Artificial intelligence in 2026 has become an assistant to everyone. Today, in educational institutions, AI is used by both professors and students. When it comes to corporations, AI is easily doing all the mundane tasks like making reports, summarizing meetings, narrowing down research time, and even helping with coding.
Everyone loves AI because it has made things simpler for humans. However, Soumitra Dutta, Dean of some of the world’s biggest business education institutions, argues that artificial intelligence as a technology may work flawlessly, but it is up to us to upskill ourselves so that we can get maximum output from it.
How Important Is AI In 2026?
The education sector is witnessing a tremendous shift in terms of technological reformation, with AI becoming the core factor that is driving every department. Take, for example, SUNY. The State University of New York has made AI literacy mandatory so that all students learn to embed AI in their study models. They want students to understand how they can use this tool to its fullest potential and also where its limitations lie. Learning AI is no longer a type of specialization; it is becoming a foundational skill.
Decoding the AI learning paradox
To put it in simple words, a paradox is nothing but the fact that one thing can mean two things at the same time - and with artificial intelligence, it doesn't get more relevant than this. Soumitra Dutta (Oxford Said Business School’s former dean), on several occasions, has mentioned that people fear artificial intelligence is going to take their jobs, but they don’t see the fact that in the future, AI will replace jobs and make space for newer jobs. Similarly, while students in colleges are motivated to use artificial intelligence, at the same time, they are warned not to misuse it and to use it as an assistant and not as a final delivery tool. The real fear with AI is that because it does a lot of thinking, those using it may start to deplete their own critical thinking, and this is probably the biggest threat AI can make to the human race.
Today, as Soumitra Dutta rightly mentions when giving a series of public speeches on AI, the real battle is whether all humans are able to upskill and develop a better understanding of which way the technology is heading so that they are AI-ready and can adjust themselves to a futuristic world that is still unknown.
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