I was quite surprised one recent morning when I came across this BBC clip on Meta getting rid of 10% of its workforce due to AI.
Asked what students should learn to stay relevant in an AI-driven future, Nina Beguš does not simply say: code more, specialize more, become more technical or the classic “system thinking…”
She points instead to the humanities: language, literature, history, philosophy, interpretation, cultural understanding.
Her argument: as AI automates more technical work, the human value shifts toward understanding context, meaning, culture, ambiguity, and new possibilities. In other words, the future of AI will not only belong to those who can build systems, but also to those who can interpret them, question them, situate them, and imagine what they are for.
As someone teaching in Fine Arts this summer, I find this worth underlining. The arts and humanities are not “soft” alternatives to technological literacy.
