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ANN ARBOR, Michigan: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many things about the world and our lives in it.
As more locations reopen after the closings, preparing for the post-pandemic future has taken on a new urgency, especially for those concerned about the prospects for education and employment in a reshaped global economy that may take years to recover from the recession. deep in almost a century.
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It may seem obvious that Singaporeans should augment our longstanding focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), given the origins and solutions of the pandemic in these fields.
However, it is the participation of humanities academics that is credited with allowing the German government to reopen its economy.
Philosophers, historians, theologians, jurists, and pedagogical experts outnumbered scientists and medical specialists in an advisory group convened to decide on the reopening of issues related to ethics, law, human and social behavior, political power, and role government in balancing health needs. environment and economy.
This has not happened in the United States, which has not had notable success in fighting the pandemic.
However, here the arts and humanities are becoming increasingly important for technological advancement, business, technology employment and STEM education.
As Microsoft President Brad Smith and Executive Vice President of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Research Harry Shum wrote in 2018: “Enabling yourself for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. “
“Language, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology, and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical, and ethics-based skills that will be central to the development and management of AI solutions.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 6, 2019. (Photo: REUTERS / Pedro Nunes)
HUMANS AT THE HEART OF A WORLD OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
COVID-19 will accelerate trends towards digitization, automation and AI. We already know that in the future workspace, humans and machines will work together as a team, collaborating intelligently to enhance each other’s complementary strengths.
Humans are good at solving problems that require adaptability, creativity, and social skills. Machines can analyze large amounts of data at a high speed impossible for humans, and can beat humans on well-defined questions, for example, allowing for much faster analysis of the COVID-19 virus and the development of treatments for it.
For the human-machine association to work optimally, we must understand how the two agents can be augmented more effectively and how to redesign the interaction process to support this.
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Take automated vehicles, which have tremendous economic and safety benefits. According to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), vehicle automation varies from level 0 (no automation) to level 5 (full automation).
Almost all automated vehicles on the road are at Level 2 (Partial Automation), where the vehicle can control direction, accelerate and decelerate, but the human driver is responsible for monitoring the environment and retaking control of the automated vehicle if it reaches its performance limit.
At tier 3 (conditional automation), the vehicle will have “environmental detection” capabilities, but will still require human override in corner cases. At level 4 (high automation), the vehicle can perform all driving functions under certain conditions and in certain areas.
For other conditions and areas, humans still need to drive, which depends on the design of new human-machine interfaces.
Can we expect a human driver who has been watching movies or texting friends in a Tier 3 automated vehicle to quickly turn attention to the driving task, understand what’s going on in the environment, and perform a proper maneuver, all in seconds?
How do we design better interfaces to help the human driver negotiate acquisition transitions? To answer these questions, we need to better understand humans, their cognitive, physical, and emotional capacities, for which the arts and humanities are necessary.
ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
According to Northwestern University professors Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, economic models fail when they lack human understanding, specifically culture, history, and ethical considerations.
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly before the closing bell as the market sinks significantly in New York, USA. USA, February 25, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS / Lucas Jackson)
They recommend studying literature, as novels help develop empathy by requiring readers to see the world as the characters in their stories do.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller also argues that the popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior are what drive markets.
For example, fear of “technological unemployment,” a narrative that robots were taking people’s jobs, created panic that exacerbated the stock market crash during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
On the personal career front, top executives interviewed by the World Economic Forum in 2016 identified ten essential skills for business success: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordination with others, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision making, service orientation. , negotiation skills and cognitive flexibility.
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Academic commentator Richard Greenwald concluded that these skills are rooted in liberal arts education, explaining that so many Fortune 500 CEOs and tech startups have liberal arts degrees because “only the liberal arts provide the foundation for leadership, lifelong learning and a meaningful life. ”
The late Steve Jobs said at a 2011 Apple product launch: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough: it is technology married to the liberal arts, married to the humanities, which gives us the results that make our hearts sing. “
Along the same lines, a 2018 Linked-In survey found that 57 percent of leaders said soft skills like leadership, communication, and collaboration were more important than hard skills.
A 2015 British Council study in 30 countries found that 55 percent of the 1,700 corporate, nonprofit, and government leaders surveyed had a bachelor’s degree in social sciences or humanities, more common among younger leaders (under 45). ).
FILE PHOTO: A technician works in a BGI Genetic Testing Laboratory, formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, December 26, 2018. REUTERS / Stringer
Other US Labor Market Surveys USA They show that the employment of liberal arts graduates in STEM fields in the US USA It has grown much faster than that of computer science and engineering graduates; and that liberal arts graduates represent a larger percentage of today’s technology workforce than technical graduates.
This is because STEM companies need employees who can understand and communicate with various users and partners, and who contribute to the creative and ethical processes of technology development for the market.
Most jobs in STEM fields are non-STEM, from sales and marketing, to people and product management services, training, and support. Among humanities graduates, the largest group moves to managerial positions (15 percent), followed by administrative and office positions (14 percent), sales (13 percent), education (12 percent), business, and finance (10 percent penny).
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Rapid technological change and increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity mean that most people will change jobs, perhaps frequently, during their careers. Liberal arts education helps provide broad disciplinary preparation, flexibility and adaptability, critical and imaginative thinking, which will facilitate the constant renewal required.
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR SINGAPORE
Singapore ranks second after the US USA In the 2019 digital competitiveness world ranking of the Swiss business school IMD.
However, without developing greater competencies in the arts and humanities, we risk losing as higher levels and increasing portions of global technology value chains are increasingly explained by derived activities and skills. of them, and “hard” skills become obsolete or more easily automated. .
A 2019 Brookings Institution study predicts that computer programmers, financial advisers, and certain types of software engineers and developers are among those whose jobs are most likely to be displaced by AI. More of the jobs that remain will require longer-lasting “soft” skills, which a commitment to the arts and humanities can develop.
(Photo: Unsplash / Lonely Planet)
But the arts and humanities are also desirable for their own good, as expressions of our humanity and as a valuable consumer good.
The COVID-19 lockdown experience saw an explosion of online art activity, with choirs, orchestras, bands, dance concerts, game readings, art lessons, and the like spontaneously self-organizing, even across national borders.
The “streaming wars” between “tough” tech companies like Amazon and Apple as they venture into the entertainment space, chasing down an “old-line” company like Disney, illustrate the growing importance of art content in the tech world. and technology in The World of Arts, something that is already familiar to millions of video gamers around the world.
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The arts and humanities are also necessary to understand consumer behavior, since the consumer is a human being who evolves in particular historical, sociological, psychological and cultural contexts that they study and express.
It is impossible to serve it without understanding these contexts, for example through “design thinking,” increasingly seen as a core business capacity.
Machine learning and data analysis can generate patterns of consumer behavior, but interpreting them is based on insights from the arts and humanities. Therefore, employers’ demand for such graduates has increased as advances in data analysis and artificial intelligence advance.
For Singapore, the unique value we can offer the global world of global technology is our understanding of the people and societies in our own regional neighborhood. For this, we will need to expand our competencies beyond STEM and the Western world of digitization to include the humanities and the visual, performing, and literary arts of our Southeast Asian neighbors.
In education, the arts and humanities provide a means to engage students with STEM disciplines and with business. There are STEAM (A for Arts) programs at many American K-12 schools and in Singapore.
(Photo: Unsplash / Dan Dimmock)
The Shakespeare-in-Detroit professional theater company collaborates with educators from the Detroit Public Schools to teach “the Science of lighting production, the technology of sound design, the Engineering or construction of a form or costume, the Art of the classical interpretation and mathematics of building a set … along with the development of social skills such as communication and confidence “and the increase in literary skills.
Oxford University Said Business School uses the performing arts to teach business leadership in its MBA program.
The 2018 report from the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. USA On The integration of the humanities and the arts with the sciences, engineering and medicine in higher education concluded that the integration of the arts and the humanities with STEMM education (the second M representing medicine) is very important associated with better oral and written communication skills, teamwork skills, ethical decision-making, critical thinking and deeper learning, solid content mastery, general commitment and enjoyment of learning, empathy and resistance, ability to apply knowledge in learning environments. real world and scientific literacy.
All of these have broader labor markets, job performance, and economic benefits.
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An example is the University of Michigan Integrated Product Development course, taught jointly by an art and design professor and a business professor, where engineering, design, and business students explore creative, technological questions together and commercial related to the development of new products from ideation and prototyping for production and marketing.
Finally, arts professionals are often on the borderline of digging up and examining social issues.
The COVID-19 crisis among foreign workers reminds us of the proactive role of the Singaporean art community in highlighting and creating empathy for its dilemma in our environment, through numerous plays, poetry, stories, photography exhibitions, and films. who have won exhibitions and awards at international events. festivals, such as Ilo Ilo (Cannes, 2013), I Dream of Singapore (Berlinale, 2016) and A Land Imagined (Locarno, 2018). Paying attention to their efforts could have advanced our current crisis.
To advance technology, which requires human participation, we must also advance the arts and humanities. The transition to a post-COVID-19 world that is more technology dependent and more aware of both the shortcomings and the potential of human society in crisis is a good time to do so.
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Linda Lim, Gunalan Nadarajan and Jessie Yang are professors from Singapore at the University of Michigan. This is a shortened version of a comment first published on Academia.SG.
