“Learn to code” used to be common career advice. Now you might “learn to read.”
English majors are known for their unmarketable skills and are often the subject of jokes. (Who would want to hire me because I read Great Expectations?) Anthropology President Daniela Amodei takes the opposite position. She doesn’t regret getting a degree in literature. He says AI will make the humanities even more important.
“In a world where AI is so smart and capable of so many things, what makes us human will become even more important,” she told ABC News.
Amodei listed several things that make us human. It’s an understanding of ourselves, our history, and what makes us tick.
Learning the humanities is “more important than ever,” she said, but large language models often excel in STEM.
“In the future, the ability to have critical thinking skills will become more important, not less,” Amodei said.
Amodei’s views are becoming more popular in the AI field. Steven Johnson, editorial director of Google Labs’ NotebookLM, told Business Insider that LLMs are causing a “revenge on the humanities.”
Her brother Dalio, CEO of Anthropic, didn’t seem to get the hint that humanities majors might be back in fashion in a world full of AI. He studied physics at Caltech and Stanford.
Industry leaders debate the usefulness of a computer science major. In the age of vibecoding, is a CS degree useful in a technical field?
OpenAI chairman Brett Taylor said the measure was “extremely valuable,” while Google’s head of Android Sameer Samat said it needed a “rebrand.”
Daniela Amodei also explained Anthropic’s hiring strategy to ABC. She said the company is looking for employees with good interpersonal and communication skills. Being “kind and considerate” and wanting to “help others” are good traits, she says.
“At the end of the day, people still love interacting with people,” Amodei said.
