What senior leaders want to know about AI
What senior leaders want to know about AI
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-senior-leaders-want-to-know-about-ai
Publish Date: 2026-05-20 09:18:00
Source Domain: mitsloan.mit.edu
This article was adapted from the May 2026 edition of MIT Sloan’s monthly AI at Work newsletter. Sign up for AI at Work here.
MIT Sloan Executive Education launched its first AI-focused course — Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy — in 2017, and it’s been consistently popular since then.
Nine years ago, however, executives were focused on the role of AI as part of larger digital transformation. Today there’s been an explosion of demand for learning about AI specifically, from the basics to specific topics such as robotics, adopting AI at scale, and understanding the implications for the workforce.
More than 20,000 leaders and managers at every level and from a wide variety of industries attend MIT Sloan Executive Education courses each year to deepen their knowledge about important topics and connect with MIT experts and industry leaders. That gives Peter Hirst, the senior associate dean for Executive Education at MIT Sloan School of Management, unique insight into how leaders are thinking about AI. Hirst, who has led Executive Education for 19 years, sees who is seeking lifelong learning, their concerns, and what skills they want to learn.
And what leaders are interested in is changing, evolving from a basic understanding of AI to how to adopt and scale the technology and manage its workforce implications.
“[Demand for AI education] now shows up at our door as a request to ‘Help us understand, help us think about AI, help us implement it, and help us manage the implications and the consequences,’” Hirst said. “And it’s every part of that journey as well, because different companies are in different stages.”
I spoke with Hirst recently about how leaders are thinking about AI:
