Making the Cut: An Exercise in AI-Aided Decision Making

This experiential exercise presents a two-part activity in which students practice and critically reflect on using artificial intelligence (AI) to aid decision making. In the first part, students develop their own criteria and decision matrix to evaluate a large pool of hypothetical job candidates and determine a short list of finalists to be interviewed—a task intentionally designed to be impossible to complete in the time allotted. In the second part, they use AI tools to aid them in the same task. In an extended debriefing, students evaluate AI’s decisions and reflect on their experience using AI for this purpose. The activity is designed to improve students’ AI literacy by giving them guided practice using AI for business purposes and bolstering their understanding of both positive and negative implications of AI-aided decision making.