Key Takeaways
- Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings said that science, technology and math fields were “overdone” as AI encroaches on those subjects, and predicted a swing back towards the humanities.
- Hastings said that AI will dominate logical, analytical work like software engineering.
- If he were raising a young child today, he said he would “double down on emotional skills” rather than pushing coding.
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings says chasing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is “overdone” and urges students to refocus on studying the humanities instead.
On the Possible podcast earlier this month, Hastings said that in an AI-driven era, emotional pursuits like entertainment, art and sports will stand out as AI-proof.
“You’re not going to watch a basketball game of robots,” he said on the podcast.
Hastings argued that AI will advance fastest in areas built on structured problem-solving, like software engineering and medicine. He suggested that tasks involving writing code and analyzing data are especially well-suited for AI, which can process large amounts of information and identify patterns.
“The kinds of things that you do with a biology background will be done so much better and faster by AI that it’ll be hard to compete for jobs in that space,” he said.
He added that for the past two decades, society has pushed the importance of STEM and teaching everyone how to code. Now, he predicts that people will start to realize that STEM has become saturated and “overdone” as AI takes over tasks.
“I think that as everyone sees that coding is overdone, my guess is we’ll see that STEM is overdone,” he said.
Hastings predicted that as AI takes over STEM fields, students will turn back to the humanities.
“And now maybe what we’ll see is a rotation back to the humanities, into understanding the combination of history and literature, but also kind of the physiology of the brain and how we interact with each other,” Hastings said. “If I had a three-year-old today, I would be doubling down on the emotional skills.”
Emotional skills include reading people and working with them, according to Hastings. He said these skills are “quite valuable” because they are much harder for computers to replicate.
Other executives agree
Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark, a former journalist who received a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, said earlier this month at Semafor’s World Economy Summit that his degree was “extremely relevant for AI.”
“What turned out to be useful is that I got to learn a lot about history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,” Clark said. “That’s turned out to be extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn’t have predicted.”
Clark said that degrees that seem ill-suited to the AI era can still be valuable, noting that Anthropic even hires philosophy majors. He added that if he were choosing a major today, he would steer clear of “rote programming,” because AI is increasingly capable of handling that task.
Another Anthropic cofounder, Daniela Amodei, also majored in English Literature as an undergrad. Amodei, who received her degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ABC News in February that she has “zero regrets” about skipping technical coursework.
“In a world where AI is very smart and capable of doing so many things, the things that make us human will become much more important,” Amodei told the outlet.
Anthropic hit a $1 trillion valuation on secondary markets last week.
Key Takeaways
- Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings said that science, technology and math fields were “overdone” as AI encroaches on those subjects, and predicted a swing back towards the humanities.
- Hastings said that AI will dominate logical, analytical work like software engineering.
- If he were raising a young child today, he said he would “double down on emotional skills” rather than pushing coding.
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings says chasing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is “overdone” and urges students to refocus on studying the humanities instead.
On the Possible podcast earlier this month, Hastings said that in an AI-driven era, emotional pursuits like entertainment, art and sports will stand out as AI-proof.
“You’re not going to watch a basketball game of robots,” he said on the podcast.
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Sherin Shibu