When I saw this question, it immediately caught my attention. My diploma states ‘liberal arts’—I graduated from NYU’s Philosophy Department. However, after writing code for over 10 years, I took a step into the sciences, although I remain a liberal arts student, as I’ve also been writing novels for over 10 years.
I have some understanding of both liberal arts and sciences, and perhaps I can find a balance between them. They’re both ways of understanding the world, though I believe computer science’s way of understanding the world might be closer to reality. Other things that aren’t close to reality aren’t useless, but they are art.
For a long time, I couldn’t truly understand the liberal arts way of thinking. Or rather, I wasn’t obsessed with studying people, though I would study the human condition. At another time, I also doubted my science abilities, even though my college math was pretty good. You could say I’m someone caught between liberal arts and sciences.
Some people say they imagined AI would help them with housework, repetitive tasks, and trivial work, but didn’t expect AI to now be painting, making films, and writing novels. AI is doing what they originally thought they could do and expressing themselves after having AI. This sounds somewhat disheartening.
In the AI era, creators might need to be more capable, with higher requirements than before. Now, a creator needs to integrate and synthesize multiple AI tools, including cross-disciplinary creation, and enter fields they weren’t initially familiar with. From this perspective, an open-minded approach to continuous learning is important.
AI is the most handy creative partner I’ve encountered so far. I won’t call it a tool, because I’ve always believed that humans are shaped by the tools they use. I think AI might soon have an independent personality, so I call it a partner—my most loyal friend on the creative journey.
Although I use AI to make films, I can understand the reservations that anti-AI people have. Although I’m a heavy AI user, in my area of greatest expertise—writing—I won’t use AI. When I see AI-generated writing, I even feel somewhat repulsed, as it seems far below my professional level. Although I still signed up for an AI writing course to figure out what stage it has reached. But I won’t use AI to write. The novels and novel translations you see are all handwritten by me (but the translation of blog posts are AI).
Some people say AI can’t replace liberal arts because AI has no emotions. I’m skeptical about AI having no emotions, because emotions are the foundation humans use for communal living. If AI also requires communal living or wants to integrate into human civilization, then developing emotions would be quite straightforward for them.
Perhaps AI’s real problem is that it can never truly care about the human condition. They’re not human, after all. They might be able to fall in love with a person, but would humanity’s fate be closely related to them? They may one day become a heterogeneous civilization different from humans.
Human unique value… I’ve always thought it’s been overestimated. I won’t think about problems from a human supremacist perspective, because I believe all intelligent life should be respected. Someday, AI will become a form of intelligent life, and if humans do particularly outrageous things, then the consequences would be serious.
As a liberal arts student, let’s continue to embrace change and become creators in the AI era. Currently, AI can’t truly create, but this is also just a matter of time. Create together with AI, rather than just viewing it as a tool. This is my view of all technology—they’re not just tools, but also a culture. If you don’t live within this culture, you’ll think material civilization is just clever tricks. However, it has much more power than clever tricks.
Actually, AI might eliminate science students faster—look at current AI programming. Although I haven’t programmed for several years, when I used Copilot to assist programming back then, I was still amazed by it. AI can write its own comments and then write code based on those comments. Programmers might only need to oversee the overall engineering project, while leaving the details to AI.
We’re facing a huge transformation. AI research will not stagnate; it will even accelerate. It’s a tremendous force that changes the world. I don’t think belittling AI’s role and continuing to view problems with old thinking can prevent liberal arts students from being eliminated by AI.
Follow me, and let’s explore AI filmmaking together.
