On educating ethics in the AI era: why business schools need to move beyond digital upskilling, towards ethical upskilling

Abstract

Uncritical assumptions about the perfect rationality of AI—coupled with the single-minded focus on profit maximization and rational efficiency in organizations—have resulted in business leaders believing that they can delegate critical morally sensitive decision-making to AI, potentially resulting in harmful outcomes. As we will argue, business education thus far has been largely complicit in enabling such harmful aspects of AI-driven decision-making in organizations. This needs urgent remediation. Our opinion article aims to clarify what exactly we—as management scholars and practitioners—have been getting wrong thus far, and how we might ensure that the business leaders of tomorrow are well-equipped to step up and guard against the irresponsible and harmful use of intelligent technologies.