Unexpectedly, artificial intelligence came and the rules of the game changed.
It is reported that from 20 12 to 20 16, the United States created 1065438+ 10,000 jobs, of which only 5%-54 1000 jobs were in computer-related fields. Even if all the Internet and computer-related technical posts are added up, it is less than 10%. So what are the remaining 90% new jobs? Most of them are related to "liberal arts"-that is, jobs that need to deal with people.
After AlphaGo defeated the previous version of AlphaGo without a teacher, people speculated when AI would surpass human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, the head of Google Engineering and a futurist, predicts that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and become the smartest race in the world in 2045.
Computers can drive cars more safely than humans, predict court decisions more accurately than legal experts, are better at facial recognition, and computer-controlled robots run around offices and factories, even completing surgery faster, more reliably and economically. When all this comes, will humans be replaced?
First, the right brain is stronger than the left brain.
Not long ago, teacher Kai-fu Lee said: "In the era of artificial intelligence, liberal arts students finally have to hold their heads high."
Jeff Corwin, the author of The Man Who Will Not Be Replaced by Machines, predicts that in the future, the skills necessary for our success will no longer be the technical left-brain skills acquired through classroom teaching, although in the past economic development, workers really needed to master these skills. On the contrary, under the strong driving force, we help each other and accomplish the task together. The advantages of human beings come from deep and fundamental human skills-empathy, creativity, social sensitivity, storytelling, humor, establishing interpersonal relationships, and self-expression more powerful than logical narration. These are just the advantages of liberal arts students.
These high-value skills can bring huge competitive advantages, including more dedicated customers, stronger culture, more subversive ideas and more efficient teams. Although many people think that these skills are innate characteristics of people, "He is really a good person to deal with people" and "She is naturally creative", in fact, these skills can be cultivated, and many far-sighted institutions have begun to cultivate them. For example:
Cleveland Medical Center attaches great importance to empathy training for doctors and other employees to improve the curative effect of patients and reduce medical expenses.
The U.S. Army has carried out a military training revolution, paying attention to interpersonal skills, making the troops stronger and achieving great success in real combat missions.
Harvard Business School completely revised the curriculum, emphasizing interpersonal communication to cultivate interpersonal communication ability.
Second, interpersonal skills are more important than professional skills.
People have a prejudice that they like to overestimate the behavior of "face-to-face communication" without buying abstract data. That's understandable. Man is essentially a gregarious animal.
This prejudice has left a job opportunity for human beings in the era of artificial intelligence. No matter how developed artificial intelligence is, we still require:
The most important decisions are made by people. If a country wants to declare war on other countries, we demand that this order be given by people. On this issue, we can't obey the command of artificial intelligence, and we can't hand over the nuclear button to artificial intelligence. People are in charge, not machines.
Our values are always changing, and so are our thoughts. We can't give artificial intelligence a clear goal, so let people solve some things themselves-because sometimes we don't know what to "solve".
Most importantly, we prefer to deal with people.
Therefore, the best way is to show "human flavor".
From this perspective, "science and engineering men" may have a crisis, and the future may be the world of "liberal arts students". A survey in the United States shows that since 2000, the actual brain power that engineers need to consume in their daily work has begun to decline. Perhaps the degree of automation is getting higher and higher, so the work of engineers is getting simpler and simpler-that is, it is getting less and less valuable.
There is a rather extreme example of people who will not be replaced by machines. IT is said that Southwest Airlines spent a lot of money to hire a skilled IT engineer from many applicants. When this man comes, he shuts himself in his office and doesn't come out to chat with others. As a result, the supervisor asked him, why don't you chat? This man said that I like studying technology rather than chatting. The supervisor said that the corporate culture of our Southwest Airlines is chatting, and then he was fired.
IT can be seen that it men who are unsociable are not good colleagues.
Third, extracurricular practice is more important than classroom study.
Harvard Business School lets freshmen go out of the classroom and participate in team practice. Each group chooses an emerging market company. For example, Lenovo in China or Vietnam Capital Bank launched real projects proposed by the company, such as developing a new financial service to attract people who have never opened a bank account, or opening up a new home user line. After designing the scheme on campus, the team entered the market in 1 month, spent 8 days in market research, and then reported their suggestions to the company's top management.
After students return to school, their work is not only more intense, but also more personalized. According to the requirements of the school, each team started their own company with the start-up capital of 3,000 yuan provided by the school within 10 week. Every year, 150 teams will set up 150 limited liability companies, generating 150 business ideas, including men's quality underwear, providing contact services for language teachers and students all over the world, and renting services for Sally in India.
It is still important for business school students to learn the capital asset pricing model, but for them, it is meaningless to continue learning the model in class. Because, although they are physically close in the classroom, there is almost no communication.
We can sum up the experience of business schools as follows: If a person works better, don't be with others. If you spend time with others, you should make full use of it. Gathering in the classroom to learn corporate finance knowledge has been unable to maximize personal time benefits.
Fourth, sensibility is superior to rationality.
Dozens of medical schools around the world encourage or require students to read novels because it helps to cultivate students' social skills.
According to the report of the Medical Humanities Project of new york University School of Medicine, reading novels helps to "develop and cultivate the most basic skills in the medical and health care industry, such as observation, analysis, empathy and self-reflection". Of course, it's not just medical students who benefit. Research shows that reading literary novels can generally improve readers' empathy. Reading non-fiction will not have this function. The characters in literary novels are more complicated, and their behaviors are more easily driven by their hearts. Reading such novels can make readers more keenly aware of what others are thinking, which is one of the few ways to improve their interpersonal skills through single-person activities.
This kind of research provides new hope for students majoring in humanities. Although we know that the highest-paid university majors are almost all engineering majors, in the emerging professional fields, the ability to cultivate humanities is precisely the ability that is paid more and more attention to in the economy. This is not because understanding the humanities can help scientific and technological personnel create better, more convenient and more attractive technologies, although it should be from the perspective of empathy. This is one of Steve Jobs' favorite themes-his education at Reed College, a well-known college of arts and sciences in Portland, Oregon, directly influenced the extraordinary appearance, texture and experience of Apple products. So Jobs named his son Reid.
Compared with engineering or computer science, humanities can strengthen deep human skills.
Christian Metzberg, a consultant, believes that "we need more students majoring in humanities". Their reason is that when reading, such as david foster wallace's works, you can learn how to get out of your own world and feel and experience the world in your works. Wallace's complex, sensitive and critical world reveals the lives of young people in the 1990 s better than any market research chart. "
This is of direct benefit to the pursuit in real life. They believe that "a careful reader has the skills that consumers in China or Argentina need in real life, in order to deeply understand cars, soaps and computers, as well as the hard skills to understand others, their behaviors and the environment". The skills that employers urgently need-the skills of critical thinking, effective communication and solving complex problems-are "the highest level skills taught by humanities".