‘AI professor’ listening to startup ideas, available 24×7:Harvard professor’s AI clone teaches students like the real professor

As soon as the video call begins, renowned Harvard Business School professor Jeff Bussgang appears smiling on the screen and asks the person sitting across from him to share an idea. In a humorous manner, the student pitches the idea of an Uber-like app for the rapid delivery of fruit. The professor continues to listen attentively and patiently. Although he looks exactly like a real person, he is actually an AI-based digital clone or avatar created using computer technology. The purpose of this ‘digital professor’ is to interact with students and guide them. When the real Professor Busgang was asked about the experience, he laughed and said that seeing such a digital version of himself feels a little strange, but the students are absolutely loving it.
In fact, Harvard Business School has launched an eight-week entrepreneurship boot camp called ‘HBS Foundry’ to reach entrepreneurs around the world beyond its 900 MBA students. In this course, AI-based digital clones of professors handle much of the teaching. Students can repeatedly practice pitching, sales calls, and board meetings over video calls with these avatars. The aim is to provide practical startup training without hesitation. Pranav Sultania, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at Boston University, used this AI system for his underwater robotics startup, ‘Magnesis Robotics.’
He says that as a researcher and entrepreneur, he has no fixed schedule, so the AI avatars are available to listen to his pitch even at midnight. This helped him learn to focus on business utility rather than technical details when speaking to investors. Dragana Savic, the founder of a company working on autoimmune diseases, practiced several times in ‘AI board meetings’ before meeting real investors. This helped her overcome her hesitation and boosted her confidence. The course fee is approximately ₹67,000. These ‘avatars’ have been trained along the lines of Harvard’s rigorous grading tradition Chatbots usually say flattering things to please users, but Harvard has deliberately made its AI agents tough-minded. Tom Eisenmann, the faculty co-chair of the project, explains that these AI bots have been trained in the same way as Harvard’s strict grading tradition.
No student’s idea gets the “green light” on the first try. Often, students spend as many as ten hours wrestling with the AI to get their idea approved.