When I first entered the sector of expertise media, most technicians had been extraordinarily thoughtful to us phrase – wielding of us throughout interviews. When speaking about technical particulars, they might habitually add, “Let me put it simply.” This unthinking, simplified clarification was like a mirror, reflecting the marginal place of liberal arts backgrounds within the expertise area.
This sense of marginality is much more deeply felt by these doing expertise public relations in expertise firms.
In the complaints from associates in company public relations, there’s at all times a phrase: frustration. The talents they’re good at, equivalent to communication, creativity, and interpersonal abilities, are principally polished by liberal arts schooling. However, in expertise – dominated organizations, they’re at all times categorised as auxiliary. Internally, they should accommodate and cooperate with the R & D rhythm, unable to get into the core and having little say. Externally, they’ve to keep up good media relations and clarify their firm’s obscure applied sciences clearly. They are caught within the center and get the blame from either side.
Now, the pattern has quietly modified. A peculiar admiration for liberal arts is spreading among the many science and engineering neighborhood.
In business teams, programmers joke that previously, it was “talk is cheap, show me the code”, however now it is “code is cheap, show me the talk”. Compared with coding, liberal arts abilities like speaking to AI and storytelling are extra necessary.
Opening my WeChat Moments, a programmer pal engaged on algorithms in a huge firm mentioned that if liberal arts college students can cross the essential IT threshold, they typically have extra benefits in subsequent growth.
It appears that immediately, your entire science and engineering neighborhood has rediscovered the worth of liberal arts.
Ge Zhaoguang, a historian, as soon as mentioned that whether or not in China or overseas, the humanities appear to be in jeopardy. The self – protection of the humanities has been repeated numerous occasions over time. Saying an excessive amount of turns absolute fact into cliches.
However, when these “cliches” of liberal arts self – protection are spoken from the mouths of the science and engineering neighborhood, they turn into extra humorous and thought – scary.
The change within the perspective of the science and engineering neighborhood in direction of liberal arts, from marginalization to admiration, is actually as a result of within the face of the total – scale penetration of AI into varied primary positions, each liberal arts and science and engineering have turn into the targets submerged by expertise. So, the science and engineering neighborhood is keen to make use of the facility of the humanities to make up for their very own technical shortcomings and keep away from the disaster of being changed by AI. Unfortunately, liberal arts can’t be the life – saving straw for science and engineering and is unable to launch a determined counter – assault towards AI.
01 Sudden Praise
In November 2025, on the Floating Light Auditorium within the 798 Art District in Beijing.
I used to be on this house stuffed with humanistic aesthetics, attending a expertise press convention. An established ToB firm introduced that it was getting into a new AI – pushed stage and launched a 2C product, an emotional companion clever agent. Giving the clever agent a heat – hearted persona requires a little bit of creativeness. So, a media particular person on – website requested: Can workers with a science and engineering background do nicely in issues that liberal arts youths are good at?
The firm’s chief smiled and mentioned that when debugging the emotional companion clever agent, the 2 most excellent group members had been really from liberal arts backgrounds.
He even thought that it could be a extra acceptable division of labor to let liberal arts youths be AI product managers and let science and engineering engineers deal with their very own work.
The significance of liberal arts talents being dropped at the forefront is inseparable from the present actuality of enterprises’ massive – scale utility of huge fashions.
From 2023 to 2025, the massive – scale acceleration of enterprises’ AI transformation has been on the rise. The report “The State of Artificial Intelligence in 2025: Agents, Innovation, and Transformation” launched by QuantumBlack surveyed almost 2,000 respondents in 105 international locations, overlaying completely different industries, enterprise sizes, skilled fields, and seniority ranges. The use of AI has elevated in nearly all industries.
In the method of AI transformation, along with the demand for technical R & D positions, a massive variety of newly – added positions clearly level to humanities and social science talents. Several kinds of newly – added positions appear to have the ability to take up many liberal arts college students:
Firstly, AI Storytellers, generally seen within the recreation, clever agent, and brief – video industries. For instance, when an IT firm is constructing an emotional companion clever agent, it wants one of these place to assemble a full character persona, dialogue logic, and storylines. These positions desire individuals with inventive talents, equivalent to these with a background in artwork design, psychology, or expertise in amusement park inventive planning or public opinion administration.
Secondly, AI Annotators. Large language fashions want extra excessive – high quality corpora. They want people to be their “Chinese teachers” to show them to grasp the subtext in human language. Annotators not solely merely label but additionally must have sociological and linguistic qualities to grasp the emotional tendencies and cultural context variations in texts.
Thirdly, AI Ethicists, who’re liable for conducting ethical critiques on AI to stop it from saying inappropriate issues that offend susceptible teams or making moral errors like serving to customers write blackmail letters. Companies like Google and Anthropic have added this place, which requires sensitivity in philosophy, regulation, and sociology.
There are additionally AI Art Designers, who’re liable for optimizing the aesthetic high quality of AI – generated content material and verifying the creative compliance of the content material. The crimson group recruited by OpenAI for the Sora mannequin belongs to this sort.
The desire for arts and social science talents in these positions is actually as a result of the technical shortcomings of AI occur to satisfy the strengths of liberal arts college students. This has made the saying of “liberal arts students’ counter – attack” shortly fashionable and turn into one of many hottest narratives within the present expertise business.
Technology influencers like Zhou Hongyi posted that liberal arts college students could have extra benefits within the period of synthetic intelligence. Fei – Fei Li, the director of the Stanford AI Lab, referred to as on each prime – tier AI lab to have anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. There are even rumors that a dropout artwork scholar created necessary AI infrastructure.
For many years, liberal arts have been considered a burden on the trail of technological progress and have been in steady decline. For instance, the lag within the growth of European synthetic intelligence is usually attributed to the extreme adherence to moral guidelines equivalent to knowledge safety and privateness safety, believing that the constraints on the humanistic degree have hindered the tempo of technological innovation.
Why are liberal arts now being pursued by technical individuals and in a position to have a “dimensionality – reducing strike” on science and engineering?
02 Liberal Arts Submerged by AI and the Non – existent Counter – assault
Not way back, on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Elon Musk made a prediction: In 2030, the intelligence of AI will surpass the whole intelligence of all people. There are solely 2,000 days left for the outdated world.
Under such a determined prediction, liberal arts are considered the final barrier for humanity, saying that it could possibly use the humanistic spirit to launch a determined counter – assault towards AI on behalf of humanity.
But the truth is that on this low – mendacity land of liberal arts submerged by AI, no fortress will be constructed.
The steady enchancment of AI capabilities has quietly raised the tide of expertise, step by step devouring the profession alternatives of liberal arts college students.
Firstly, it’s the decrease – degree liberal arts college students who’re submerged.
In low cost flats in Kenya and Uganda, a group of younger individuals who have studied literature, schooling, and publishing are clicking on “angry”, “joyful”, or “neutral” on the display. They are AI annotators employed by Meta by means of the outsourcing firm Appen, with the duty of instructing algorithms to grasp the irony, slang, and cultural unwritten guidelines in human language.
Their writing abilities have turn into the gasoline for big language fashions. This knowledge – employee job clearly has nothing to do with metaphysics, and the so – referred to as humanistic worth is out of the query.
In 2025, the tide of AI flooded the desks of white – collar employees.
While Selina and Evon in Beijing and Shanghai had been nonetheless celebrating the Spring Festival of their hometowns, DeepSeek – R1 hit the recent search. Overnight, white – collar positions equivalent to model copywriting, public relations planning, and authorities secretarial work, which had been as soon as considered respectable locations for liberal arts college students, collectively fell.
This sort of clerical work has excessive necessities for textual content rigor and format standardization however lacks a core inventive barrier, making it the right goal for AI’s exact strikes.
“My spiritual will is broken. What has my more than 20 – year effort been for?” A author posted in despair on a social platform.
AI scientists and technical bigwigs all say that liberal arts talents are necessary. But it does not imply that liberal arts college students are necessary. This is the bitter actuality that 99% of atypical liberal arts college students are swallowing.
What in regards to the remaining 1%?
In April 2024, the Sora video – era mannequin broke into the movie business, and for a whereas, the general public opinions of “AI replacing directors” and “AIGC’s first sword, cutting down the extras first” erupted. OpenAI urgently introduced that it might recruit human artists to type a crimson group to debug and optimize the content material generated by AI. It appears that liberal arts employees can nonetheless co – exist with AI.
But mockingly, these invited artists later collectively sued OpenAI: their works had been used to coach the mannequin with out authorization. The so – referred to as excessive – degree liberal arts are additionally discarded by AI after use.
Liberal arts college students are submerged by AI. Then what precisely are the liberal arts talents pursued by expertise firms?
Currently, nobody can say clearly.
An organization that develops clever brokers as soon as invited a senior recreation world architect to construct the story engine for an emotional companion clever agent. There is little question in regards to the particular person’s writing potential, however the precise operation impact was not splendid.
The core downside is that along with literary creation potential, one additionally wants to mix the technical benefits and drawbacks of AI and rework creativity into sensible operations equivalent to immediate – engineering. As a product supervisor, one should have the ability to independently full the closed – loop from creativity to implementation. Relying solely on single – dimensional humanistic qualities shouldn’t be sufficient.
Whether these new alternatives and positions on the intersection of humanities and expertise are tenable and might final continues to be unknown, so that they naturally can’t be the best way out for liberal arts college students.
The tide of expertise is rising quietly and has already submerged the silent majority. The so – referred to as determined counter – assault of liberal arts is simply an phantasm stuffed with excessive hopes.
03 AI, an Equalizer for All
When the humanities should show their usefulness to AI to be acknowledged and to achieve a foothold within the technological period, their self – worth has already disappeared.
Some students consider that the explanation why the humanities flourished from the sixteenth to the 18th century and humanists at the moment didn’t must be self – anxious or self – defensive was that through the historic change interval, they had been at all times criticizing and questioning. They criticized what individuals wished to criticize however had been unable to specific, they usually questioned what individuals wished to query however did not understand how. In that period, the humanities influenced the general public and in flip established the worth of their very own self-discipline.
In distinction, presently, when liberal arts should show their usefulness to AI, they’ve already misplaced their most valuable transcendence.
Just when the humanities are self – dissolving, the science and engineering neighborhood out of the blue begins to name for the humanities and advocate liberal arts schooling. Why?
Because the tide of AI has lastly flooded their embankments and reached the door of the expertise camp.
Silicon Valley has skilled essentially the most intensive wave of expertise layoffs in its historical past. Google, Meta, and Amazon laid off greater than 200,000 individuals in three years, principally junior programmers and take a look at engineers. In India, the commercial empire that when relied on low cost labor to undertake international code outsourcing has additionally misplaced its benefit within the face of AI. With a month-to-month price of $200, a massive mannequin can full the work that a whole group used to do in a week.
An organization posted a radical tweet, saying that it had archived the final line of code written by people.
This survival disaster has compelled the science and engineering neighborhood to start out reflecting: When programming will be performed by AI and human craftsmanship has no value benefit within the face of AI, how can they achieve a foothold?
So, they flip their consideration to liberal arts, to these humanistic talents that AI continues to be troublesome to copy at current, equivalent to empathy, creativity, and demanding pondering. The pursuit of liberal arts is the self – redemption of the science and engineering neighborhood within the face of the disaster.
In 1952, Kurt Vonnegut predicted in “Player Piano”: “Machines will first replace physical labor, then routine work, and finally, perhaps, real mental work.”
The course of could also be completely different, however the end result could have been predicted. That is, AI does not favor liberal arts or science and engineering. It is an equalizer, equally flooding the embankments of each self-discipline.
04 Traditional Disciplines Try to Swim
Liberal arts are on one facet and science and engineering are on the opposite, with a clear – lower distinction between them. This is the disciplinary divide left over from the commercial period within the nineteenth century, which as soon as effectively skilled the specialists wanted for industrialization. However, within the face of the flood attributable to AI, it seems so inflexible and fragile.
Traditional disciplines are beginning to actively leap into the water and attempt to study to drift and sink within the new period.
One day in 2021, Professor Lü Peng from the School of Social Sciences at Lanzhou University despatched a message to the ecological director of an AI firm: “You’ve made such a big deal out of your AI training courses with computer teachers. Our teachers from the School of Social Sciences are a much larger group. Why don’t you consider them?”
After they talked, they discovered that each one facets of social sciences are associated to nationwide financial system and folks’s livelihood, and lots of fields really want to make use of synthetic intelligence to