Photo: A team of WNMU MBA students traveled to Denver at the beginning of April to compete in the Daniels Fund Business Ethics Case Competition. (L-R: Richard Mubanga, Marian Valle Angulo, Melissa Zenil Garcia, Oscar Arteaga Romero)
DEMING—A team of WNMU graduate students in the MBA program competed at the Daniels Fund Ethics Case Competition in Denver, CO, April 3-4.
The team—Marian Valle Angulo, Richard Mubanga, Melissa Zenil Garcia and Oscar Arteaga Romero—advanced to this second round of the competition based on the success of their first round, which involved writing an essay on a business ethics case provided by the Daniels Fund.
The case they were provided involves a company that has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) product.
In the competition, the team is asked to take on the role of the founders of the company. “The company has a product called Precog, which uses legally collected information to make predictions about people,” explained Mubanga. As founders of the company, they were faced with proposals from a variety of other companies that wanted to use Precog for their own purposes, and the team needed to assess the proposals using both sound business reasoning as well as ethical principles.
The proposals came from businesses in very different fields, explained Mubanga. “We had one in education, one in finance, one from a divorce law firm, one in government, one in healthcare, and one in insurance.”
Each proposal introduced a unique set of ethical dilemmas that the students had to work through. The team was evaluated on how well they were able to apply ethical principles while also using sound business strategies as they decided which companies would be licensed to use Precog.
“AI is just an algorithm making decisions based on the patterns and information that we feed it,” said Mubanga. “So as founders of Precog, we need to find the fine balance where we make a profit, yes, but we also put the rights of the individual first.”
“There is this stereotype that business people only care about making profit,” said Valle. “I really like that this competition shows you can find balance between ethics and making a profit.”
The scenario they were given, said Zenil, is very relevant to the moment we are living in. “It really trains us for the real world that we are going to face.”
This was the first time a team from WNMU has participated in the competition, and they competed against teams from much larger universities. “We are inspired by the idea of little Western New Mexico University being in the tent with the big shots,” said Mubanga. “We are inspired by the underdog mentality.”
“We like that we are getting the name of our university out there,” added Zenil.
Arteaga noted that the team has worked very well together, bringing different ideas to each of the ethical dilemmas they faced. “It is super interesting how even though we are working on the same case, there are different opinions and different perspectives among us.”
Those different perspectives, added Mubanga, have been enhanced by the fact that the group members come from three different countries. Zenil and Valle are from Mexico, Mubanga is from Zambia and Arteaga is from Venezuela.
Arteaga noted that the team’s coursework in the MBA program has prepared them well for the competition. “This is such a good opportunity for us to apply what we have been studying,” he said.
Their travel to Denver was funded by the School of Business, the Student Research and Professional Development program, as well as from the Daniels Fund itself.
While the team did not win the competition, their experience was nonetheless extremely valuable, said the team’s faculty advisor, Assistant Professor of Economics, Jorge Romero-Habeych. “They had an amazing experience at the event and throughout the entire process,” he said. “It is a rare opportunity for our business students to interact with students from universities like Notre Dame, Air Force Academy, University of Colorado-Boulder, BYU, Clemson, etc. They were able to network, compete, and have an overall unique experience.”