A few years ago, AI was just a buzzword surrounding a new and advanced chatbot. Today, artificial intelligence has infiltrated every corner of the professional world. Overnight, this digital disruptor has transformed the status quo and left the rest of us trying to play catch-up. What was the hallmark of ingenuity and innovation now barrels towards uncharted territory—a frontier unknown and untested. Now that this initial honeymoon phase of AI is wearing off, people are left wondering, “What’s next for AI?”
TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year was “The Architects of AI,” a commemoration of the great advancements made in machine learning by multiple individuals. The magazine lists notable figures, such as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The magazine highlights the radical impact that these companies and their technology have had on the world. The good and the bad.
While AI has improved various areas, there are concerns about AI’s influence in fields such as business.
“Of all the businesses out in the public, what percentage of them do you think are using AI?”
This question was posed to me by Steve Harden, the Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships within Azusa Pacific University’s School of Business and Management.
“100%. Why? Because it’s the future,” Harden said.
Since business is an industry driven by profits, companies quickly jumped on to the prospect of incorporating AI into their workflow.
“AI is going to bring in an unbelievable amount of efficiency,” Harden said, “It’s just an efficient machine. It makes me much more efficient. I can do an hour’s worth of thinking in 90 seconds.”
With so many rapid advances in technology, this is being realized. Google can automatically summarize email threads with an AI overview, and you can now commission AI to create computer-generated videos from scratch based on a single prompt.
This “intelligence” that we have regarded as artificial is starting to have a very real impact.
Within the business world, tasks that used to take a large team long hours can now be done instantly with the aid of artificial intelligence.
“I can do an hour’s worth of thinking in 90 seconds,” Harden said, “I’ve got a buddy of mine, who was running VP of marketing, that was running a marketing team of 20… And the board asked him, because they were going through a tough time, to narrow it down to five people.”
“Today, his team of 5, plus him, are doing four times the work because they figured out how to use AI to do all the research, the data, and validate what AI is telling them. So a team of six is doing 4x the amount of work that 21 people were doing.”
“If I’m the CFO, I’m going, ‘Well done!’”
This story reflects of the broader shift in the American industry.
In research for Robert Half’s Demand for Skilled Talent report, marketing and creative leaders identified AI and ML integration as their top strategic priorities for 2026, actively seeking employees who can integrate AI into their workflow to increase productivity for a greater output.
What does this mean for people who are unable to integrate AI into their workflow? Extinction.
“I’m of the age where you could use a calculator in school, and then all of a sudden, calculators were like, yeah, whatever. And then, the internet; you had to go to the library and do your research. But now I can do two hours’ worth of research in like three minutes on the internet. I think AI is the same thing.”
It’s like giving Albert Einstein a chalkboard and Kim Kardashian a calculator and telling them to solve the same math problem. Assuming Kim Kardashian knows how to use a calculator, it is no longer about who is verifiably more intelligent, but who can get the answer quicker.
If I asked you who the tallest living person is and gave you the Guinness Book of World Records, you could probably find the answer in like 5 to 10—
It’s Sultan Kösen.
I asked Google Gemini, and it is Sultan Kösen from Türkiye. By the way, did you know that he was born on December 10, 1982 and also holds the world record for the largest hands on a living person, measuring 28.5 cm (11.22 in) from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger?
For a person working in data analysis, without AI integration, their job has become completely obsolete. AI usage is now being listed in job descriptions as a non-negotiable.
When analyzing the productivity gap, some reports claim that AI users are up to 2.3x more productive in task completion than non-AI users.
AI is here. Whether we like it or not, we have to live with it.
As a Cinematic Arts major, this is a pattern that parallels many changes within the film world. One example is the switch from celluloid film to digital. At the dawn of the digital camera, many filmmakers were apprehensive or outright defiant.
In 2002, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones was widely recognized as a pioneer in digital filmmaking.
Today, you would be hard-pressed to find any movie shot in the old film style, unless it is an extremely high-budget Christopher Nolan film.
Film development is not a required course for my degree, if you can believe it. According to an elementary school principal, they are no longer teaching the Dewey Decimal System to fourth graders.
What does this mean for the world? We must learn to adapt. We can not be a Blockbuster in an ever-increasingly Netflix world.
If APU aspires to offer a world-class higher education, then the university must teach what the work field is offering. This shift, while subtle, is happening.
Even the APU Honors College, which is known for its conservative stance on AI integration, has since changed its statement by including an artificial intelligence clause in the course syllabus.
In the fall of 2023, the syllabus stated, “Using AI-generated work to outline, write, create, or revise papers and speeches violates academic integrity. Using ChatGPT or other AI programs for compiling commonplace book quotations is not permitted.”
After the campus-wide integration of Google Gemini and NotebookLM this past fall, the syllabus has changed slightly:
“[There are] uses of such tools that are compatible with our mission, vision, and values. For example, using Generative AI or AI-enhanced writing software to help identify errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, or footnote formatting is permissible.”
Integration is even further along in other departments.
However, integration seems to be only part of the picture. Integration only works as long as what you are integrating remains a companion or tool for the greater picture.
For example, there was only digital camera “integration” in the early days when celluloid film was the status quo, but now there’s no room for celluloid film “integration” now that the digital workflow is the status quo. Every job pertaining to the development of film has been completely put out of business.
As a creative, it is a scary thought. What happens if this AI tool becomes larger than the industry it supports? You could ask AI to generate a fake image or graphic to include in your movie—integration—but what happens when you ask AI to generate the entire movie?
For the long-term plan, APU should not only focus on integrating AI into the current world, but also prepare to change the way higher education operates as a whole.
“Does [Artificial Intelligence] negate the need for higher education like APU? And the short answer is, yeah, it could.” Harden warned, “But the real answer is, how do we merchandise the APU education, meaning the whole thing?”
Harden believes the solution is to focus less on training APU students to achieve tasks replicable by AI, but instead focus on human interaction.
“If that’s the magic potion, if that’s the glue that holds everything together, how do we create more glue? How do we create more connections between human beings?”
APU, and higher education in general, should set its sights on creating more human connections rather than just rigorous courses. That will be the prevailing draw to universities in the future. While that may seem outrageous, this has already been explored by colleges and universities well before the dawn of AI.
“Do you realize you can take a Harvard class online for literally no dollars? You can’t get the certificate or the diploma, but you can take a Harvard class for nothing.” Harden pointed out.
YouTube existed for many years prior to the AI boom. Education, even to the collegiate level, has been readily accessible on the internet for decades. While AI will absolutely change the way we engage in education, there is still an understanding that this is what we do as humans:
We move forward.
“Who created the internet? Humans. Who created the calculator? Humans. We’re going to keep creating new and neat stuff.”
We must acknowledge, whether we agree or disagree, whether AI is the greatest or the worst, there is no sign of it going anywhere.
What matters now is not just adapting, but choosing how we use these tools to make the world a better place.