European business schools move beyond AI basics to teach decision collaboration

TL;DR:

• European executive education is pivoting from teaching how to use AI tools to teaching how to make decisions with AI — when to trust the system, when to question it, when to override it.
• INSEAD places executives in AI-enabled simulations forcing judgment under uncertainty; HEC Paris’s AItelier platform translates business problems into AI use cases; UPF Barcelona’s workshops force executives to sign off on consequential AI-led decisions to expose the accountability question.
• One Uniqa Insurance Hungary deployment now authorises insurance claim payouts up to a defined threshold autonomously — the management implication, the school directors argue, is the bigger challenge than the technology.

Executive education is being reshaped by the same shift that is reshaping the businesses it serves: the operative skill is no longer using AI tools but collaborating with them. The Financial Times reports that programmes at INSEAD, HEC Paris, Corvinus SEED, UPF Barcelona, Essec, Esade, Polimi and Essca are converging on a common curricular question — when should an executive trust the AI, when should they question it, and when must they override it?

The Uniqa case study, and what schools take from it

The framing case in the FT report is Uniqa Insurance Hungary’s NiQA system, which now operates autonomously to analyse photos, interpret documents, calculate losses and authorise insurance payouts up to a predefined threshold without human intervention. “The real significance is the management model it demands,” says László Eszes, director of Corvinus-SEED in Budapest. Companies, he argues, must rethink “the division of decision rights between human experts and AI systems,” alongside new control mechanisms and structures.

INSEAD’s response to that organisational challenge is simulation-based. Sameer Hasija, dean of executive education, says participants make decisions under uncertainty while augmenting their information with AI: “Humans are thinking about the problem and pushing forward with their own judgment, while augmenting their information with AI.” HEC Paris’s AItelier platform takes a different cut, guiding executives in translating business problems into AI use cases — and forcing the managerial questions that surface (data ownership, output accountability, quality assurance) to be answered explicitly. UPF Barcelona’s workshops, the FT notes, force executives to sign off on consequential AI-led decisions such as rejecting a job candidate or denying a loan: “What AI systems cannot do is sign,” says executive education professor Giulio Toscani. “But someone must.”

A persuasion-engine warning

Recent research published in MIT Sloan Management Review warns that generative AI acts as a “persuasion engine,” shaping how users interpret information and nudging decisions in subtle ways. For executives, the challenge is not only whether an AI system is accurate, but whether its outputs are influencing judgment in ways they do not fully understand. Essec’s new Executive Master in AI programme, led by Thomas Huber, aims to produce “AI-fluent” leaders who can translate between technical and business teams, question assumptions and “push back” when necessary.

For UK firms running executive AI training internally, the curricular shift offers a useful audit checklist. Programmes that stop at tool tutorials are now visibly behind. Programmes that force participants to confront accountability, decision rights, and the difference between trusting an AI output and being persuaded by one are where the executive-education frontier has moved.

Looking forward

The pace of change in executive AI education is itself accelerated by AI. INSEAD embeds tools like Lexarius for real-time feedback; HEC Paris uses AI agents in AItelier to challenge assumptions; Polimi uses AI avatars in virtual learning environments; Esade runs hackathon-style exercises to teach when AI adds value and when it does not. For UK business school deans, the competitive question is whether their own programmes are evolving at the same speed — and whether the UK’s executive-education brands are at risk of slipping behind their European counterparts on what is now the defining skill for senior decision-makers.