FEN U. de Chile opened the second semester by welcoming its largest incoming international cohort in nearly a decade, at a ceremony led by Dean Óscar Landerretche and featuring a keynote lecture on generative artificial intelligence by Professor Gabriel Weintraub.
The School of Economics and Business (FEN) at Universidad de Chile has welcomed 136 exchange students this semester, arriving from 20 countries and close to 50 partner universities across Europe and the Americas, according to the Faculty’s International Office. With this cohort, FEN has now hosted more than 750 incoming students since 2021 and maintains over 100 active exchange agreements across 17 countries.
The delegation comprises 63 women and 73 men: 110 are enrolled in undergraduate programs, 22 in graduate programs, and 4 in dual-degree tracks. France leads by country of origin with 33 students, followed by the United States (19), the Netherlands (16), and Spain and Germany (15 each). Home institutions include Bocconi, Sciences Po, the University of British Columbia, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, among others.
Opening the official welcome, Dean Óscar Landerretche greeted the incoming students with a brief introduction to the Faculty, describing student exchange as “an essential part of educating people in the field of business.” Because Chile is “an export-oriented economy,” he noted, it matters that students “interact with the markets and the customs” of partner institutions. He added that the Faculty actively seeks to have international students “interact with FEN students” as a matter of educational policy.
The second half of the program was given over to Professor Gabriel Weintraub, FEN faculty member and Faculty Director of the Deming Center for Operational Innovation and Excellence at Columbia Business School, who delivered the keynote lecture “Generative Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities for the Future of Work in Chile.” The talk drew on his own research into the impact of generative AI across 100 occupations and 2,600 workplace tasks in Chile, covering a workforce of 5,690,000.
The findings are striking. The potential value of accelerating the analyzed tasks with generative AI is equivalent to 12% of Chile’s GDP. On average, 48% of the tasks within a given job can be accelerated using these tools, and at least 80% of Chilean workers hold occupations in which more than 30% of their tasks are susceptible to acceleration. The occupations with the greatest potential: software developer (87%), public administration policy specialists (84%), systems analysts (80%), medical secretaries (76%), and lawyers and accountants (72%).