What I’m Reading: ‘Robot-Proof’

The machines are coming. The machines are coming.

What will students need to learn once artificial intelligence takes over routine (and some nonroutine) tasks? In his book Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 2017), Joseph E. Aoun reports that robotic algorithms already outperform human beings in picking the stocks that will finance our retirements. David L. Yermack, chairman of the finance department of New York University’s Stern School of Business, commented for an article on the Poets & Quants for Undergrads website that the combination of finance, computer science, and analytics known as fintech has “made our curriculum irrelevant in pretty short order.”

If many tasks done by humans today become automated, what will humans do? How can we, as teachers, prepare our students for a world in which artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous?

Aoun, who is president of Northeastern University, suggests we need to focus on tasks for which humans are uniquely suited — human literacies that will allow us to “robot-proof” ways of thinking and learning. These literacies include an understanding of the technological world (technological literacy) and facility with analyzing data (data literacy), as well as the ability to understand and connect with other human beings (human literacy). The machines may be coming, but human creativity, the ability to communicate within and across cultures, and critical and systems thinking skills will sustain our future.

If Aoun’s vision holds, artificial intelligence may inspire a renaissance for the humanities.

Stefanie Lenway is dean of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota.