I was a theater major. My classes included opera, Native American studies, Buddhism, set design, and a mix of subjects that had no obvious connection to each other. That’s a liberal arts education. Learning a little about a lot. It’s been seen as scattered. Not serious. There has been no clear path, no direct application, no sense that this was building toward something useful. But what it did build, was range.
For the last two decades, we built an economy around specialization. Go deep. Learn to code. Build technical expertise. And my goodness the STEM campaigns! Everything was technical and about building systems.
Well now those same systems are starting to do the work for us.
Research from Anthropic shows that AI can already perform a meaningful share of tasks across white-collar roles, including programming, market research, and finance. Take it with a grain of salt given the source. Adoption may be uneven at the moment but directionally, it is undeniable.
The shift is happening at the task level. And the STEM tasks that defined expertise for years are getting automated first.
What is left for us to do?
The answer is showing up across industries. Work is starting to split into three parts. Defining the problem. Executing the work. Evaluating the result. The middle layer is getting compressed. The first and last are becoming more valuable. Can you meaningfully define the problem by synthesizing the holistic picture across a range of stakeholders and outcomes? And then two, can you evaluate the result, the cause-effect, and the impact?
This is where a liberal arts education is useful. It is designed to educate across disciplines. I believe what will be more valuable in the future is context. You can have deep technical skill and still miss the problem entirely. You can build something that works and still fail because it was never the right thing to build.
So maybe, for the first time, a liberal arts education is the way to go! Exposure to different disciplines, learning how to synthesize, interpret, and connect ideas that do not obviously belong together. That did not map cleanly to a job description when I entered the workforce 20 years ago, but it maps directly to the world we are entering today.
When answers are cheap, the advantage moves to the person who knows what to ask, what matters, and what to do with the result.
You can already see the shift. AI can generate code, but it cannot decide if the code solves the right problem. It can analyze data, but it does not determine which question is worth asking. It can produce outputs at scale, but it still requires judgment to evaluate quality and relevance.
The more capable the technology becomes, the more that layer matters.
This does not make technical expertise less important. It makes it incomplete on its own. And it’s not to say that people with technical expertise can’t understand context. But workers of the future who can connect disciplines, translate ideas, and apply technology in ways that actually drive results will last longer in my estimation.
Which is why the skills we used to dismiss are starting to look a lot more relevant. Scene.
Elsewhere in Culture
This week on the CEO Daily Brief we talked about:
Today’s newsletter is thanks to the brilliant mind of John Frehse who brought this idea to me earlier this week. Check out our episode on why a Liberal Arts Education Wasn’t a Mistake. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000759510043 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m4jXBTRV9F4QeNYIM95v5?si=4a9470bda9f840c5
HR and Real Human Connection – We revisited the idea that HR is dying, and why this time it might actually be true. As more administrative work gets automated, the role of HR as a function becomes less clear. At the same time, the need for real human leadership is increasing. The companies that get this right won’t eliminate the people side of the business. They will stop outsourcing it to one department. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000760007638 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ZaKOxt7npoch7vuwHOwfF?si=75fe271caf074c3b
AI and CEO Turnover – There’s a growing trend of CEOs stepping down with AI cited as part of the reason. Whether that’s the real story or just the headline, it points to something bigger. Leadership is shifting. The pressure on leaders is only going up from here. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000760223744 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7eCCtjvZsHPnCGq05CaUN2?si=2c5f64be404c4078
And coming later this week:
UKG and the Cost of Lost Opportunities – We talked about a pattern that shows up in every industry. Companies invest heavily in technology and then fail to get the return. The gap between strategy and adoption is where most of the value gets lost. The companies that close that gap are the ones that actually see results.
Listen to CEO Daily Brief with Dr. Jessica Kriegel wherever you get your podcasts.