Emily Todd is the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Eastern Connecticut State University. In this op-ed for the Hartford Courant, she explains why the humanities are a critical part of education in the age of AI.
With the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, it is almost impossible to keep up with the latest developments and changes that AI is bringing to industries and to people’s daily lives. From the power of ChatGPT to produce seemingly polished text to DALL-E’s ability to generate striking images in seconds, the progress of AI has been a marvel, if also unsettling.
In my role as dean of arts and sciences at Eastern Connecticut State University (the state’s public liberal arts university), many of my conversations with colleagues swing between excitement about what AI makes possible and fear about what threats it may pose. We keep asking: what does AI mean for the liberal arts? What value do the humanities, arts, and social sciences bring when the future seems dominated by data and algorithms?
My professional life has been devoted to advocating for the liberal arts in higher education, especially at public institutions. Both in my former roles as an English professor and department chair and now as a dean at a liberal arts university, I have embraced the value of the liberal arts and have told my students that “we don’t know what the future will bring, but we do know that we will need people who can communicate well and be critical, ethical, creative thinkers.”
In other words, we need the liberal arts.
I have come to believe that we need the liberal arts in the same way as we always have: to prepare informed citizens to take responsibility for themselves and others in a free society. Now, however, that society is one where AI is prevalent, presenting a new set of challenges that require liberal arts skills perhaps more than ever.
It will be important for students to learn to harness the power of AI. In order to do so, they’ll need to evaluate different AI tools, assess the content and responses AI generates, and recognize biases baked into the algorithms and source information from which AI pulls.
