Value of an English degree in the age of AI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most English majors go to law school, medical school, or other graduate school or they go on to teach in K-12, or general professional office jobs (e.g., HR, project management etc)--

AI is going to gut those professions as well.

What it will do to K-12, still remains to be seen, but when AI is good enough to teach home school (and that day will come), watch out.

Gut? Hardly. I for one would never allow AI to defend me in a court of law or do a procedure or operate on me if needed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
An English degree is even more important in the AI age. What most do not realize is that the major is not only about writing, but learning how to interact with others in different settings, critical analysis, understanding and interpreting the big picture, etc.



Imagine thinking English is the only major or even the best major for learning those things.

It certainly is one of the best, PP. Not sure what the eye roll was for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An English degree is even more important in the AI age. What most do not realize is that the major is not only about writing, but learning how to interact with others in different settings, critical analysis, understanding and interpreting the big picture, etc.

Imagine thinking English is the only major or even the best major for learning those things.

Certainly one of the better ones, at least for people who have more understanding and open mind than you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An English degree is even more important in the AI age. What most do not realize is that the major is not only about writing, but learning how to interact with others in different settings, critical analysis, understanding and interpreting the big picture, etc.

Imagine thinking English is the only major or even the best major for learning those things.

Certainly one of the better ones, at least for people who have more understanding and open mind than you.

I agree with this. PP with the eye roll, which major do you think teaches critical analysis and communication (in all forms) as well as an English major?

[Anonymous]

I was an English major. The degree teaches analysis, just as many other degrees do. That is something you can use in so many professions. You're not restricted to being a writer or teacher or journalist by having English. You can go onto Law school, become a politician, a policy maker. There's endless possibilities.

I think the OP must be some kind of trogodyte who had never really understood the benefits of advanced degrees in anything other than maybe Math. There's always been people who think like that, even before AI was created.

I find it tedious.

[Anonymous]

None

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]All the middle managers will be heavily impacted.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-disappearing-white-collar-job-af0bd925[/quote]

And if all these jobs disappear, plus outsourcing to Indians getting paid next to nothing, who is going to buy all this crap that corporations sell?

[Anonymous]

Back a few decades ago companies would hire someone with a history BA from a state college because 1) not many people back then went to college; and 2) the fact that you got a BA degree (in any major) showed that you had the intellect, work ethic, ability to learn and come up with new ideas, and ability to lead. Even back then those companies didn’t hire you because of your knowledge of the Carolingian Empire. But now history degrees are a dime a dozen. Not only that, tasks performed by generalist managers can be easily replaced by AI. IBM has announced that some management jobs will be done by AI, meaning that some human employees will report to bots as their supervisors! Actually it’s not a new thing. For a long time Japanese companies required blue collar workers to learn from and emulate robots. Now it’s coming to the white collar world.

[Anonymous]

My father was huge in corporate finance in the 80s. His degrees were all in History.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Back a few decades ago companies would hire someone with a history BA from a state college because 1) not many people back then went to college; and 2) the fact that you got a BA degree (in any major) showed that you had the intellect, work ethic, ability to learn and come up with new ideas, and ability to lead. Even back then those companies didn’t hire you because of your knowledge of the Carolingian Empire. But now history degrees are a dime a dozen. Not only that, tasks performed by generalist managers can be easily replaced by AI. IBM has announced that some management jobs will be done by AI, meaning that some human employees will report to bots as their supervisors! Actually it’s not a new thing. For a long time Japanese companies required blue collar workers to learn from and emulate robots. Now it’s coming to the white collar world.

Did AI write this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back a few decades ago companies would hire someone with a history BA from a state college because 1) not many people back then went to college; and 2) the fact that you got a BA degree (in any major) showed that you had the intellect, work ethic, ability to learn and come up with new ideas, and ability to lead. Even back then those companies didn’t hire you because of your knowledge of the Carolingian Empire. But now history degrees are a dime a dozen. Not only that, tasks performed by generalist managers can be easily replaced by AI. IBM has announced that some management jobs will be done by AI, meaning that some human employees will report to bots as their supervisors! Actually it’s not a new thing. For a long time Japanese companies required blue collar workers to learn from and emulate robots. Now it’s coming to the white collar world.

Did AI write this?

You have a lot of learning to catch up. Learn from AI. 😊

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My father was huge in corporate finance in the 80s. His degrees were all in History.

That was the 1980’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh good lord, stop over-hyping the capabilities of AI. Human minds created AI (there really isn’t anything approaching intelligence in there) and humans can tweak it to suit our needs.

Humans are going to tweak it to eliminate the need for English majors.

And most definitely CS majors except for the top 1% of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back a few decades ago companies would hire someone with a history BA from a state college because 1) not many people back then went to college; and 2) the fact that you got a BA degree (in any major) showed that you had the intellect, work ethic, ability to learn and come up with new ideas, and ability to lead. Even back then those companies didn’t hire you because of your knowledge of the Carolingian Empire. But now history degrees are a dime a dozen. Not only that, tasks performed by generalist managers can be easily replaced by AI. IBM has announced that some management jobs will be done by AI, meaning that some human employees will report to bots as their supervisors! Actually it’s not a new thing. For a long time Japanese companies required blue collar workers to learn from and emulate robots. Now it’s coming to the white collar world.

Did AI write this?

You have a lot of learning to catch up. Learn from AI. 😊

This one is human gibberish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
An English degree is even more important in the AI age. What most do not realize is that the major is not only about writing, but learning how to interact with others in different settings, critical analysis, understanding and interpreting the big picture, etc.

Imagine thinking English is the only major or even the best major for learning those things.

It certainly is one of the best, PP. Not sure what the eye roll was for.

The eye roll was because English majors are oblivious to how much they overrate their ability to interact with others in different settings, to do "critical analysis", and to understand and interpret the big picture, and how little they know about the ability of people who majored in other things (especially STEM) to do those things even better than English majors do.