Harvard Business School is experimenting with a different way of giving entrepreneurs access to experienced business mentors: AI versions of real instructors.
The technology is being used in HBS Foundry, an eight-week entrepreneurship bootcamp that costs $699. The program combines live instruction with AI-powered simulations designed to give participants additional opportunities to practice their ideas and receive feedback.
The AI avatars were developed with HeyGen, a company known for creating digital avatars capable of delivering spoken responses.
Rather than replacing the program’s instructors completely, the avatars are being used as an additional layer of practice between live sessions.
What Is HBS Foundry?
HBS Foundry is designed for entrepreneurs who want structured guidance while developing and testing startup ideas.
The eight-week program combines weekly live sessions with practical exercises focused on areas such as pitching ideas and handling simulated business situations.
One of the more unusual elements is the ability to interact with AI versions of instructors and other experienced business figures.
Participants can use these digital versions to practice situations that would normally require another person to participate.
That could include pitching a startup, responding to questions from a potential investor or participating in a simulated board meeting.
How the AI Avatars Work
The avatars are designed to resemble specific instructors or business professionals, allowing participants to interact with a digital representation rather than simply reading written feedback from an AI chatbot.
The concept is intended to make practice sessions feel more like conversations with a real person.
The technology behind the avatars comes from HeyGen, which specializes in AI-generated digital people and video.
The company has increasingly focused on creating interactive avatars that can respond to users rather than simply presenting pre-recorded video.
For Harvard Business School, that technology creates an opportunity to make certain parts of its entrepreneurship training available without requiring an instructor to participate in every individual practice session.
From Chatbots to Digital Instructors
According to reporting from The New York Times, the original concept for the AI component was closer to a traditional chatbot.
That approach changed after students participating in an early version of the program indicated that they wanted a more guided experience.
The resulting avatar system provides a more visual and conversational interface.
Instead of typing questions into a conventional chatbot, participants can interact with a digital representation of an instructor and receive feedback during simulated exercises.
AI is increasingly moving beyond traditional chatbots, with companies and educational institutions exploring more interactive ways to use artificial intelligence. Instead of simply responding to typed questions, newer AI systems can simulate conversations, provide personalized feedback and interact with users through digital avatars. HBS Foundry’s use of AI-powered instructor avatars is an example of how this technology could change the way people practice skills and access expert guidance.
That distinction could be important for entrepreneurship education, where communication skills are often as important as the underlying business idea.
Practicing Before Facing Real Investors
One potential advantage of the system is that entrepreneurs can practice repeatedly.
Pitching a startup to an investor can be stressful, particularly for people who are still developing their presentation skills. An AI avatar can provide an environment where participants can make mistakes without the consequences associated with a real investor meeting.
For example, an entrepreneur could repeatedly practice explaining a business model, responding to objections and defending assumptions.
The goal isn’t necessarily for the AI avatar to replace human mentorship. Instead, it can provide additional opportunities to practice before a participant meets with a real instructor, investor or business partner.
The Technology Isn’t Perfect
The experience also demonstrates some of the limitations that remain with AI avatars.
When New York Times reporter Sarah Kessler tested the system, she interacted with an AI-generated version of Flybridge Capital co-founder and Harvard Business School instructor Jeff Bussgang.
The digital version reportedly provided feedback during her simulated startup pitch, but some of its visual behavior made the artificial nature of the avatar noticeable.
That highlights one of the biggest challenges facing companies developing digital humans.
An avatar can reproduce a person’s appearance and voice, but small details in facial expressions and movement can still make the experience feel artificial.
For some users, those imperfections may be distracting.
Students Appear Open to the Experiment
Despite those limitations, participants in the program reportedly responded positively to the avatars.
That reaction is interesting because the use of AI in education has generated significant debate.
Students and educators have raised concerns about AI replacing human interaction, reducing learning to automated systems and changing the role of teachers.
HBS Foundry takes a somewhat different approach.
The AI avatars are being used alongside live instructors rather than presented as a complete replacement for them.
That distinction could become increasingly important as educational institutions experiment with generative AI.
A Different Model for Business Education
The Harvard experiment points toward a potentially broader use of AI in professional education.
A traditional instructor has a limited amount of time available for individual students. An AI avatar, by contrast, can theoretically interact with many participants simultaneously and remain available outside normal class hours.
That could make repeated practice considerably easier.
Entrepreneurs could potentially rehearse a presentation late at night, receive feedback, make changes and repeat the exercise without needing to schedule another meeting with an instructor.
However, AI feedback still has limitations.
A startup mentor can draw on personal experience, understand complicated interpersonal situations and recognize nuances that an automated system may miss.
That means the most useful model may not be AI versus human instructors, but rather AI handling repetitive practice while human instructors focus on higher-value conversations.
Harvard’s Experiment Shows Where AI Education Could Be Heading
HBS Foundry’s AI avatars represent an unusual application of generative AI.
Instead of using AI simply to answer questions or generate text, Harvard Business School is using digital versions of people to simulate the experience of interacting with an instructor.
The experiment also illustrates the trade-offs involved.
AI avatars can provide greater access, more opportunities for practice and potentially more personalized feedback. At the same time, their artificial expressions and responses can remind users that they are interacting with a simulation rather than a human mentor.
For Harvard Business School, the technology offers a way to extend its entrepreneurship training beyond scheduled classroom sessions.
Whether AI avatars eventually become a standard part of business education will likely depend on how well they can complement — rather than replace — the human expertise that students value in the first place.
Source: TechCrunch, with additional information about HeyGen and HBS Foundry.