STRIKING A BALANCE

SPJIMR IS FOCUSSED ON FINDING THE SWEET SPOT BETWEEN AI READINESS AND CRITICAL THINKING.

- BY TAMANNA MOHANTY

WHAT'S THE biggest danger posed by AI? If you ask Varun Nagaraj, the dean of SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), the answer wouldn't be job displacements or economic disruption. Instead, he would say it is AI's ability to potentially short-circuit the learning process and destroy human traits such as compassion, socialisation, communication, and connection.

The professor of information management and analytics laments that curiosity is fast disappearing among people. “Because you don't have to be curious; when you need to know something, you can know it. Curiosity is about knowing things that you may not necessarily know why you want to know; you're just curious. So, the whole notion of curiosity is being compromised.”

This concern has led SPJIMR to make some tough curriculum choices. It has moved a subject like systems dynamics—that trains students to think about connections that are often unnoticed—from an elective to a compulsory course. After all, doing business in a disruptive world is all about solving unprecedented problems.