Commentary

Liberal Arts Matters Now -- More Than Ever -- In An AI Future

by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, January 16, 2025

As all of us who attended the CES in Las Vegas last week know, we are in the age of AI. Those letters were plastered everywhere out there, literally. Every talk, every booth, and way too many conversations started and ended with the thought that AI is going to change everything.

I agree the emergence of AI is transformational for many, many businesses, and certainly the world of technology-driven advertising that I inhabit today. We all need to spend time learning more about AI and preparing our teams, products and customers for how it can change (and improve) what we do every day.

However, so much of the rhetoric around AI focuses on its “techno-whiz-bang” characteristics, suggesting to many that non-technologists may find themselves left behind in an AI future.

When I founded my first internet startup 30 years ago -- when almost no one knew what the Internet was -- the majority of my team were recent liberal arts graduates with an interest and aptitude for technology. They won the dot-com age. Will they win the AI age, too?

Quite the opposite, I believe that the future of AI empowerment will be won significantly by those with strong liberal arts educations and foundations. Reading, writing, imagining, communicating, suggesting, prompting and being curious -- those are the skills that will help leverage AI in life and business.

I have never seen a scientist paint a vision of the future as clear, prescient and accessible as novelists like Jules Verne, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov and Neal Stephenson and artists like Leonardo De Vinci have.

Truly understanding how to think, communicate, persuade and judge become more important in an AI world, not less important.

Yes, knowledge of technology and how it works will matter a lot, but those who have strong liberal arts skills, and who are curious, tenacious and focused are the people that I want to hire to win in the AI future. People that only have professional, process-driven business skills, much less.

Are you ready to double down on liberal arts grads to win in the AI age? I am.

4 comments about "Liberal Arts Matters Now -- More Than Ever -- In An AI Future".

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Phil Guarascio from PG Ventures LLC, January 20, 2025 at 6:53 p.m.
Amen, David.
Reply

George Simpson from George H. Simpson Communications, January 22, 2025 at 1:33 p.m.

While I tend to agree, I fear (and see already) that AI will be doing most of the communicating that liberal artists do now.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, January 22, 2025 at 3:59 p.m.

Thanks Phil!

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, January 22, 2025 at 4:01 p.m.

I worry as well George, but great liberal arts folks will get beyond the innovations in communcations tools (ball point pen, typewriter, work processor, desktop pubishing, auto-correct) and will be able to identify the great porblems to solve and will solve them; not just cran out workds as quickly and cheaply as they can.