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Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings says chasing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is \u201coverdone\u201d and urges students to refocus on studying the humanities instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the Possible podcast<\/a> earlier this month, Hastings said that in an AI-driven era, emotional pursuits like entertainment, art and sports will stand out as AI-proof.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not going to watch a basketball game of robots,\u201d he said on the podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hastings argued that AI will advance fastest in areas built on structured problem-solving, like software engineering and medicine. He suggested that tasks involving writing code and analyzing data are especially well-suited for AI, which can process large amounts of information and identify patterns.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe kinds of things that you do with a biology background will be done so much better and faster by AI that it\u2019ll be hard to compete for jobs in that space,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He added that for the past two decades, society has pushed the importance of STEM and teaching everyone how to code. Now, he predicts that people will start to realize that STEM has become saturated and \u201coverdone\u201d as AI takes over tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think that as everyone sees that coding is overdone, my guess is we\u2019ll see that STEM is overdone,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hastings predicted that as AI takes over STEM fields, students will turn back to the humanities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now maybe what we\u2019ll see is a rotation back to the humanities, into understanding the combination of history and literature, but also kind of the physiology of the brain and how we interact with each other,\u201d Hastings said. \u201cIf I had a three-year-old today, I would be doubling down on the emotional skills.\u201d<\/p>\n Emotional skills include reading people and working with them, according to Hastings. He said these skills are \u201cquite valuable\u201d because they are much harder for computers to replicate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark, a former journalist who received a Bachelor\u2019s degree in English Literature from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, said earlier this month at Semafor\u2019s World Economy Summit that his degree was \u201cextremely relevant for AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat turned out to be useful is that I got to learn a lot about history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThat\u2019s turned out to be extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn\u2019t have predicted.\u201d<\/p>\n Clark said that degrees that seem ill-suited to the AI era can still be valuable, noting that Anthropic even hires philosophy majors. He added that if he were choosing a major today, he would steer clear of \u201crote programming,\u201d because AI is increasingly capable of handling that task.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another Anthropic cofounder, Daniela Amodei, also majored in English Literature as an undergrad. Amodei, who received her degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ABC News<\/a> in February that she has \u201czero regrets\u201d about skipping technical coursework.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn a world where AI is very smart and capable of doing so many things, the things that make us human will become much more important,\u201d Amodei told the outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic hit a $1 trillion valuation on secondary markets last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings says chasing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is \u201coverdone\u201d and urges students to refocus on studying the humanities instead.\u00a0<\/p>\nOther executives agree<\/h2>\n
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