Signal Inflation: When Everyone Aces the Test But Nobody Learned Anything

Today our conversation explores why AI did not break academic assessment but made it impossible to verify, introduces the idea of signal inflation in technical fields and argues that sovereignty over decision-making is the one skill students must never outsource to a machine. We also reflect on how the MSBA curriculum at CEU will need to evolve and what a good relationship with AI looks like in research.

Our host Eduardo Ariño de la Rubia is joined by Ulrich Wohak, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Economics at Central European University, where he teaches coding and data visualisation in the MSBA programme. He holds two MSc degrees from the Barcelona School of Economics and Vienna University of Economics and Business and previously worked as a competition economist for the British government.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

- From chef to competition economist: Ulrich's unlikely path into academia

- Why AI empowers students but undermines academic assessment

- Ulrich's AI stack and how he uses it in research

- Maintaining sovereignty over decision-making in an AI world

- Signal inflation, curriculum evolution, and the future of the MSBA

GUEST DETAILS

Ulrich Wohak is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Economics at Central European University, where he also teaches coding and data visualisation in the MSBA programme. He holds two MSc degrees from the Barcelona School of Economics and Vienna University of Economics and Business, and previously worked as a competition economist for the British government. His current research, conducted alongside CEU colleagues, focuses on how AI is reshaping the labour market.

QUOTES

- "AI is such a cool product for students to engage more deeply with the material and to understand things maybe from a different angle. You know, it's a great learning tool, but it's also ripe for exploitation." - Ulrich Wohak

- "I think one should be very aware of what one outsources to AI. And I think there are some things that one should not give up sovereignty over." - Ulrich Wohak

- "I think students expect to learn very big ideas that deliver big results. But often I think what we're teaching is very small ideas that deliver big results." - Ulrich Wohak

- "It's a signal inflation, if you want, rather than a signal erosion." - Ulrich Wohak

- "I want to encourage them to use AI to empower themselves, not to outsource their thinking capacity." - Ulrich Wohak

KEYWORDS

#TeachingAnalytics #DataScience #AIEducation #AcademicIntegrity #HigherEducation