Would you support your child in pursuing a degree in English Literature?
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Anonymous
Now quickly do that for the rest of STEM, not just TE... 
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Anonymous
Yes lol Mostly econ, cs, stem(math, physics, etc) majors. People are delusional. |
Anonymous
NP. I write and edit blogs and web materials. Guess what? Companies are turning to AI and then turning right back to humans to edit AI-generated materials because those materials still sound bot-like and so often are inaccurate, too. And before you chime in with "AI will soon improve until you're not needed!" -- sure, it'll improve, but only by being "trained" by human writers and editors. |
Anonymous
Companies needed 5 humans, now only 2-3, very soon only 1. |
Anonymous
We need people doing all of these jobs/areas. Key is for a kid to understand the average pay they will get and choose a lifestyle that supports that. I support doing what you love for a living. You just have to make choices. If you are only making $40K, you most likely need a roommate or to live at home for a few years. |
Anonymous
Here is an excerpt from a U Wisconsin philosophy professor...decide if you think AI will dramatically change things or not: "ChatGPT has many of my university colleagues shaking in their Birkenstocks. This artificial-intelligence tool excels at producing grammatical and even insightful essays — just what we’re hoping to see from our undergraduates. How good is it, really? A friend asked ChatGPT to write an essay about “multiple realization.” This is an important topic in the course I teach on the philosophy of mind, having to do with the possibility that minds might be constructed in ways other than our own brains. The essay ran shorter than the assigned word count, but I would have given it an A grade. Apparently ChatGPT is good enough to create an A-level paper on a topic that’s hardly mainstream." |
Anonymous
Because that's what parents are for, not for imposing their will. You give advice and help explore options and then let them make their decision. |
Anonymous
It is much easier and efficient to edit something generated in 30 seconds, than to spend the time to create the original content. Here are some excerpts from the WSJ on what AI is already doing to the freelance business: We can be reasonably certain her story is typical of the experience of tens of thousands, perhaps millions of people, because at least a half dozen studies using data from freelance job boards have been published in the past year, each one building on the previous. Nonpublic data from within at least one such service corroborates this work. It’s a remarkably fast turnaround for such research, considering that ChatGPT is less than two years old. Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. Freelance jobs that require basic writing, coding or translation are disappearing across postings on job board Upwork, said Kelly Monahan, managing director of the company’s Research Institute. Economists are fond of saying that AI will automate away some tasks, but is unlikely to eliminate many jobs, since most jobs are much broader and more demanding than the parts that can be handed to AI. But freelancers represent an increasing proportion of the workforce: One study by Upwork found 38% of Americans did some kind of freelance work in 2022. For this type of work, it’s sometimes the case that the bulk of a person’s job is doing precisely the tasks that can be automated—and that can put their entire livelihood at risk. Reid Southen is a concept artist for TV and movies, including ones you’ve probably heard of, including Blue Beetle and the Matrix Resurrections. His income in 2023 was less than half of what he would make in a typical year, he says. That’s even worse than 2020, when the entire film and TV industry effectively shut down. Southen’s work typically happens in the early stages of a project, when producers need detailed sketches to help them establish the look of a film or show. This kind of behind-the-scenes work is being handed to AI faster than any other part of the film and TV business, as producers seek to cut costs in the face of a broader slowdown in their industry. Much of it is being handled by Midjourney, the image generation AI which by late 2022 was capable of producing photorealistic images from nothing but a short text prompt. If concept artists are brought in at all, it’s to tweak the images already generated by AI, says Southen. Southen’s experience has been echoed by others in his field, across social media and in the whisper networks that artists like him rely on. |
Anonymous
Not every company cares that the AI-generated materials sound bot-like. Press releases generated by some 20-something communications major also sound bot-like. |
Anonymous
Put another way, 99% of corporate communication just needs to effectively communicate the equivalent of "the chicken crossed the road in order to get to the other side". When a company issues an earnings press release, nobody cares how well that's written. They just need to communicate that revenue went up this much and EPS went down this much and other facts about the quarter. IPO prospectuses don't convince someone to invest or not...they are just exceptionally dry legal filings that contain tons of boilerplate language that for the most part cover the ass of the issuing company so they can tell you they highlighted some random risk in their SEC filing...it's your fault you didn't read the incredibly long boring document. |
Anonymous
I think this says more about the deflated standards of modern Academia. I talk often with professors at the LAC I graduated from. They say ChatGPT can hardly write a C level paper every time they've tried it out as a department. They even have pro-AI syllabi now, because the students who use it don't do better. |
Anonymous
That assertion can't be supported whatsoever. I doubt the LAC professors know how to train the model, nor are they hoping it produces great work...because if it does, it cuts to the core of their identity. Disparaging other Academics really isn't a winning argument. |
Anonymous
Yup! You help them see the path. So Sure major in English Lit and don't go to law school. Just be aware of what career paths you can take. And what the average pay for first 5 years is, etc. Know you have to work a bit harder than A STEM major to find a job---your internships and research will be important. You will have to market yourself a bit more. And decide If there is a minor or some courses that will be strategic to making you more marketable and take those. Then you let your kid make their decision. Life is not all about making more money. But you need to make enough to support your desired lifestyle. |
Anonymous
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No.
Minor is fine. |
Anonymous
| I mean, I’m paying for a music major so I don’t see why not. In fact, I think humanities majors will have much less competition now that all these parents are forbidding their students from it. |