MBA Students at HBS Must Take AI Course To Graduate

Harvard Business School introduced Data Science and AI for Leaders as a new requirement for all master’s in business administration candidates — signaling a shift in the important role artificial intelligence will play in business management.

The course, which is co-led by HBS professors Karim R. Lakhani and assistant professor Iavor Bojinov, replaced the previous data science course in the Spring Required Curriculum for first year students. But unlike the previous iteration, DSAIL specifically uses AI tools to teach students how to analyze data.

“This new course basically expanded on what we had, and we used a lot of the existing cases, but we actually created a lot more new material that expanded the focus more than just machine learning into the realm of AI,” Bojinov said.

Lakhani said that he believes DSAIL, which is being taught for the first time this year, is the “only native course about AI and data science in the world.”

Bojinov noted that curricula at HBS often serves as the model for other business schools, and said the course may well inspire similar instruction at peer institutions.

“Through our publishing arm, we produce the vast majority of cases that get used by business schools,” he said. “I think of this course as really a pioneering course that will transform how AI and data science are taught at business schools.”

Bojinov said the course was developed alongside Janice H. Hammond — the professor who taught the previous data science course — to reflect the increasing accessibility of AI tools.

“Their uptake in society and business at large has been massive. We felt that a course that sort of covered the foundations of AI — which are really data science — and then the application of AI and business needed to be developed,” he said.

Lakhani and Bojinov developed two AI tools to supplement students’ education, both of which have seen use by at least half of the enrolled class.

“We created a RAG-based tutor bot for our course, which has all the knowledge of the course, all of our cases, all of our coach notes, all the conceptual notes, and several textbooks that allow people to deeply understand the statistical concepts, the data science concepts, the AI concepts and apply them to business,” Lakhani said.

Alongside the tutor bot, DSAIL uses the Julius.ai service to help students program in the R and Python coding languages without needing to learn how to code.

“Our students are gonna have a competitive edge now compared to other MBA students given what they can do with this,” Lakhani said.

—Staff writer Sarah F. Silverman can be reached at sarah.silverman@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.