Smith Business magazine-summer24-paperturn - Flipbook - Page 28
AI AT WORK
It’s that problem-solving mindset,
as well as the knowledge of what AI
is and how it can help an organization,
that will make graduates tremendously
attractive in today’s marketplace,
says Padmanabhan.
“Every employer out there is talking
about AI. Across the board, every CEO,
every 昀椀rm is interested,” he says.
And the market is ripe for job
candidates with AI skills. The
Washington, D.C., region and many
other regions outside of the tech
epicenter of California are quickly
rising in their share of job postings
requiring skills in AI, according to
the new UMD-LinkUp AI Maps jobs
tracker. Developed by Smith professors
Anil Gupta, Siva Viswanathan and
Kunpeng Zhang alongside job data
company LinkUp and consulting
company Outrigger Group, the tracker
uses AI technology to keep tabs on the
spread of jobs requiring skills in AI
across the country.
“This will de昀椀ne how to visualize
and understand the landscape of AI job
creation as it continues to evolve,” says
Gupta, the Michael Dingman Chair and
professor of Strategy, Globalization
and Entrepreneurship. “We have
been able to combine academic rigor,
highly accurate employment data, and
expertise in AI methodologies to help
昀椀gure out how the demand for AI skills
is evolving throughout the U.S.”
Smith’s Of昀椀ce of Career Services is
also tracking companies looking to hire
Smith grads with AI skills. The number
of job descriptions that include AI
AI Research Briefs
Measuring Racial Inequality
in Mortgage Lending
Working With AI Chatbots to
Provide Mental Health Care
Finance professor Agustin Hurtado used AI to
study racial inequalities in U.S. mortgage lending.
He documents access disparities between minority
and otherwise identical white borrowers, even within
the same bank, loan officer and underwriting method.
He looks at computer-generated loan decisions
and finds AI-based technology is associated with
smaller mortgage access disparities. “Our findings
are another step toward understanding the factors
driving discriminatory forces in the mortgage
market. Recent research suggests structural
or organizational factors such as minority bank
ownership may also play a role,” says Hurtado.
Information Systems researchers Gujie Li,
Jui Ramaprasad and Lauren Rhue study how
human mental health counselors react to their
AI counterparts. They looked at an online peer
counseling forum, where expert and peer human
counselors offered mental health support to
those in need. When an LLM-powered chatbot
was introduced, the researchers had a chance
to see how it changed the human counselors’
level of engagement, quality of assistance and
counseling strategies. It’s the first study to look
at how generative AI affects the care extended
by human providers.