Embracing chatGPT in the financial technology classroom is becoming increasingly popular as the technology’s potential for immense productivity gains is discovered. Craig Hurwitz, an Executive in Residence in the Pratt School of Engineering, assigns a financial writing assignment to his graduate students in his “Emerging Trends in Financial Technology (Fintech)” course, giving them a hands-on introduction to the use of generative AI. By using the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, his students are able to draft an Executive Summary more efficiently and have access to sources that can make their work more accurate and current.
The assignment requires the students to read a case study, pick a Fintech approach to solve a challenge, and submit a 750-word Executive Summary to the instructor, who plays the role of Venture Capitalist. For the assignment, the class is instructed to generate the first draft of the essay with the help of ChatGPT. Once the draft is complete, it is imported into Microsoft Word with “track changes” turned on, edited and then submitted.
Utilizing ChatGPT helps the students gain important skills such as developing appropriate prompts for the AI chatbot. Many students found that trying to create the entire essay with a single prompt yielded too general and repetitive outputs. Thus, the process of submitting follow-up questions with descriptive, succinct text is essential to generate output that achieves the desired results.
It is also important to train the AI to take on a particular role beforehand. Every student in the class who completed the assignment overwhelmingly credited ChatGPT as a time saver and valuable skills training for the workplace. Above all, the students noted that using ChatGPT was a great way of writing as if English were their native language.
Despite the positives, there are several limitations to the current generation of the technology. These include incorrect sources, outdated sources and outputs only being as good as the prompt. Hence, fact-checking every output from ChatGPT is key to ensure that its sources are reliable.
As Craig Hurwitz’s experiment has demonstrated, ChatGPT can be a helpful tool in the classroom and can offer a real-world glimpse into how a generative AI can be used when preparing written work. However, it is important to note that despite the immense potential of the technology, it should be used with caution, as unethical use of the technology can lead to copyright infringements and other consequences. Nevertheless, when used correctly and within scope of the student’s own work, ChatGPT can be greatly beneficial.
