NYU AI Architect Says Mastering GenAI Means Changing Our Behavior

When he was the dean of students at NYU Stern Business School, Conor Grennan had to say up to date with the newest tools and trends that would help MBA students excel after graduation. So when he first came across OpenAI's ChatGPT in early 2023, he "immediately went down a rabbit hole" exploring this new tool's capabilities, he told Newsweek.

Even Grennan, who has no tech background, found the generative artificial intelligence chatbot easy to use. Without any previous knowledge or instruction, he asked the bot about everything – from writing marketing copy to writing poetry and explaining strong theory.

"I couldn't find an area or domain that it wasn't a phenomenal expert," he said. "It knows everything and that is probably only going to get better."

That's when Grennan said he realized ChatGPT would "change how everybody works across every industry."

After receiving "enthusiastic permission" from NYU Stern leadership, Grennan started a program to teach students, faculty and members of the administration how to use generative AI.

As part of his new role as Stern's chief AI architect, Grennan worked with companies affiliated with NYU to develop GenAI case studies that could help teach students how this technology is being used in the workforce. To his surprise, Grennan found that companies also needed his help learning about AI and implementing it into their operations.

But even after he held workshops, the problem remained. Companies were excited to use AI, but when he checked back with them weeks later, Grennan said not much progress had been made.

"I found over and over again that when I would give people use cases, the idea was that you'd give them some and it would inspire them and they would go off and find their own – that didn't happen," he said. "People weren't using generative AI, despite being enthusiastic in the session. And not only that, they weren't spreading it to everybody else."

If generative AI was so simple and groundbreaking, then why was it so difficult for people to adopt it?

That question inspired Grennan to start AI Mindset, a consulting company that trains professionals and organizations on a new and effective framework for using GenAI. This training does more than teach a new digital product, it encourages organizations to adopt a new way of thinking, working and problem solving.

"The reason I started AI Mindset, ultimately, was that I realized the training around [ChatGPT] and how we're dealing with generative AI was totally backward," he said. "I completely tore up my framework and redid the lesson [to] a way of teaching that's focused completely on behavior."

The training offers courses for top organizations and individuals who are "complete beginners, advanced AI gurus and everyone in between," according to the website.

Grennan's thesis is that it is not the technology that holds people back from using GenAI, but the resistance in the human brain that makes using a tool like ChatGPT difficult.

The 2024 EY Work Reimagined Survey found that GenAI usage has increased over the last year. According to EY, 49 percent of employees in 2023 said they were using or planned to use GenAI in the 12 months. A year later, the survey found 75 percent of employees using GenAI.

Grennan believes, however, that GenAI adoption is actually lower than some studies report. While people may be using AI to write emails or make priority lists, he said most are not using AI in a way that is pushing their business forward to scale.

To eliminate the resistance to using AI, Grennan teaches people to reframe how they think about and approach ChatGPT.

With any new technological advancement, there is a clear relationship between the new tool and what it is replacing – like Airbnb with hotels and Netflix with Blockbuster. But if the brain doesn't know what a new tool is replacing, Grennan said it will make something up. The brain relies on pattern recognition and prediction when approaching new things, which is why Grennan said most people see ChatGPT and treat it like Google.

"Your brain sees [ChatGPT] and your brain says, I know what that is, it's a white box with a search bar at the bottom. That's something I've seen every day of my life for the last 20 years," Grennan said.

But generative AI is not a search engine. With Google, users type in a command asking a question and get an aggregation of information from across the internet. Generation AI, in contrast, will respond to a user's queries through prompts and conversational language to create a response or summarize information.

"It's a behavior change because there's actually nothing to learn," he said. "All you do is talk to [the AI tool] like a person. But why is that hard? It's hard because your brain doesn't see it as a human."

AI Mindset, therefore, focuses less on the technology itself and more on the approach to using it. Grennan's course prompts companies and individuals to think about how they community, strategize and make decisions as a business before considering how GenAI can best help them.

Once these metrics are identified, organizations develop their own use cases that will not only train employees on GenAI but shift company-wide behaviors.

Through AI Mindset, Grennan has trained teams leading several influential companies, like McKinsey, NASA, PwC, Amazon, JP Morgan and Google. Working with companies has also impacted how Grennan teaches generative AI at NYU.

"We want to be a leader in this space and that can only happen if our entire population is really fluent on Generative AI – not just using it but understanding how it's deployed in the workplaces as well," he said.

Grennan said he wants to upskill everyone in the school's administration so NYU becomes an AI-powered school that runs better and more efficiently to set up students for success.

"[MBA students] spend a lot to learn but we really want them going out into the workforce and understanding when they join a team in whatever industry they are [in] how they can lead the generative AI push in that organization," he said.

Grennan works with NYU Stern faculty to integrate AI into their courses so students use AI on assignments while still learning how to apply tools and lessons after they graduate.

"I think that people who are good at communication, people who are good at relationships and [are] good critical thinkers, and a lot of these are the sort of this staple of a liberal arts degree, are the people who are going to do absolutely outstanding," he said. "Those are exactly the skills you need in an AI era."

Grennan is one of the judges for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards, which recognize unique and innovative AI solutions that solve critical issues or advance capabilities across various industries. The awards highlight measurable impacts AI delivers in various business operations, including marketing, customer experience, product development and supply chain optimization.

Entries are open until April 25, and finalists and winners will be announced in late May ahead of the AI Impact Summit in June. The panel of expert judges is led by Newsweek Contributing Editor Marcus Weldon, an AI scientist and former president of Bell Labs.

For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the AI Impact Awards homepage.