Why I’m betting on Art History in the Age of AI
In the age of AI, my personal bet this year will be to learn about art history. Why?
🧮 When we think about the rise of AI, it’s easy to assume that STEM careers—programmers, engineers, data scientists—are the most secure. But here’s a counterintuitive thought: as AI advances, much of the workload in STEM fields will be automated. AI is already taking on tasks like data analysis, report generation, and even writing code—anything that relies on recall, calculation, or prediction.
💡And that’s where the real opportunity emerges—one that places liberal arts, critical thinking, and cross-disciplinary creativity at the forefront. In a world where models can predict and calculate everything within known parameters, the true value will lie in what can’t be extrapolated. We’ll need people who can uncover outliers, challenge assumptions, and explore what’s outside of the model.
✨ This shift is already happening. Take the financial sector, for example. You might expect investment firms to solely prioritize mathematicians and economists, but they’re increasingly seeking out liberal arts graduates as well. Tim Skeet, managing director at RBS Capital Markets, explains:
“We need an input from people who have left-field, blue-sky creative thinking, who can bring the ability to ask the tough questions.”
🤖 This trend extends beyond finance. In China, DeepSeek, an AI firm, takes a cross-disciplinary approach by hiring poets and humanities majors to train their models. These individuals bring deep cultural and creative insights, helping AI generate classical Chinese poetry and tackle complex questions from the nation’s notoriously challenging college entrance exam. Unlike many of its competitors who focus on programmers, DeepSeek understands the need for diversity of thought.
🖼️ So again, why learn about art history? Because while AI excels at predicting outcomes based on past data, the real winners will be those who can use AI as a tool to push thinking forward, beyond what models can predict, into places no one has yet explored.
⚡️ I hope that by studying how art has change (and changed us), I can develop a richer framework for breaking conventions and sparking new ways of thinking—something I believe AI cannot deliver alone.