In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.
“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”
Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)
The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.
On one hand, there’s a lot of people whose jobs can actually be replaced by AI. A lot of office work is just middle managers justifying their existence with headcount that just move paper around desks. There’s a lot of humanities graduates - and science, and engineering, and whatever - that are in bullshit jobs. If I could earn a good living doing trades, I’d switch careers. Too old, and too embedded, and I’m not an entrepreneur. And I work in an engineering/tech space that actually accomplishes stuff.
But AI replacing philosophy, absolutely the hell not. I can’t think of an academic position that can truly be replaced by AI.