24-07-2025
AI ethics & employability
In today's Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered world, a silent transformation is underway. From automating mundane tasks to predicting human behaviour, artificial intelligence is reshaping how we live, work, and lead. And as industries adapt at breakneck speed, the question before us is no longer whether AI will shape the future of work—it's how prepared we are to shape it responsibly. AI (Unsplash)
For business schools, this isn't just a curriculum challenge—it's a moral and strategic imperative.
Machines now write emails, analyse markets, and even diagnose diseases. But while we celebrate these efficiencies, we must also confront a more sobering reality—our reliance on AI is growing faster than our understanding of its ethical boundaries. Many students entering the workforce today can prompt ChatGPT with ease, yet struggle to question the fairness of an algorithm or recognise when automation replaces empathy.
This is where business education must evolve—not just to teach how AI works, but to ask why it should be used, who it serves, and what it might displace.
At institutions like the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of Colorado Boulder, business schools are already taking bold steps—launching dedicated courses on AI ethics, building multi-stakeholder committees, and embedding GenAI tools into foundational coursework. At FIIB, we too are reflecting deeply on how AI integration must be as much about critical thinking and conscience as it is about technical proficiency.
Because at the heart of this revolution lies a powerful truth: AI is created by humans—and it inherits our flaws.
From insurance companies using opaque algorithms to deny claims, to marketing departments unknowingly lifting copyrighted content, the ethical dilemmas are real and rising. Bias in datasets, lack of transparency, and the black-box nature of AI decision-making demand that we teach students not just to use these tools—but to challenge them, audit them, and lead ethically through them.
Historically, universities have been centres of knowledge transmission. But in the AI age, they must also become centres of knowledge navigation—places where students learn how to live and lead in a world where human and machine intelligence coexist, often contentiously.
We need to expand the traditional triad of teaching, research, and service into a more dynamic ecosystem—one that fuses academic rigor with industry relevance and social responsibility. AI shouldn't just be a vertical within IT electives; it should become a horizontal theme cutting across marketing, operations, finance, and strategy.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in India provides a timely foundation for this shift. By encouraging multidisciplinary thinking, innovation labs, and industry-academia collaboration, the NEP invites institutions to evolve beyond silos and reimagine themselves as hubs of real-world problem-solving.
India is at a critical inflection point. With declining university-age demographics, rapid industrial shifts, and growing global competition, universities cannot afford to stand still. They must embed AI thinking across disciplines, establish centres of excellence, collaborate with industry to shape demand-driven curricula, and foster faculty development programmes that ensure educators are as AI-aware as their students.
This transformation need not be expensive—it must be intentional.
We've already seen industry giants like Microsoft and Google partner with Indian institutions to create AI upskilling initiatives. But what we need next is a coordinated national strategy—one that recognises business schools not just as talent factories, but as ethics incubators and policy influencers.
Amid all this change, one thing must remain clear: AI should not be used to replace human intelligence—it should enhance it. And that enhancement must include empathy, diversity, fairness, and inclusion.
We must teach our students that while AI may accelerate analysis, it cannot replace curiosity. It may automate tasks, but not trust. And it may generate content, but not character.
Let us not create a generation of professionals who can code without conscience or automate without accountability. Let us instead nurture responsible leaders who understand that the future of business is not just digital—it's deeply human.
In the race to keep up with AI, business schools must not just adapt—they must lead. And they must do so with boldness, foresight, and a renewed commitment to building a world where technology serves humanity—not the other way around.
This article is authored by Radhika Shrivastava, CEO and president, FIIB.
