By ABC Religion & Ethics
Publication Date: 2026-05-13 02:59:00
The humanities are in a disastrous state. Students wonder why they should pay money for knowledge that Big AI is now offering as a free sample. You can ask the free version of Claude for the interpretation of Hamlet’s monologue and query it indefinitely for clarification. At some point, an increasingly geriatric liberal arts academy will take its time. Librarians can then easily cancel subscriptions to all of our overpriced magazines.
But could it be that this crisis in the humanities is a much-needed cause?
Bad news for a fundamentally extractive academic business model cannot mean the end of the humanities. We need the humanities to solve the mysteries of human flourishing in the age of AI. We cannot predict the details of the future academy. But better future prospects could not only come from the humanities for all people except out of all people.
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