hand, the loss of privacy and potential decisions being made for us without our consent that we don't understand brings fear to many. These are real concerns, but they’ve been concerns with the age of data, information, and automation for decades, and we have almost always been able to come up with rules and practices that have contained the problems.
What do you enjoy most about teaching this course?
PV: The thing I like the best is when a student comes up to me partway through the course and exclaims, “I didn't think I could do this stuff, but now I'm really getting it.” At BC, we try to make our learning intuitive and applicable to real business.