What AI Can’t Do

The pervasiveness of generative AI sparks as much anxiety on college campuses as it has everywhere else. That’s particularly true for faculty: 90 percent of professors say the use of AI will weaken students’ critical thinking skills, according to one recent survey. Even administrators’ more positive take has diminished, with the share who say AI does “more good than harm” for student learning dropping from 55 percent to 45 percent in the past year. 

No wonder so many other Americans are worried, too, from students, families, and policymakers to anyone who cares about our civic and economic future. When AI is everywhere, what knowledge, skills, and habits will students need to get ahead?  How can graduates be thoughtful, effective, purposeful users of this technology, benefitting from its value rather than becoming its casualties? 

These questions are especially pressing for the liberal arts. A broad education in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, logic, and mathematics fosters abilities that include critical thinking, analytical reasoning, cultural and historical awareness, and communication. With origins in classical Greece and Rome, this rich mixture of subjects and skills was known as the artes liberales—the faculties a free person needs to participate in public life.  

Today’s students might think AI has made the liberal arts irrelevant. Yet this centuries-old educational tradition is precisely what they will need to thrive, personally and professionally, in the age of AI. Only the ability to think critically about fundamental questions, evaluate evidence, analyze complex issues, and form reasoned arguments will equip students to unlock the potential of emerging technologies. 

The growth of coding boot camps in the 2010s—together with a panoply of digital badges and online certificates—convinced would-be education revolutionaries, in Silicon Valley and beyond, that traditional college degrees would soon be obsolete. In a booming tech economy, coding seemed like a fast, targeted, and affordable path to career success. 

But this storyline was too simple. The advent of AI tools quickly showed that coding is among the first skills that smart machines can replace. Employment of computer programmers fell from about 457,000 in 2022 to around 334,000 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Surveys—a drop of roughly 27 percent. It’s not the first time automation has destroyed entire categories of jobs. To survive such changes, workers need adaptability and resilience; the lesson isn’t that coding doesn’t matter–it’s that narrow skills can leave you vulnerable. 

College majors in the humanities have plummeted in recent decades. Conversely, STEM disciplines have attracted record numbers of undergraduates, and business remains the most popular major. Nevertheless, surveys show that many employers hire candidates with the general skills often associated with liberal arts graduates, including judgment and adaptability, as well as strategic planning and clear communication. 

These so-called durable skills—the kind needed to gather information, synthesize it, and communicate it—are particularly valuable for anyone who wants to use AI effectively. True, AI’s remarkable capacity is mesmerizing, from passing the bar exam and analyzing medical records to writing music or literary analysis. This may resemble creativity and reasoning. But the human advantage, which liberal arts education still cultivates, remains the ability to scrutinize those outputs: to assess their originality, the rigor of their analysis, and their quality. 

One tech executive, trained as a classicist, notes his start-up employs computer programmers who studied philosophy and music composition as undergraduates. Jonathan McBride, managing director of the global investment firm BlackRock, told an audience of college presidents that his best employees are those who can operate outside of their silos and speak to many different people. “That sounds roughly like a liberal arts education,” he said. 

Nearly 90 percent of employers who responded to the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2025 survey said they seek evidence of job candidates’ problem-solving abilities, while around eight in 10 value strong teamwork and written communication skills. However, NACE surveys also show a large gap between employers’ valuation of abilities like critical thinking and their assessment of students’ proficiency in those areas. There’s clearly room for much more general education in the liberal arts mode. 

In practice, liberal arts classrooms take many forms, from Great Books programs to required writing and quantitative reasoning classes at the large, public institutions attended by most Americans. Too often, unfortunately, undergraduates at rural and regional colleges have less access to seminar-style, humanities-rich classes. But even in community colleges where students pursue safe careers and economic mobility, there’s demand for liberal arts courses. At Austin Community College in Texas, the Great Questions Journey focuses on discussion-based analysis of transformational texts. 

As AI reshapes jobs, the liberal arts may be necessary but not sufficient. Workforce analyst Brent Orrell, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, believes that AI is “hollowing out” precisely those entry-level analytical tasks that have, he notes, “traditionally served as training grounds for professional judgment.” Students may increasingly need to find ways to mix broad reasoning abilities with in-demand targeted skills and hands-on experience to navigate an AI-amplified career. 

For now, some universities are explicitly linking the liberal arts to important career skills—including helping students create useful AI prompts or vet the accuracy and rigor of AI assistants’ work. Back in 2018, the University of Arizona created a bachelor’s degree in applied humanities, connecting the humanities to fields including business, engineering, and medicine. After its introduction, the number of undergraduate humanities majors at the university spiked by 76 percent.  

The liberal arts need not be a hard sell. Many young people are drawn to the big questions they ask. Colleges need not force undergraduates to choose between career preparation and the life of the mind. They can give students the grounding to get the best results from AI by interrogating it rather than leaning on it. 

We don’t know exactly how AI will proliferate and how humans will respond. But giving students the tools to use AI thoughtfully and assess its outputs critically will reduce their anxiety and empower them to make the most of whatever the future brings. 

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