University at Buffalo School of Management

10 Buffalo Business | BUSINESS ANALYTICS SOCIAL IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT BUSINESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LEADERSHIP Outside his full-time role at eBay, Gujral also is founder of Diaspora, an AI-driven company that provides universities with tools to help international students. His early-stage startup recently received $100,000 in pre-seed funding from UB's Cultivator program and UB is among its first clients. "We are enabling universities to make lives easier for their international students through an AI assistant that will give them all the tools and services they need in a single, one-stop shop interface that is again conversa- tional," says Gujral. Sanjukta Das Smith, chair and associate professor of management science and systems, says research- ers are investigating how conversa- tional AI agents express emotions and how that affects the humans on the other end of the discussion. "In a customer service setting, whether and how an AI agent is emoting certain expressions can affect my perspective of the quality of service I'm getting," she says. Smith and her colleagues are also conducting research on mental health AI chatbot apps that are presented as solutions to issues like anxiety and depres- sion, but can sometimes veer off into problematic territory. "These apps are not regulated by the FDA, and some of the most popular apps are showing alarming charac- teristics," says Smith. "So, we're digging in to identify the risks with the goal of using our results to guide regulatory frameworks." The Management Science and Systems Department takes a big-picture look at the AI landscape, and Smith sees AI tools being used all over. "Everyone I'm talking to who is using ChatGPT and its variants are using it as an accelerator," she says. "It's not going to replace a human, but it's going to speed up a lot of the tasks we do, and allow us to invest that time into some- thing that takes more brain power." Finance at the speed of AI Cristian Tiu, chair and associ- ate professor of finance, says AI's accelerator effect is making an impact on finance in several ways — for researchers, practitioners and individuals. "AI is very good at getting context," he says of his AI use in academic research. "For instance, it can infer the sentiment of a report beyond just counting positive and negative words like we used to, so now we can better understand the subtleties." In addition, Tiu says AI is adept at cleaning data and extracting relevant information from documents, which can be especially useful in analyzing investment strategies or company reports. AI also can act as a translator of sorts, making personal finance more accessible. "AI can help individuals by reading and summarizing complex documents like bank contracts, making it easier to understand the key points," says Tiu. At financial services company Ally, Ruchi Kumar, MBA '12, is director of technology program/ delivery management. Ally is an all-digital bank, so there are no physical branches for customers to visit and conduct transactions. This presents some unique challenges, according to Kumar, Everyone I'm talking to who is using ChatGPT and its variants are using it as an accelerator. It's not going to replace a human, but it's going to speed up a lot of the tasks we do, and allow us to invest that time into something that takes more brain power. SANJUKTA DAS SMITH Chair and Associate Professor Management Science and Systems Smith Tiu Kumar

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