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them worse off once they switch off. In education, the aim must be the reverse – to produce graduates who are genuinely more capable afterwards, not more dependent. This is the conviction behind CESIM’s approach. For more than 25 years, CESIM has built business simulations in which students learn by making real decisions in teams, under uncertainty and with consequences. Its AI layer keeps the cognitive work where it belongs. A Tireless Teaching Assistant takes on the administrative load – analysing results, surfacing who contributed what and supporting feedback – freeing faculty for the human side of teaching. A deliberately Socratic AI Coach is context- aware, alert to where each team sits and how they compare, yet it withholds answers. Ask how to improve your sales figures and it helps you reason your way there; that friction is the point. At Telecom Paris, a cohort of 200-plus engineering students who are more than capable of writing their own agents were told to use AI freely during a simulation. They then sat a pen-and-paper assessment with no tools, where faculty used the AI Assistant to generate team-specific questions so every group faced a unique narrative. Students used AI to deepen their thinking, but could not offload the learning itself, because the assessment demanded real knowledge. A faculty that had feared AI would erode learning found how much it could
left invigorated, realising that four decades of knowing exactly where students get stuck was his most valuable asset in making the technology useful. Deep expertise, it turned out, let a late adopter outpace colleagues who had used AI superficially and stopped. The word “stopped” is the crux. Most people take one or two exchanges with a model, accept or reject the output and move on. The real value emerges through persistent iteration: pushing back, interrogating and bringing your own judgment to what returns. The first response is never the final response. Treating AI as a thinking partner rather than an answering machine is itself a skill and one business schools are uniquely equipped to model. The practical starting point is unglamorous: take a real problem with genuine stakes and explain it the way you would brief a thoughtful new colleague. Then interrogate what comes back by asking: “What did it get wrong?”, “What did it assert without evidence?” and “What is missing?” You are not asking AI to solve the problem but to help you think better. From principle to programme design The design question that follows is how to build this into the curriculum rather than bolt it on. Neuroscientist Vivienne Ming warns that too many technology products make people more capable only while they are using them and leave
“Students want AI embedded in the genuine intellectual work of their discipline, not delivered as a standalone skills course”
These themes were explored at the CESIM Elite Instructor Workshop 2026, where Tawnya Means delivered the keynote address. Means writes about pairing human creativity with artificial intelligence to transform classroom practice in The Collaboration Chronicle: Human+AI in Education on Substack. CESIM provides multilingual, multidisciplinary business simulations that help educators improve student engagement and employability. The theoretical foundation of the business simulation methodology is experiential learning and CESIM’s mission is to make this available and affordable to the widest possible audience. To see what context-aware, simulation‑based AI looks like in your own programmes, visit cesim.com.
add when the design assesses the process , not just the output. The same work, better supported The underlying thread is simple: the tools are new but the work is not. Business education has always been about developing judgment, evaluation, oversight and human relationships – capacities that no model will replace. Used thoughtfully, AI serves that mission. However, if AI is used as a shortcut, it quietly erodes it. For schools weighing up how to respond, the most strategic move may not be another tools course but doubling down on thinking – and choosing technology that does the same.
cesim.com
Ambition • ISSUE 5 • 2026 17
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