Will humanities majors disappear because of AI?

Generative artificial intelligence does not need a presentation at this point. Its capabilities, the power to move millions and millions of euros in the market and the huge debate They are facts that speak for themselves. However, there are still issues of great importance to be resolved. Its possible impact on the labor market is one of them. Like any major technological revolution, its arrival represents a direct threat to existing jobs. Like no other previous technological revolution, with its capacity for conversation, writing, data analysis or illustration, it targets jobs that seemed reserved for humans. On the surface, the question is how many and which jobs can be replaced. Ultimately, the debate centers on whether the new context is going to prune entire branches of knowledge.

At the beginning of the year, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics Christopher Pissarides defended that in an increasingly technological world, the humanities in general and jobs that revolve around the human in particular are going to be the clear winners of this revolution. To endorse his argument, Pissarides said that AI can learn to program, but it cannot imagine, it does not have empathy or creativity. Along these same lines, different experts consulted for this article point out, who consider that the most human is a bastion against the emergence of AI, but not everyone sees it this way nor do the first data point in this direction.

When taking stock of the damage that literature, science or technical knowledge may suffer, Valentín Bote, director of the Randstad Research study center, refers to the starting situation. “It is reasonable to think that computer science, mathematics and engineering professions will continue to be winning profiles in this environment. Compared to them, the humanities professions already came with a lower starting employability. A graduate in one of these technical disciplines has a greater job prospect than a graduate in humanities disciplines. That is a reality today, it was five years ago and our perception is that it will continue like this in five years,” says the expert.

In the early stages of this revolution, reality is proving Bote right and Pissarides is wrong. In a recent report, the Bank of Spain detects that companies whose occupations are more exposed to the developments of robotics and AI have increased their number of workers more than those that were less exposed. How can it be. “A possible explanation for these results is that companies that automate are more productive and competitive, so they can reduce the price of their products and, therefore, gain market share, so their demand for labor increases,” they say. the experts of the monetary authority.

However, according to the Bank of Spain, given the unusual range of capabilities of AI and the novel capacity to replace qualified jobs, “it is possible that the limited empirical evidence available to date in relation to the impacts of robotics and AI on the labor market is not truly representative of the changes that will be observed in the near future.”

In other words. Neither the Bank of Spain – nor anyone – is completely clear about the scope of the real impact, or whether it will affect the humanities or the sciences more. Perhaps the problem is the prism through which it is analyzed. Perhaps, to see the impact on the humanities it is worth looking further.

A new classification

“Society starts from a very erroneous concept when it divides knowledge into science and literature,” says philosopher and professor Eduardo Infante, adding that although this division is everywhere and engraved in us, knowledge is actually something transversal. and that, precisely, what artificial intelligence does best are the most specific tasks. This last element is key.

Deloitte, in its report What is generative AI and what is its likely impact on human jobs?, divided the jobs that could be most impacted not by the type of career to which they were linked, but by their nature. His analysis yielded seven categories: routine physical jobs, non-routine physical jobs, routine intellectual jobs, non-routine intellectual jobs, social jobs, creative jobs, and data analytics jobs. The consulting firm came to the conclusion that routine intellectuals and data analytics people are going to bear the brunt.

Coinciding with Deloitte’s vision, Antonio Luis Flores Galea, advisor to the European Commission on artificial intelligence and author of an infinite mind, warns that both the opportunities for new jobs generated thanks to AI and those destroyed will be distributed throughout the training spectrum. This is not about sciences or humanities. It depends on whether what is done is repetitive or not. The more repetitive, the worse.

Lessons woven on a loom

A priori, a translator (literature) and a programmer (science/technique) do not have much to do with each other, but they do agree on one thing: both can fall – to a greater or lesser extent – ​​into the category of repetitive intellectual jobs, one of those that Deloitte indicated as threatened.

“The translation is likely to disappear. But the software developer that is currently outsourced in low-cost countries may disappear because the code development will be done by AI,” Flores asserts. It would not be the first time that a profession disappears. “The elevator operator disappeared, the cinema usher too. The intercom almost erased the figure of the doorman. There have already been layoffs in the media to replace journalists with artificial intelligence,” Infante recalls.

Another option is that, rather than disappearing, the profession of translator or programmer and many other similar ones are called to disappear just as they are nowwithout this meaning a total extinction.

Bote gives an example to understand this concept: the first looms. “When a loom arrived, what happened in a textile workshop? The number of workers was reduced because the loom did the work of ten people. Where there used to be ten employees, there was a loom and an operator. What ended up happening? By producing fabric at a higher rate, the market opened because the price of fabric fell. After a while, that workshop already had ten looms and ten workers,” he compares with an argument reminiscent of that of the Bank of Spain.

In the style of the loom operator, translators, instead of translating languages ​​from human to human, can end up translate what a human wants to order to a machine. What can happen with programmers was explained at the HR Evolution event by David Claramunt, a workforce planner at Banco Sabadell and a programmer originally: “There are jobs that are one way now and in the future they will be different. In programming there may be a transfer from web and systems programmers to system trainers who program,” he predicts. “I don’t believe that in five years we will live in a world in which we need more translators than programmers,” concludes Bote.

What career to choose?

If under normal circumstances the choice of which career
path to take is not easy, in an environment like this with such high uncertainty due to AI, a priori, the difficulty increases even more. A priori.

Bote recommends taking employability into account and believes that there is a brighter future in technology and science. He is by no means against a person choosing a career in the humanities, but he believes that, if you opt for it, you should be aware that you are much more likely to face a more complicated career path. “It worries me to hear that the only thing you have to do is study whatever you want. “It is a decision that must be made with all the information on the table and thinking about the consequences,” he says.

Flores believes that you have to analyze yourself and not just think about university, because vocational training also gives access to professions that, furthermore, can hardly be replaced by AI. Infante advises following your passion.

For his part, Raúl Gómez Púa, an expert in innovation, technological strategy and digital transformation in the financial sector, aligns himself with the philosophers and with Pissarides. “An AI will be able to make a better diagnosis of cancer, but 100% of patients will want everything to be communicated to them by a human, not a machine. We need human skills. We come from a society in which there is hyperspecialization. We have spent decades in which studies and professional opportunities were hyper-specialized. I believe that this went against our nature and that this is going to change. None of us are going to have a job for life. Better that you have a holistic vision of life and knowledge than something hyper-specialized,” he defends.

Cristina Peláez, Lener’s people director, opts for a balance. “I tell them to take three factors into account. Let them see what they like, what they are good at and what society demands. From there, they must make decisions, but without going crazy. Knowing that as long as they work and acquire knowledge and skills, they can do whatever they want. The important thing is that they have a multipurpose knife because everything can change,” she suggests. Everyone agrees that choosing a direction is more complicated, but also that it is easier to change it.

Infante reflects on how many jobs are in danger from AI. It is difficult to encrypt because it does not only depend on it. “AI is going to eliminate jobs. This could be positive or negative. Whether it is good or bad will depend on human beings.” Whether AI leads to job cuts or reductions in hours without losing pay depends on people, not AI.

Perhaps the future employability of humanities jobs is in question. It may also be true for science jobs. But in the midst of so much uncertainty, two certainties. The first. If the humanities cease to exist, as Infante says, it will ultimately be the fault of humans, not AI. The second. If the humanities ceased to exist, the world would be an even more bland and cold place.

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