From AI Bans to AI by Design: IIMs, ISB and IISER Pune Rewrite Classroom and Exam Rules

India’s top management and science institutions are quietly retiring the idea that generative AI must be kept out of the classroom. At IISER Pune, the Indian School of Business (ISB) and IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore, faculty are redesigning teaching and assessment so students learn to use AI critically, without handing over the analytical work that a degree is meant to build, according to a report in The Indian Express on 27 October 2026.

IISER Pune: AI permitted unless a teacher says no

From this semester, IISER Pune has flipped the default. Generative AI use is allowed unless a course teacher or PhD supervisor rules it out in writing, leaving each faculty member to decide what fits a course’s learning goals. In one bioinformatics course, students could use AI to write data-analysis code but had to solve similar problems unaided in the exam, separating coding skill from subject understanding. Most quizzes and mid- and end-semester examinations at the institute still run without AI.

Professor Sutirth Dey, who chairs IISER Pune’s AI Committee, said grading has adapted too: where AI was explicitly allowed, evaluators checked assignments for hallucinated references, and faculty can now set harder coding-based questions knowing students will not get stuck on syntax.

IIM Ahmedabad: reworking the case method

At IIM Ahmedabad, students use tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini to summarise long business cases before class. The institute has bought 1,500 AI-tool licences for students, faculty, research associates and staff. Director Professor Bharat Bhasker said many professors now encourage AI-assisted case preparation, with classroom time shifting from summarising information to applying it, while stressing that critical financial decisions still need human judgement.

IIM Bangalore: students’ own chatbots sit the midterm

IIM Bangalore has gone further, bringing AI into a controlled examination. In the June–July term, 78 MBA students from Business Analytics and general MBA elective cohorts built chatbots that answered their midterm questions on generative AI, as earlier reported by The Financial Express. Professor Subhabrata Majumdar built a password-protected testing platform that restricted the bots to assigned course material, using a no-code retrieval-augmented generation workflow so students without coding backgrounds were not disadvantaged. Students were graded on prompt engineering, parameter tuning and how well they applied course concepts.

ISB: faculty decide, assignments get redesigned

ISB, across its Hyderabad and Mohali campuses, has chosen not to impose an institution-wide rule. Individual faculty decide whether AI is permitted, restricted or banned for a course, assignment, group project or research task. Professor Vishal Karungulam of ISB’s Centre for Learning and Teaching Excellence said the aim is to prepare students for AI-heavy workplaces while building responsible use and critical judgement. Faculty are piloting AI simulations, personalised course tutors and companions modelled on case protagonists, and assignments now put more weight on problem framing, synthesis and decision-making, backed by in-person discussions and case defences. Across 37 pilot deployments, ISB faculty reported 10–20 per cent productivity gains on routine academic and administrative tasks.

Why it matters

Global surveys suggest institutions are still catching up. A 2025 Digital Education Council study of 1,681 faculty in 28 countries found 86 per cent expect to use AI in teaching, yet 80 per cent lacked clarity on how to apply it and only 6 per cent fully agreed their institutions were investing enough in faculty AI literacy. The Indian experiments point to a practical middle path for campuses drafting their own policies: let AI handle the groundwork, then assess the judgement, verification and reasoning that only students can show.

Source: The Indian Express, 27 October 2026.