The Business School: MIT Sloan, February 2025
Fourth in a series about my AI lecture tour through Ivy League and international universities
Where Sam Altman Came From
I’m standing in MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
This is where Sam Altman studied. The guy running OpenAI. The guy whose company’s products I’ve been dissecting, comparing, building on top of for years.
And I’m here to tell these students that everything about business is about to change.
It was an amazing feeling. I’m not going to lie.
A Different Audience
Harvard the day before had been diverse - engineers, researchers, humanities folks. MIT Sloan was different.
Maybe half the room were engineers. The other half were pure business students. MBAs. Future consultants, VCs, founders, executives.
They didn’t want to know how AI worked. They wanted to know how it would affect them.
So I told them.
Everything Gets Easier
I walked through the entire landscape of business work that AI was already transforming:
Research
- Product research - understand your market in hours, not weeks
- Competitor analysis - comprehensive breakdowns on demand
- Due diligence - process documents at scale
Creation
- Writing copy - first drafts that actually work
- Business letters - professional communication, fast
- Proposals and decks - structure and polish with AI assistance
Analysis
- A/B testing - design experiments, analyze results
- Financial modeling - build and iterate quickly
- Monte Carlo simulations - run scenarios without the math PhD
Everything else
- Meeting prep and follow-up
- Email triage and response
- Contract review
- Strategic planning frameworks
Every single thing they’d spend years learning to do slowly - AI was making it faster. Not replacing the thinking, but removing the drudgery.
The Questions They Asked
Business students ask different questions than engineers.
Engineers want to know: “How does it work? What are the limitations? What’s the architecture?”
Business students want to know: “How do I get ahead? What should I be learning? Which industries get disrupted first? Where’s the opportunity?”
I had answers for both. But the business questions were more fun. Because the honest answer was: “Everything. All of it. Everywhere. Now.”
The Altman Connection
I didn’t make a big deal about the Altman connection in the room. It would have been weird. But afterwards, walking through MIT’s campus, I thought about it.
This guy sat in these classrooms. Did case studies. Networked with future founders. Then went on to run the company that might change everything.
And now I’m here, years later, explaining to the next generation what his company’s products mean for their futures.
There’s something poetic about that. Or at least, something that feels meaningful.
What I Learned
Talking to business students forced me to sharpen my message.
Engineers accept complexity. They’re comfortable with nuance, with “it depends,” with technical trade-offs.
Business students want clarity. What’s the bottom line? What do I do? What’s the play?
That discipline - cutting through complexity to actionable insight - made all my subsequent lectures better. MIT Sloan taught me to communicate more efficiently.
Back-to-Back
Harvard one day, MIT the next. Same city, different schools, different audiences.
By the end of those two days, I’d found my rhythm. The building blocks were working. The message was landing. The audiences were engaged.
Three more lectures to go.
Next: NYU - a room full of engineers, and the moment that made them gasp.
Date: February 5, 2025 Venue: MIT Sloan School of Management Audience: ~50% engineers, ~50% business students Context: Where Sam Altman attended Focus: AI’s transformation of business workflows