Deans Warn Future Leaders: Don’t Let AI Do All Your Thinking For You

Critical thinking is perhaps the most important skill for business graduates today. It’s also at great risk of being lost, school leaders have warned.

As AI becomes ubiquitous in and outside the classroom, a key concern for business schools is students falling into a cycle of “cognitive atrophy,” according to deans representing 10 top global business schools surveyed by the Graduate Management Admission Council.

“Deans consistently returned to one central issue: the impact of generative AI on student learning and on the development of critical thinking,” write the authors of a broad-ranging GMAC report published today (September 22).

The impacts of AI pervade nearly every issue in the report. That’s in stark contrast to the last edition of GMAC survey in 2022, which appeared just months before the public release of ChatGPT – and in which AI received a minor mention. At the time, the big concern about technology “was not disruption but delivery.”

Things could hardly be more different today. The “relentless speed” of AI uptake has affected everything from how business schools teach and assess their students, to the use of case studies, to the value of graduates in the job market.

“Students being pressured for time have no time to think and this is the biggest danger,” notes Sergei Guriev, dean at London Business School quoted in the report. “If they only use the AI to produce answers, they lose the capacity to practice the cognitive muscle.”

Eloïc Peyrache, dean at HEC Paris who spoke to GMAC, also cautions about the long-term effects over outsourcing learning. “The best way to be replaced is just to ask the machine, take what it gives you, and pass it to someone else. You are going to be useless very quickly.”

STILL A LONG WAY TO AGENTIC MODE

But the temptation to take shortcuts is great, Nils Stieglitz at Frankfurt Business School tells Poets&Quants.

“That’s not just true for students but also for deans,” he notes, citing as example a recent publishing conference he attended, where participants heard about the growing prevalence of AI submissions.

Despite the proliferation of AI shortcuts, institutions aren’t always on the front foot in using it. There are vast differences both between schools and the faculty within them. Many are far behind the ‘agentic’ mode of working touted in big consulting firms and financial services.

“Our reality is still very, very different than constantly engaging with AI agents – there are many institutional factors that work against it,” Stieglitz acknowledges.

Part of the problem is the shifting landscape of competing priorities.

“As a researcher, I was looking at how established organizations deal with change. Established players are not very good at managing disruption,” he notes. “There are budgetary challenges in many business schools. Also, there’s this daily grind – daily problems that pop up that constantly draw you back from really thinking about how to address the challenge.”

ELIMINATING AMBIGUITY IN ASSESSMENTS

And yet, there’s no arguing that AI is everywhere. “In the past year AI has been on the agenda of every single faculty meeting,” says Marion Debruyne, dean at Vlerick Business School.

She tells Poets&Quants her institution has “come a long way” on bringing AI into teaching and learning – creating an AI track and bringing AI into the broader curriculum – and in how it tests students’ knowledge.

“On assessment we’ve made a clear decision. There’s no wishy-washy. Either it completely excludes AI and you need to adjust the format [to] oral exams or presentations, or it allows for AI and it’s expected.”

Vlerick is also bringing AI to leaders. Last year, the school launched an AI course for executives. To date, nearly 1,000 people in “very senior” positions have taken the course, including Debruyne.

“In the spirit of ‘eat your own dogfood,’ I was a participant. I started really embedding AI in the day to day,” she says. This week is no exception. “On Sunday I use Claude, my ‘chief of staff’ I have a standing prompt – access my agenda, what are the to-dos.”

Arguably, AI is helping Debruyne work more efficiently. But she wants to reframe the scenario.

“We often hear, ‘how will AI augment humans?’ But also relevant is, how will humans augment AI? We need real creative thinking and originality of thought.”

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