Should AI be used in Management education?

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Could I have used AI to write what follows? Yes. Should I have used AI to write what follows? I’d better not. For if I had, then what you will be reading need not be what I really believe in. It might well be what anybody else could espouse, bereft of experience, emotion and enterprise. Most importantly, it would be the outcome of all that has been digitally tracked, traced, and captured till one minute before. Not of how the mind thinks right now, in a certain context and with a certain purpose.

AI is necessary for all that we currently do and wish to do in the decades ahead, till some other interface betters it. But it is an interface. One of the means. A facilitator. Not the end. It is like speech and writing. They are the tools we have used in our process of evolution, not the product.

Not yet time

So, should AI be used in Management education? No. Why not? Because it is not yet time for students of Management to obsess with artificial tools before they develop their own capabilities and skills.

But it is already a part of everyday life. So, should students not be prepared accordingly? Driving, too, is a part of everyday life, but do you allow anyone before a certain age to indulge in the same?

It is not so much to do with age, but with a level of internal development. Social scientists say that it all happens with age. So, my opinion is that AI should not be used in management education.

But used is different from being taught. So, should AI be taught as part of management education? For sure. The future manager or entrepreneur should be aware of all tools that can improve the process and productivity. Just like we have sex education in school and workshops on traffic rules.

Management education is also going through soul-searching now. The corporate ecosystem is questioning its current form, content, and purpose. Today, it is largely classroom-based, structured and focused on creating managers rather than entrepreneurs. One does not learn intuition and individualism. Creativity is at best taught, not necessarily encouraged or practised. In this state of flux, incorporating yet another “structure” in the form of AI as a tool to be used for education will further complicate the soul-searching.

Teachers and students

Also, when we talk of education, it applies to teachers as much as students. I strongly believe that no teacher should use AI to craft syllabi, lessons, and classes. That defeats the entire purpose of demonstrating to the students the power of their own thinking and individualism. Again, I am not against teaching what is happening in the world of AI. Students need to know about Agentic, Ambient, and Neurosymbolic and the differences between them, but they should not be used at this stage.

Some may say I am being a Luddite and against technology and progress. They may argue that calculators were finally allowed in class. Agreed, and they should have been once they were accepted as a medium to allow better output, not as the output itself. It takes a generation or two for that realisation to happen, and we need to give it the required time.

Management education should not be about learning quantitative techniques, formulae, laws and sections in an act. That was yesterday. Tomorrow has to be more about cognitive fluency, the ability to plan, prepare, execute and solve issues or problems using a mix of the structured and the instinctive. That makes every outcome totally bespoke and individualistic. Recommending ready-made solutions, under the garb of “not reinventing the wheel” and “compressing gestation periods”, has actually dumbed down Management education. The fact that we now cannot read long formats and prefer video over written content is an outcome of an artificial curriculum structure resting on classroom examinations, synthetic role plays, and an archaic evaluation system instead of one based on multiple internships, collaborative projects with the industry, and evaluation by impact.

Using AI in such a framework will make Management education obsolete. Let us focus on sharpening cognitive skills and honing the creative quotient. Artificial Intelligence can be handled later.

The writer is the chairperson of the XLRI Centre for Automobile Design and Management (XADM) and founder of Indian School for Design of Automobiles (INDEA) at XLRI-Delhi NCR.