So much investment is going into the development and integration of artificial intelligence technology, and the systems themselves have changed drastically in a short time. It's clear that as a business leader, you need AI literacy to keep up with the conversation in your industry.

Updating your AI knowledge is a potentially relevant path regardless of your company's location or its market, as AI interest is not limited to a single vertical. From organizations making hard pivots into AI development to firms adding a few time-saving elements to their workflows, there are countless ways to make the technology work.

Rather than trying to gain AI literacy through osmosis or pick it up as you go, you can take a direct, dedicated approach to boosting your knowledge, studying the specifics in executive education courses. A quick review of the state of the market will reveal that there's more than enough happening to warrant this level of immersion.

Read more: Tap into the business value of AI.

Grasp the basics in the fast-moving AI field

The first steps into AI literacy can be the most difficult, especially because the term "AI" can mean so many different things today. A product marketed as AI can fall into categories including:

• Generative AI: The type of AI that has become so popular in the recent wave of AI adoption, based on using programs like large language models to ingest information and produce a novel output based on analysis of the data.
• Machine learning: A longer-tenured form of AI based on algorithms that detect patterns in data based on large input.
• Multimodal AI: A type of machine learning model that considers input from multiple forms of data when generating its results.
• Agentic AI: AI programs designed to combine several functions into a single program, with the intent of completing complex tasks.
• Artificial general intelligence (AGI): The concept of an autonomous, "thinking" program with human-like capabilities, held up as an end goal by advanced AI developers.

As companies hyper-scale their efforts to build these and other types of AI tools, there are a variety of attendant legal, ethical, and regulatory issues that come along. For example, the use of copyrighted data to train models remains contentious, as does the generation of content based on real people's images, and the legal status of automatically generated works.

Businesses are also dealing with the need for new competencies among their teams. Data science skills such as data cleansing, for instance, have perhaps never been more important due to the need for high-quality input to make AI tools function, exemplified by the maxim "garbage in, garbage out."

Read more: Catch up with the state of GenAI in business.

Changing AI norms: How the technology is evolving

One of the reasons why it's so important to keep building AI knowledge doubles as a reason why it's so difficult to grasp the subject: The state of the art is a moving target.

The current wave of GenAI ubiquity dates back more than three years to the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT. In the time since, algorithms have evolved constantly, leading to new conditions every few months. These latest waves of development, however, are merely an evolution of systems that have been in place for years.

Experiments with machine learning and big data analytics date back decades, laying the groundwork for the large language models and GenAI algorithms that would follow. Gaining a perspective on how far the technology has come and grasping its current capabilities can help you prepare for what's coming next.

Refreshing your knowledge around AI's capabilities, regulatory status, best practices, and other details should be a regular part of your continuous learning as an executive. New areas of focus, such as bundling functions into AI agents, are always emerging, calling for continuing engagement.

Read more: Discover the current state of AI in business.

Why and how companies are integrating AI

While it's interesting to delve into the theory behind new tech areas, you have a duty as an executive to study how the latest developments can affect your business. This means studying how companies are already putting AI to use in their own operations.

It's worth noting that sometimes, success with AI doesn't mean launching an ambitious project that wholly reshapes your business. Some of the more successful early adopters have been those that have used AI for easier-to-understand purposes, like streamlining everyday workflows and automating repetitive tasks.

Businesses with well-considered AI strategies, ones that reflect their overall business goals and deliver real results, can set themselves apart from less disciplined competitors. Some promising moves for an ambitious company thinking about further AI integration include:

• Developing adoption road maps: Despite the novelty of the technology, AI demands the same kind of rigorous planning and execution as other IT initiatives, with all the attendant change management best practices.
• Setting up value metrics: Measuring the value and return on investment from a new AI project is a helpful way to make sure it's truly aligned with your company's objectives.
• Adjusting decision-making: One of the surest ways to determine whether your organization is actually making use of AI is to determine whether you're ready to change the way you make decisions. AI shouldn't merely be a surface-level investment, but rather a real difference-maker at a strategic level.

Read more: See how manufacturers are using AI.

Learning about AI with executive education

Amid today's frenzied moves to integrate AI into business processes, there are many potential settings for learning AI skills, but only a few represent up-to-date insights from top industry thinkers. Executive education courses from a top institution can provide that level of detail and authority.

AI Essentials: Accelerating Impactful Adoption from MIT Sloan Executive Education is an example of a course designed specifically to keep business leaders in the conversation around AI. By engaging in interactive projects such as prompt engineering, bot building, and AI agent creation, you can actually witness the current state of the art firsthand.

The course, led by Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh Smith, introduces the state of the AI landscape and sets up the technology's potential for business transformation while also laying out essentials such as the value of data science. As a capstone to the course, you apply the lessons about modern AI to creating a roadmap that will turn learning into practical action.

AI Essentials is one of several courses exploring various aspects of practical corporate AI usage, letting you pick an experience that relates to your organizational needs.

Read more: Learn how leaders are catalyzing creativity through AI deployment.

Take concrete steps to learn about AI

AI knowledge is in demand among today's organizational leaders. Whether you're hoping to excel in your current role, move up to a new role, or seek out an executive role with another company, having AI literacy can be a powerful point in your favor.

Expert-led executive education courses are the perfect setting for learning AI skills, with up-to-date insights gathered from the real world. Interactive work, collaboration with fellow participants, and the ability to develop practical strategies for your own business add to the value of these learning opportunities.

Enroll in AI Essentials: Accelerating Impactful Adoption to build useful knowledge for your career.