On May 7th, Cristina Anghel and I spent two and a half hours with the master's students of the Customer Relationship Management program at ASE Bucharest, in a session built around one idea: Responsible AI in Practice.
"AI or not AI?" is no longer the interesting question. The interesting one — and the one we kept coming back to — is how to use AI responsibly. We walked through how the systems actually work, what the 2026 landscape looks like, ran a few live demos, and left plenty of room for real questions and honest debate.
"AI or not AI? That is not the question. The real one is: how to AI responsibly."
The session
A CRM program is, at its core, about managing relationships between humans and organizations. We added a new layer to that: managing the relationship between humans and AI. The 2.5-hour session covered:
- How modern AI actually works under the hood — enough mechanics to stop treating it as a black box
- The 2026 landscape: where the tools are useful, where they still fall short
- Live demos on real workflows — prompts, iterations, and verification
- Responsible use: disclosure, accuracy, ethics, and the questions students are already asking themselves
The room
The energy was the best part. The questions were specific, the debates were honest, and nobody was looking for shortcuts — they wanted to know what to do when AI is already in their workflow and the answers aren't obvious. Two and a half hours felt short.
Thanks to Carmen Acatrinei, PhD., for the invitation, and to Cristina for the partnership on stage. If your program or organization wants a session that mixes how-it-actually-works with the responsibility questions that come with it, I'm happy to put one together.