Executive Education White Paper

Will AI shape a new generation of managers?

An interview with Albert Meige ESCP Executive Education Expert and Associate Director of Arthur D. Little

$432,500: that's the price at which Christie's sold ‘Portrait of Edmond de Belamy’ in 2018, a work of art by the French art collective Obvious, created in collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI).

Then, in 2023, a group of researchers collaborated with a generative artificial intelligence to solve a previously unsolved mathematical problem.

While AI has been used in business for the past 10 or 15 years to boost performance and productivity, these examples show that it can now demonstrate both creativity - a domain thought to be reserved for humans - and success in complex cognitive tasks.

In other words, we have entered a new era of AI, which is bound to impact business, work and society. It's a subject that needs to be tackled head-on by the managers of today and tomorrow as they think about their organisations and plan for the future.

What are these generative AIs, and how do they work? What applications can we imagine in the company? How can we prepare for the current and future upheavals?

This white paper is part of a series entitled “Leaders for the Future”, produced by ESCP Business School Executive Education, that addresses the needs of companies and professionals so that they can thrive in the face of challenges and a rapidly shifting business landscape.

Albert Meige

Albert Meige specialises in the impact of technology on business, society and people and teaches at ESCP Business School’s Custom Solutions. He is also the Associate Director and Global Head of Blue Shift at Arthur D. Little. He is the author of numerous books and publications on innovation and digital transformation and has contributed to more than a dozen peer-reviewed academic articles. He holds two patents and authored the ministerial report ‘La Formation de l'Esprit Entrepreneur’ (2018).