In the age of AI, study of humanities still matters

With the rise of artificial intelligence, it is tempting to believe that the future belongs to coders, data scientists and engineers. But the past year has made something else equally clear: The world's biggest challenges — from the ethics of AI to climate resilience and social trust — cannot be solved with technical expertise alone. If anything, they are exposing the limits of a purely technocratic mindset.

According to the World Economic Forum 2023, nearly half of all job skills will change within five years. Amid such upheaval, societies must grapple with a foundational question: Are we educating only for employment, or are we educating for the future of humanity?

Although the idea of "liberal arts" is often described in Western terms, its underlying philosophy is deeply woven into Chinese civilization.

For thousands of years, China's educational tradition insisted that learning must cultivate moral character, broad cultural insight and the capacity for sound judgment.

Even China's scientific and technological breakthroughs were often pioneered by scholars whose humanistic backgrounds expanded — not hindered — their scientific imagination.

Zhang Heng, a scientist during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), who is often remembered for creating the world's first seismoscope, was also a poet and philosopher who saw natural phenomena as part of a wider moral and cosmic order. The ingenious astronomical clock of Su Song in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) was the product of a mind trained in classics, medicine, engineering and cosmology. These were not narrow specialists. They were broad thinkers whose achievements emerged precisely because they refused to separate science from humanistic inquiry.

This Chinese lineage matters today because the challenges we now face resemble those confronted by earlier thinkers who stood at the edge of new technological possibilities. AI, for all its power, cannot explain why certain choices are just, why traditions matter, or how societies should navigate the long-term moral consequences of innovation. It can optimize decisions, but it cannot take responsibility for them. The humanities — history, literature, philosophy, ethics, the arts — remain essential precisely because they sharpen the uniquely human capacities that technological systems lack: judgment, empathy, imagination and the ability to reflect on values rather than outputs.

Yet for much of the 20th century, higher education worldwide tilted toward specialization, efficiency and professional training. This orientation delivered economic growth but also a narrowing of intellectual horizons.

Today's complex problems reveal the cost of overspecialization and sidelining of the humanities: Engineers can build AI systems but cannot explain how they should be governed; technologists who can model climate trajectories cannot navigate the conflicting interests of communities; and analysts who can predict behavior cannot interpret meaning.

Encouragingly, universities across China are reinvigorating the role of the humanities rather than treating them as peripheral. Tsinghua University brings philosophers and computer scientists together to examine AI ethics. Peking University and Fudan University are exploring models of "new humanities" that place history, literature and moral reasoning in dialogue with data science. At our institution, Duke Kunshan University, experiential learning — community engagement, project-based courses, cross-disciplinary inquiry — is gaining prominence. These developments align with China's enduring belief that education should cultivate virtue and nurture talent, not merely impart technical skills.

The global trend is unmistakable: Universities that embrace interdisciplinary learning are gaining ground. MIT's urban design labs integrate social science with engineering. Ashoka University's seminars blend philosophy with public policy. European institutions are creating new fields — digital humanities, environmental ethics, technology governance — where students use humanistic insight to shape scientific progress. Countries that continue to silo disciplines risk falling behind not only in innovation but in societal resilience.

In the end, the debate over the humanities is a debate over what kind of future we want. If education becomes narrowly technical, societies may produce efficient systems but disconnected citizens. But if we unite innovation with virtue — an ideal deeply rooted in China's intellectual tradition — we can ensure that the world shaped by technology becomes not only smarter, but fairer, kinder and more deeply human.

John Quelch is executive vice-chancellor, American president and distinguished professor of social science at Duke Kunshan University in China. Zach Fredman is an associate professor of history and division chair of Arts and Humanities at Duke Kunshan University.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.