Over the past two years, the Freeman School has integrated AI literacy throughout its curricula at both the undergraduate and master’s levels.
Every week there seems to be a new report on how the AI revolution is likely to impact business, and invariably these stories tend to focus on one particular aspect: the loss of jobs.
I don’t dispute that AI will eliminate jobs. Jobs with the most exposure to automation — things like coding and customer assistance — are already being replaced by AI. But as an academic who has spent a career studying technology in business, I feel comfortable in saying, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of jobs has been greatly exaggerated.
To begin with, it’s important to recognize we’re in the very early stages of the development of AI. Do you remember the birth of the World Wide Web? Now think about all the businesses that came about because of the web, companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix. We are just beginning to discover what AI can accomplish and how businesses can integrate it into their operations. If a CEO wants to use AI solely to eliminate jobs, he or she can certainly do so, but that would be a tremendous failure of leadership. CEOs instead should be asking, “How can we create value through AI?” That’s a very different question. Leveraging AI to create value means innovating and discovering new ways to do things better, not simply cutting costs.
To follow the analogy of the World Wide Web, there are certainly jobs that were lost due to the web. Brick and mortar stores became online retailers. Travel agents disappeared with the advent of online bookings. Printed newspapers and magazines became online publications. At the same time, entire new industries were born. Web design, web hosting, online security, online marketing, search engine optimization, peer-to-peer platforms, cloud computing and so on.
I believe that AI will follow a similar trajectory, making some jobs obsolete but creating many more new jobs, some that we can’t yet imagine.
Dean Paulo Goes
For our students, it’s important to recognize that these changes will not take place over night. Despite reports highlighting AI’s threat to entry-level jobs, that’s not what we’re seeing on the ground. Our Career Management Center reports strong demand for our graduates with no appreciable drop off in the number of offers. That’s not to say AI will not eventually alter the job landscape, but it will take place over years, not months, and students will have time to plan ahead and acquire new skills to meet the changing needs of business.
And that’s where the Freeman School comes in.
Last year, we entered into a partnership with BoodleBox, a pioneer in the implementation of AI in higher education, to integrate AI throughout our programs. BoodleBox’s collaborative, secure platform enables students to utilize a wide range of LLMs — including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral and others — giving them an opportunity build AI literacy while working on business projects under the direction of Freeman School faculty. With BoodleBox, we’ve embedded AI-assisted learning throughout our curricula at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and for students who want to go deeper into these new technologies, we’ve launched a new undergraduate certificate in Business Analytics and AI, and redesigned our MANA program into a one-year Master of Business Analytics and AI degree program.
This isn’t using AI to write a term paper or generate a slide deck. It’s reimagining business workflows and processes. It’s using AI to analyze market data and generate innovative product ideas. It’s practicing negotiation skills with AI bots prompted with specific objectives and constraints. It’s using AI to build and refine business models and create brand identities for entrepreneurial ventures.
This semester, 22 instructors are integrating AI-assisted learning projects into 27 different courses, and we expect those numbers to rise substantially next semester. Projects such as these reflect how AI is increasingly being used in business, not as a blunt tool to complete rote tasks but as a strategic collaborator and value-added partner. Human-AI interaction will be the new norm, with employees utilizing AI “teammates” to analyze data, answer questions and contribute to business decisions. By introducing projects that require students to utilize AI tools to complete team-based assignments, Freeman is giving them relevant experience in what will be a critical business skill. Regardless of the industry or role, these are skills that every employer will demand and that every Freeman student will have.
AI isn’t going away, but with the AI fluency a Freeman education provides, students will be well prepared for the next stages of this revolution.
