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What should I study in the age of AI? What should I major in? Does a degree still make sense?
The development of artificial intelligence changes how we look at which paths in life make sense. Which studies and which profession to choose.
The questions I weighed up when I chose what to study in 2015 are different from the ones people leaving secondary school weigh up today.
How I chose my field
When I was asking myself this question, in 2015, I considered that we live in a time in which fields of study appear and disappear quickly. And the fields that made sense to me were the ones time had tested, such as mathematics, physics and philosophy.
Which fields will exist but will need few people
Today is marked on top of that by progress in artificial intelligence. A person therefore has to consider which fields it makes no sense to study given the development of AI. Which fields will still exist, but where, thanks to AI, only a very small number of human specialists will be needed.
Already today we see far fewer job openings in some of the professions that are done on a computer. Companies are not making large redundancies, but they are no longer taking on new people.
Do you need a degree at all?
Today also raises the question of whether university study makes sense at all, of whether a person would not move forward faster on their own, without a university.
With these questions a person probably has to answer first what they want from studying at a university, whether it is job security, a higher salary, status, contacts, an extension of youth, knowledge, skills or habits. Or training for the mind, to keep it in good shape. Or you are simply driven by curiosity and you want to devote yourself fully to discovering new things. So first you have to answer the question of what you want, and only then can you answer the second question, whether university makes sense for you, and which university and which field.
To anyone whose aim is to secure employment through school, I recommend thinking about how they will be useful to society in the age of AI. It does not depend so much on whether they graduate from a university or not, but on whether they understand the world as it is today and can see where they can bring value to other people.
If your aim is something more than just job security, then I would start by looking at what this or that school, this or that field, can actually give me.
Which fields are the core and which are only derived from them
Even today I would choose, just as I did in 2015, according to which fields time has tested. They are at the same time fields that are not derived from anything else. The fact that we have such a number of technical fields today comes from their being derivations of physics and mathematics. The fact that we have so many fields in the humanities comes from their being a derivation of philosophy. These derived fields appear and disappear according to what society, industry and so on need. I was always interested in the fields that are the core of the derived ones, and that therefore do not disappear, such as physics, mathematics and philosophy.
Now the question is whether it makes sense to study these fields today as well, when AI can do research faster than any person.
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Summary
Common questions on this article's topic
What should I study in the age of AI?
Do you need a university degree at all?
Which professions are hiring fewer people today?
Is it worth studying a field where there will be few jobs?
How do I choose a university if contacts matter to me?
What stays with a person from university?
If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.
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