Emotional Intelligence Back in Fashion? -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2026/05/16/emotional-intelligence-back-in-fashion/

The jury is out

With apologies. I almost never read Maureen Dowd. But as a guy with degrees in philosophy and engineering, the headline grabbed me: "What A.I. Kant Do."

Dowd explores the notion that the spread of A.I. may be the death of STEM's dominance in education and the rediscovery that the humanities still have value:

Daniela Amodei, a founder of Anthropic, told ABC News that "the things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important." She said that at Anthropic, the company is looking to hire people who are "compassionate and curious" about other people.

Amodei, who majored in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that "studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever. A lot of these models are actually very good at STEM. But I think this idea that there are things that make us uniquely human -- understanding ourselves, understanding history, understanding what makes us tick -- I think that will always be really, really important."

With A.I. ascendant, computer science majors now worry about their futures. The advice Ben Braddock received in the 1960s was "plastics." A generation or two later it was STEM. Some of Dowd's friends still doubt liberal arts is mounting a comeback.

"Some people are beginning to realize you have to avoid sautéing your brain in A.I. slop if you want to keep it fit," Dowd writes. Among them, tech giants and billionaires who claim they see a need for "emotional intelligence and storytelling in a world dominated by A.I."

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