Back in May, my undergraduate University, the University of King’s College reached out about a piece they were writing on the future of humanities, and if/how the humanities are becoming more of an area of discussion and focus in my industry.
You can read it here , or posted below with all credit to Kate Rae
After I finished FYP, I stayed working at the university for two or three years, working in the KSU office, and I found I really liked the problem-solving aspect of running a business. Then I went to business school, and then from there, I got into the tech industry. I think the appeal for me is that it’s hard to find an industry that is as fast moving. I have friends who work in more classical engineering and their projects are measured in years and decades. And I like things that are measured in days and weeks.
One of the things FYP really prepares you for is arguing out loud. It’s incredibly easy now to produce writing that is structurally sound. Anyone can generate a paper on the meaning of The Good using AI. But ask that person to defend it with conviction, and they will wilt. If you haven’t developed that gray matter, if you haven’t trained that intellectual muscle and have instead outsourced it to a non-deterministic prediction machine, you’re going to be very disappointed with what comes next.
In a world where anyone can produce an argument via chatbot, the ability to evaluate arguments, to dissect the logic, draw on historical examples, apply a humanities framework, or synthesize perspectives from the people around you, is actually far more meaningful. The humanities train you to evaluate ideas, and that’s a skill that’s deeply undervalued right now.
I could have gotten a computer science degree and it would have served me well. But the type of intelligence the humanities trains – interpretation, evaluation, comfort with ambiguity, articulation – has only become more valuable in my work. The fact that computers can now do more doesn’t make those qualities worth less.
I’m literally running the AI exploration team at a digital product agency, so I’m as embedded in this technology as anyone. But I don’t rely on it to generate final solutions. It can produce ten versions of anything I need. The skill lies in determining: this one is right, this one is wrong, here’s why, and here’s what we do about it. That sounds a lot more like a FYP seminar than a computer science class.
I don’t think the humanities is a silver bullet. But personally, I’m betting on the people who can ask the right questions and think critically, not the subscribers to any one worldview. I’m betting on the people who are adaptable, and who are okay with ambiguity.
I mostly standby this. If I could change what I said - I’d give more credit to people who ACTUALLY did Computer Science degrees.
My conviction around asking the right questions has only increased as planning, reasoning, tool use, memory and even perception are far more mechanized than in May.
What exactly is left that makes a mind a mind?
Back to the books.