The Age of AI means new opportunities for English Majors

Like many writers and people who are devoted to humanistic values, I am somewhat skeptical of the AI hype.

But when I think about the future of English majors at St. John’s, I am struck by a lot of positive vibes about the humanities in general, and English in particular. Some of this buzz is coming from inside the house of AI.

AI companies and firms that invest in AI recognize that the people they really want to hire are trained in crafting relevant and meaningful questions. The future we are entering will require humans who understand the complexity of language beyond the “token” model upon which AI currently relies. Employers want to hire people with a comprehensive knowledge of human practices of language, including its ethical and persuasive dimensions.

These things, of course, are exactly what English majors specifically and humanities majors more generally do! The future is ripe for the Revenge of the English Major.

Here are a couple of articles that are worth reading –

Chloe Berger at Yahoo Finance writes about the “Rise of the English Major”, based on her interview with the COO of BlackRock Investments. She writers that BlackRock wants to recruit liberal arts analysts that ‘have nothing to do with finance or technology’

“We have more and more conviction that we need people who majored in history, in English, and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology,” said Goldstein of BlackRock’s new hiring strategy.

Steve Johnson at the Adjacent Possible Substack concurs that the current moment is witnessing a “Revenge Of The Humanities”

“Like any technological revolution,” Johnson writers, “AI is putting a premium on a new set of skills. Only this time, the skills might be best acquired in a writing workshop or a philosophy seminar.”

Johnson further suggests that “But it’s more than that, I think. The core skills are not just about straight prompt engineering; they’re not just about figuring out the most efficient wording to get the model to do what you want. They also draw on deeper, more nuanced questions. What is the most responsible behavior to cultivate in the model, and how do we best deploy this technology in the real world to maximize its positive impact? What new forms of intelligence or creativity can we detect in these strange entities? How do we endow them with a moral compass, or steer them away from bias and inaccurate stereotypes? Can language alone generate a robust theory of how the world works, or do you need more explicit rules or additional sensory information?”