By the time I’ve finished the first few lectures of my class Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI, most students are already uneasy.

They’ve seen how powerful AI is. How fast it moves. And how easily it reshapes decision-making, stakeholders, and outcomes.

Now comes the uncomfortable question:

This lecture is where things slow down—not because the technology slows, but because ethics resists simplification.

Ethics is hard to teach. Harder to operationalize. And hardest to enforce.

Which is precisely why it matters more than anything else.

I’ve seen others teach ethics before, most memorably during my MBA at London Business School.

And I remember thinking at the time: This is oddly unsatisfying.

Not because ethics isn’t important, but because it resists clean answers. Unlike finance, strategy, or operations, there is no straight formula, no spreadsheet, no universally accepted optimal answer.

Ethics forces you to confront judgment, duty, and values; the very things most modern systems try to abstract away.

AI, ironically, makes this harder, not easier. And in the age of AI, ethics is even more critical.

To make this real, I often start with images.

First Adolf Hitler.

Few figures in history generate such universal moral condemnation. Genocide. War. Destruction on a global scale.

Almost no one struggles with the ethical judgment here.

Then Donald Trump.

Suddenly, things get messy.

Some see a deeply flawed leader. Others see a disruptor, a nationalist, even a savior of sorts.

Same person. Radically different ethical interpretations.