Some Big Personal News. And a Rebuilt Course.
Friends.
Big personal news! Sharing with you because we are all best friends. (And also it’s public.)
After twelve years at NYU Stern - first as Dean of Students, then as Chief AI Architect - I'm stepping away.
My last official day will be March 1st.
I absolutely love Stern - but the truth is that AI Mindset has grown to the point where it needs all of me. Not part of me. All of me.
So that's what it's getting.
I'll have more to say about what's next in the coming weeks. There's a lot coming. But I wanted you to hear it from me directly, first.
Okay. Deep breath. Let's talk about what's happening out there.
THE MOMENT WE'RE IN
Something shifted this week.
Sam Altman and Dario Amodei were both in New Delhi for the India AI Impact Summit - on stage with Narendra Modi, Sundar Pichai, and a room full of world leaders. India committed over $200 billion in AI investment over the next two years. ChatGPT now has 100 million weekly active users in India alone - making it the platform's second-largest market after the US. Ramp
One hundred million people. In one country. That’s, like, so many people.
And yet the most interesting thing that happened at the summit was a photo. Modi lifted the hands of Altman and Pichai on stage. Everyone followed suit - except Altman and Amodei, who were standing next to each other. They raised their fists instead. CNBC
Okay, I know this is weird, but I kinda love this. The two most powerful AI labs in the world, in a room full of heads of state, and they couldn't even hold hands for a photo. The competition is real. The stakes are enormous. And none of it changes the fundamental challenge facing every professional trying to figure out where they fit in all of this.
That challenge is behavioral. It always has been. The tools keep getting better. The question is whether we're building the habits to use them.
Speaking of which.
THE COURSE IS REBUILT. HERE'S WHY.
I've been working on something for the past several months. With the world moving this fast, the original AI for Professionals course needed to move with it.
So we rebuilt it from the ground up.
New videos. New modules. And - this is the part I'm most proud of - a completely new learning experience baked into every single lesson. Not just better content. A different theory of how behavior actually changes.
Here's the short version:
Watching a video doesn't change behavior. Knowing something doesn't change behavior. The gap between insight and action is enormous - and most courses just leave you there, stranded in that gap.
The new course doesn't. Every lesson now has a Practice Lab - a pre-written AI prompt, tabbed for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, ready to copy and use the moment the video ends. There are self-diagnostic questions that help you identify your specific sticking point. The button at the bottom says Complete & Continue - not Next Lesson - because finishing the exercise is what finishing a lesson actually means.
Modules 9 and 10 are entirely new. That's where it gets into daily workflows, AI agents, deep research tools, and — a lesson I think about constantly right now - how to stay authentically human while working more and more with AI.
If you've already taken the course: welcome back. Go straight to Module 9.
If you haven't: perfect timing. Start here.
AI NEWS OF THE WEEK
1. Anthropic's Claude Gets Smarter for the Same Price
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.6 this week - its second major model release in under two weeks. The new Sonnet approaches the intelligence level of Opus, Anthropic's most advanced model class, but is priced identically to its predecessor. Early users are reporting meaningful improvements in complex multi-step tasks, coding, and financial analysis. More intelligence. Same cost. That's a genuinely good week for anyone using Claude as their daily teammate.
At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India committed to over $200 billion in AI investment over the next two years, alongside 20,000 GPUs to strengthen domestic AI infrastructure. Anthropic used the occasion to partner with Infosys and open its first office in Bengaluru. The global AI race just got a significant new entrant. Pay attention to this one.
3. Practical AI Is the New Hype
TechCrunch's 2026 outlook puts it well: if 2025 was the year AI got a vibe check, 2026 is the year it gets practical. The focus is shifting away from ever-larger models and toward the harder work of making AI usable - smaller models where they fit, intelligence embedded into real workflows, agents that actually augment how people work rather than just promising to. This is exactly what we've been saying for two years. The technology was never the bottleneck. The behavior was.
GENERATIVE AI TIP OF THE WEEK
Next time you finish a piece of work — an email, a document, a plan — before you send it, try this.
Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT and ask: "What's the one thing that's missing from this that my audience will immediately notice?"
Not "make this better." Not "fix the grammar." One thing. Missing. Immediately noticeable.
You'll be surprised how often the answer is something you already knew but didn't want to deal with. Your teammate has no such reservations.
LOOKING BACK
Twelve years at Stern. Two hundred billion dollars committed to AI in India. A course rebuilt from the ground up.
It's a big week.
Here's what I keep coming back to, though. The India investment numbers are staggering. The model releases are relentless. The competition between Altman and Amodei is genuinely fascinating.
But none of it changes what matters most for you, right now, in your actual working life.
The gap between having access to AI and actually using it - really using it, every day, in a way that changes how you work - that gap is still enormous. Closing it isn't a technology problem. It's a behavior problem.
That's still what we're here for.
Let's get after it.
— Conor
AI Mindset helps professionals and organizations close the gap between AI access and AI fluency — through behavior change, not just technology training. For speaking, workshops, and enterprise programs: www.ai-mindset.ai/speaking
