Against the backdrop of the new business education reform, teaching in economics and management majors needs to break away from the traditional model of one-way knowledge transmission and shift to a student-centered, practice-oriented, active and constructive new form. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), with its deep semantic understanding and personalized precise Q&A capabilities, has gradually attracted wide attention. Guided by constructivist theory, this study implements a GenAI-empowered problem-based learning (PBL) teaching model. It integrates basic business knowledge, abstract algorithm principles, and programming syntax from data technology courses into inquiry-based learning tasks, stimulating students’ cognitive shift from passive reception to active construction. Practice shows that this model breaks the barrier between teaching and learning that exists in traditional instruction, creates a new teaching ecology driven by context, problems, and competency cultivation, and significantly enhances students’ critical thinking and innovative practical abilities. It provides a useful reference for the practical application of generative AI models in teaching.