The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence has profoundly reshaped global business landscapes, posing unprecedented challenges and pivotal questions for contemporary business education in higher education institutions: How should business schools lead educational transformation amid deep AI penetration in industries? How can universities cultivate high-caliber economics and management talents suited for the AI era? To answer these era-defining questions, Antai College of Economics and Management (ACEM), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, officially released The Antai Declaration on Business Talent Cultivation in the AI Era on July 29, 2026. Grounded in China’s Outline for Building a Powerful Country through Education (2024–2035) and the national “AI + Education” action plan, the landmark document puts forward ten core principles to reshape modern business education, marking a pivotal milestone in the college’s in-depth integration of artificial intelligence and business talent cultivation.

Forward-Thinking Strategic Layout: Cultivating Human Core Competencies Irreplaceable by AI

Adhering to the educational philosophy of “Interdisciplinary Integration, Unity of Knowledge and Practice”, ACEM takes industry research and technology finance as dual driving forces to implement forward-looking, systematic planning for business education reform in the AI era. The college founded the Institute of Industry Research of SJTU in 2018. Starting from 2019, it established more than 30 industry research teams covering “AI +” sectors, conducting in-depth industrial field research to explore frontier issues and innovative paradigms for business education transformation.

As one of China’s earliest pioneers in integrated “AI + Business” talent training, ACEM launched the pioneering AI MBA Program in 2020. In 2025, the college set up the AI Governance Committee to formulate standardized pathways and institutional norms for integrating artificial intelligence into business education. During the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), ACEM co-founded the OPC Talent Incubation Center with SenseTime and Datawhale, pioneering a new model that empowers industrial upgrading through individual competency improvement in the AI age.

This systematic strategic layout stems from ACEM’s profound insights into the future of business education. According to Professor Chen Fangruo, Dean of ACEM, the core of talent cultivation in the AI era lies in strengthening irreplaceable human competitiveness. The college is committed to nurturing future-oriented professionals with systematic AI literacy, who are capable of operating independently as “One-Person Companies (OPC)” and tackling sophisticated industrial challenges. “Defining strategic directions and making ultimate value judgments constitute the core responsibility of modern managers,” Dean Chen noted. Guided by this philosophy, ACEM has persistently explored the integration of AI technology and business education in recent years, culminating in the formulation and official launch of the landmark AI Declaration.

Multi-Dimensional Empowerment: Building a Holistic Ecosystem for AI-Era Business Education

Dean Chen emphasized that education reform in economics and management must break free from overreliance on technological tools. Instead, it should focus on forging core human capabilities to adapt to industrial restructuring driven by technological disruption. ACEM has built a comprehensive, three-dimensional education system for the AI era by advancing reforms across five key dimensions: in-class teaching, practical extracurricular education, academic research, alumni ecosystem development, and global academic exchange.

Optimizing in-class teaching with an integrated “AI + Economics & Management” curriculum matrix. Seven of the college’s courses have been selected for SJTU’s AI-enabled curriculum development initiative, forming a systematic and comprehensive “AI + Business” curriculum system. The construction of intelligent classrooms also provides replicable and scalable solutions for universities worldwide to advance “AI + Education” integration.

Building immersive practical platforms for extracurricular education. ACEM has established an AI Learning Center in partnership with Datawhale, China’s leading open-source AI education community, as well as core industrial partners including Alibaba, Tencent, AMD, and the Shanghai AI Research Institute. Centered on the innovative One-Person Company (OPC) talent cultivation concept, the center’s flagship “AI+X” Training Camp adopts an immersive “Learning + Practice + Competition” training model. It focuses on deep integration between AI technology and diverse industrial scenarios, equipping students with practical competencies to seize opportunities in the intelligent transformation wave.

Realizing mutual empowerment between AI technology and academic research. ACEM has released the 2026 “AI + Industry” Development Blue Paper, exploring practical pathways for AI-enabled technological iteration and industrial transformation. The college also hosts a wide range of high-level academic exchanges with peer universities and leading enterprises, focusing on cutting-edge AI research and industrial application challenges.

Empowering industrial upgrading through the alumni ecosystem. ACEM alumni communities and alumni enterprises actively practice the development concept of “integrating management with technology and connecting management with industries”. At the 2026 ACEM Entrepreneur Forum, Wang Junhao, President of JuneYao Group and Chairman of the ACEM China CEO Club, shared the group’s comprehensive AI transformation practices across all business sectors. He called on alumni entrepreneurs to leverage ACEM’s high-quality platform resources to explore new industrial opportunities, guiding enterprises to evolve from basic AI application to proficient AI empowerment, and enabling technology to effectively fuel the high-quality development of the real economy.

Mobilizing global business wisdom to address universal industry challenges. At the 10th Global Business School Deans Forum hosted by ACEM in 2024, over 200 deans, distinguished scholars, and industry entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the theme “AI and the Future of Business”. The forum explored in depth how AI reshapes global business education paradigms, as well as proactive responses to emerging opportunities and profound challenges regarding AI ethics, moral norms, and sustainable development.

Ten Core Principles: Pioneering a New Paradigm for AI-Era Business Talent Cultivation

The ten principles outlined in the ACEM AI Declaration form a complete closed-loop system spanning value orientation, capability cultivation, teaching practice, and social responsibility, bridging theoretical consensus and practical implementation. In terms of value foundation, the Declaration stresses mission-driven education and ethical norms, affirming that humans remain the ultimate subjects of decision-making and responsibility. In terms of core capabilities, it highlights the integration of irreplaceable human competencies — including logical reasoning, abstract thinking, and critical judgment — with multidisciplinary knowledge structures, defining the boundary of human subjectivity and the co-creation mechanism of human-AI collaboration. In terms of teaching methodology, it advocates a shift in teachers’ role from solving existing problems to designing innovative topics and guiding critical thinking, adopting differentiated, phased training strategies and emphasizing process-oriented evaluation for interdisciplinary human-AI literacy. In terms of social responsibility, it commits to serving societal progress through cutting-edge educational practices and inclusive empowerment, maintaining an open mindset for continuous exploration and dialogue amid technological changes.

“This Declaration represents a one-year collective research effort and reform consensus on AI-era business talent cultivation,” said Dean Chen Fangruo. “It fully demonstrates ACEM’s global strategic vision rooted in Chinese educational practices, as well as our firm determination to pioneer and lead transformative business education in the artificial intelligence era.”

ACEM has launched a series of pioneering initiatives to implement the Declaration’s guiding principles. The college’s MBA program is comprehensively advancing the “Five-Link Talent Cultivation Reform”, building an innovative educational ecosystem that links industries, scientific and technological innovation, intelligent technology, global resources, and SJTU’s superior disciplinary strengths. ACEM is systematically restructuring its curriculum system, focusing on in-depth research and practice in AI4O (AI for Operations). It has launched practical courses including FDE Industrial Implementation and OPC Full-Stack Industrial Operation, cultivating high-end interdisciplinary industrial leaders for the digital intelligence era.

The upcoming 11th Global Business School Deans Forum in October 2026 will take “The Changing Role of Business Education” as its core theme, featuring specialized roundtable dialogues on “AI-Driven Talent Development” to explore unified standards and innovative pathways for AI-era business talent cultivation. Meanwhile, the OPC Talent Incubation Center’s “Hundred Industries & Thousand Enterprises Co-Building Program” has initially covered more than 40 cities nationwide, driving verifiable and scalable AI application achievements across diverse industries.

The Antai Declaration on Business Talent Cultivation in the AI Era

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping global operations. As AI gradually replaces repetitive human work, humanity faces an essential proposition: what defines human value and uniqueness in the AI era? As AI revolutionizes business operations, how should business education systems achieve systematic restructuring? As students gain instant access to massive information and intelligent AI assistance, what should business schools teach, how should teaching be conducted, and how should learning outcomes be evaluated?

Upholding the core educational philosophy of “Interdisciplinary Integration, Unity of Knowledge and Practice”, Antai College of Economics and Management has long stood at the forefront of global business education reform. Facing the historic transformation brought by artificial intelligence, the college has condensed industry and academic consensus to formulate ten core principles, clarifying its fundamental stance and actionable roadmap for AI-era business talent cultivation. This Declaration serves as a starting point for educational innovation rather than a final conclusion. ACEM encourages all faculty and students to enrich its connotation and implement its principles through persistent practice.

Principle 1: The Primacy of Learning – Upholding the Core Value of Education

The AI era does not diminish the importance of learning; instead, it raises higher requirements for learning innovation, cognitive upgrading and competency improvement. The more advanced AI technology becomes, the deeper and broader human learning is required to effectively leverage and collaborate with AI systems. Only through continuous cognitive refinement and in-depth thinking can humans maintain subjective initiative, independent judgment and original creativity, avoiding being passively steered by technological tools. This is the fundamental prerequisite for business education to adapt to the changes of the new era.

Principle 2: The Pursuit of Truth – Delving into Theoretical Causality and Logical Essence

In-depth theoretical learning has become increasingly critical in the AI age. The digital era is flooded with fragmented and unauthenticated information, while algorithmic black boxes often embed implicit biases that may mislead commercial decision-making. Rigorous theoretical systems act as a reliable compass to penetrate such cognitive fog. They lay the foundation for understanding operational laws, sorting out underlying logic, and deducing causal mechanisms. Business education must return to theoretical origins, clarify causal relationships, and adopt first-principles thinking throughout the learning process. In-depth critical thinking enables learners to break free from empirical inertia, identify hidden correlations, verify information authenticity, avoid algorithmic misleading, and generate forward-looking innovative capabilities.

Principle 3: Problem-Oriented Learning – Rooting Education in Real-World Business Practice

Business education must be guided by authentic and complex industrial problems. In the AI era, industrial boundaries are constantly blurring, and commercial challenges are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and complicated, requiring the breakdown of traditional disciplinary barriers and deeper integration of theory and practice. Problem-based learning is the optimal approach to cultivate interdisciplinary integration capabilities and comprehensive decision-making literacy. Business schools should transform from pure knowledge-teaching institutions into practical platforms for solving real industrial problems, enabling students to acquire substantive knowledge and practical wisdom through discovering, analyzing and resolving real business challenges.

Principle 4: Interdisciplinary Competency – Building an Integrated Knowledge System of Specialization and Diversification

Interdisciplinary compound talents have become the core demand of the AI era. Technological integration has rendered previously irrelevant fields interconnected, with weak correlations generating equally significant industrial impacts as strong correlations. Modern business talents must build a balanced knowledge structure of professional depth and interdisciplinary breadth. They need solid expertise in management, paired with systematic cognition of human-AI collaboration, science and technology, humanities and philosophy, social economy and organizational operation. Beyond professional tools and methodologies, talents are required to possess global vision and profound humanistic care.

Principle 5: Evolving Educators – Transforming the Paradigm of Talent Cultivation

Faculty members should anchor teaching in solid theories, closely connect with industrial practice, and stimulate students’ innovative thinking, realizing a fundamental shift from knowledge instruction to high-level competency cultivation. Teaching priorities focus on guiding students to master theoretical core logic and real commercial operational rules. Through interactive and collaborative classrooms, teachers cultivate students’ abilities to perceive business essence, decompose complex variables, and deliver practical industrial solutions. Solid theoretical foundation and in-depth integration of teaching and practice are essential to fulfilling educational missions in the AI era.

Principle 6: Innovative Pedagogy – Embracing Empowering Technological Transformation

Educational methods should actively embrace technological innovation and integrate AI tools organically with theoretical learning and complex problem-solving practices. AI should be regarded as a powerful auxiliary tool for training critical thinking and exploring essential truths, empowering students to independently solve sophisticated practical problems and promoting the comprehensive improvement of human core literacy.

Principle 7: Differentiated Strategies – Implementing Targeted AI Integration

Different teaching programs at the college undertake differentiated talent cultivation positioning and missions. Under the unified framework of this Declaration, all programs shall formulate targeted AI integration plans and personalized evaluation standards based on their own training objectives, so as to precisely empower specialized educational systems.

Principle 8: Dual-Dimensional Evaluation – Establishing a Balanced Assessment System

ACEM builds a dual-layer evaluation system that balances basic competency mastery and comprehensive practical application. At the foundational level, assessments examine students’ independent logical reasoning and theoretical deduction abilities without AI tools, as well as their proficiency in standardized AI application. At the applied level, evaluations focus on students’ comprehensive literacy to integrate independent thinking with AI tools and independently solve complex real-world industrial problems.

Principle 9: Value Anchoring – Consolidating Inner Spiritual and Ethical Foundations

Business education must prioritize correct values and noble spiritual pursuit. Personal cognition and values determine behavioral outcomes: sound values enable professional capabilities to serve social development, while deviated values will lead to harmful application of capabilities. The more efficient technological tools are, the more far-reaching the negative impacts of value deviations will be. ACEM is committed to cultivating responsible leaders who can dominate and lead technological transformation, rather than mechanical AI operators. The college firmly upholds that humans are always the primary subjects of decision-making and responsibility.

Principle 10: Ethical Responsibility – Safeguarding Benign and Responsible AI Development

Adhering to AI ethics and safeguarding social fairness are essential professional norms for modern business practitioners. While improving operational efficiency, AI technology may trigger potential risks such as data hegemony, algorithmic discrimination, information cocoons, social stratification and digital divides. ACEM aims to cultivate business talents with awe for technology, integrity awareness and social responsibility. All practitioners should abide by the ethical principle of “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself” in AI application, ensuring that technology consistently serves social equity and inclusive development.

Moving forward, ACEM will continue to act on the vision laid out in the Declaration. The college will carry out follow-up research, curriculum upgrades and international exchanges to advance business education innovation amid the AI revolution. ACEM also welcomes dialogues with peer schools, industry partners and scholars worldwide to jointly explore sustainable talent development models for a technology-driven era.