Artificial Intelligence role play in the MBA class ..

On 30 July 2021 we did three role plays in the MBA sem 1 class, section B.

According to wikipedia, Role-playing is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role.

Northern Illinois University has this explanation of role playing. Click here

Role playing is that allows students to immediately apply content as they are put in the role of a decision maker who must make a decision regarding a policy, resource allocation, or some other outcome. - serc.carleton.edu

Click here for my earlier writing on the Bloom's Taxonomy to effect great understanding in the learning process, Role play comes in the top create part of the pyramid and hence is very effective in ensuring student's creative and conscious participation in the learning process.

Objective : Understand how AI applications in daily routine activities in industry or elsewhere can help simplify matters and improve productivity

Procedure : There were 3 groups of 4 students each, the rest of the 45 students were taking online sessions from home. The 12 students carried out the role play.

The roles we assumed in the class were of participants who earlier had issues with carrying out the mundane functions in the manufacturing or office or home domains and demonstrated how AI helped to efficiently carry out the same processes timely at high productivity  and quality.

A. The first group showed how they had problems manufacturing computer displays in the shop floor. The manual processes were inefficient and resulted in errors which the quality manager often found and complained to the top management in the company. It was when they decided to call in an AI expert and succeeded in effectively shifting from manual control to AI based control, which saw all quality parameters being ensured resulting in high quality and increase in productivity of the shop floor and efficiency.

B. The second AI-based role play included students who were bored of the food they were eating. The menu had not been changed. That's when one of the students' friends was called to assist them in developing an AI software in which you can take photographs of all the ingredients you have and the algorithm would provide and assist you through the recipes based on the components you have. This enhanced the hostelers' daily lives because they could prepare quality meals of their choosing on their own.

C. The third group focused on a retail store. Earlier the store had problems with low sales and the store management decided to install AI systems. This system used eye tracking technology to monitor the activities of the customers and gave indicators to the store management what were the items that particular customer were looking at which would move faster than the other items in the store. The store was able to improve its sales by installing this system.. 

D. Gas filling - A major gas filling station of an oil company had lot of rejects and inaccurate gas filling done in cylinders, that led to inefficiency and customer complaints. With automation and in future AI intervention, the co. could improve the quality of the process, have less quality interruptions and large output and finally ensure customer satisfaction.

E. Google maps - Riding in Bangalore in the rains is a major issue as we miss the potholes. In spite of reminders, the corporation authorities do not complete the work on time. This leads to accidents and loss of productive time of the public and in extreme cases accidents leading to loss of life. An AI designed Google app that has mapped the potholes in Bangalore city, ensures safe ride of the two wheeler without causing any accidents

F. Online education interaction - Online sessions during the Covid times have been misused by some students faking the class attendance. It becomes difficult for the professor to monitor each student and at the same time ensure there is quality instruction happening in the class. By deploying an AI based application that monitors student logging in and out of the system, the teacher is able to have a control over who attends the session in full and who bunks in between.

In China the system has gone a bit further. (click here) During school hours the headband through embedded AI informs the class teacher who is getting distracted, how long and to bring those students back into attention. Should AI be so intrusive ?

Learning : The exercise helped the students to visualise a poorly performing situation (with manual interventions and hence low effectiveness) and then plan the improved situation with the application of AI based systems that led to overall improvement.

Usually inside the class the students get to know the theory or the tools to solve but their minds are not primed to believe that all these AI theory, apps, tools etc are being taught with the primary objective of getting the students understand the nitty gritty of AI applications and come out with exciting creative solutions and apps to help solve our common day to day problems.

Now they have got an idea of what is possible with AI and what is not possible. 

George.