SUNY Oswego students will have the opportunity to learn more about an emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tool, starting with the pioneering Summer Session course MBA 590: “ChatGPT for Business.” 

School of Business faculty member Mohammad Tajvarpour, who has a background in engineering and business administration, developed and teaches the course. "To the best of my awareness, it is the world's first university-level course focused on ChatGPT for business," Tajvarpour said.

This groundbreaking online course on the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT is specifically designed for master of business administration (MBA) students and will unfold during Oswego’s second Summer Session (June 12 to 30). Although the course is fully enrolled for this summer, Tajvarpour anticipates offering the course in the future to undergraduate students as well, as the need for such courses continues to grow.

“What made me interested in developing this course was the power of AI,” Tajvarpour said. “I started using ChatGPT myself and it’s a very powerful tool. It’s a game changer for many industries and many jobs.”

Tajvarpour said MBA 590 will unfold in three modules –- an introduction, a section on prompt engineering and concluding with business analytics.

“It’s important to start by introducing ChatGPT, its sources, its limitations and its capabilities to set a foundation,” Tajvarpour explained. 

From there, learning prompt engineering – the questions a user asks to the AI – is important because “the answer that it provides is very dependent on how we ask the question,” he said. “There are very small things you need to consider. We will focus on some business applications available through this type of AI.”

The third module –- on business analytics, coding and code translation -- is more advanced and builds on the first two parts of the course.  

“I would try to demonstrate to my class how they can use it in data collection and analysis, how they can get data from ChatGPT and how they can find patterns in data using this AI,” Tajvarpour said. “I’ve found it can write code in two minutes that might take me a day to do. It also is becoming proficient at taking code in one programming language and translating it into another.”

For more information on other Summer Session classes at SUNY Oswego, visit oswego.edu/summer.