In 2025, chatbots can ace the LSAT, draft business emails and even mimic the voice of Virginia Woolf. So what’s left for us?

A lot — if we care about thinking.

Last year, as a sophomore at Brown University, I declared English as my major. Since then, I’ve been repeatedly asked why I would spend four years studying how to write when artificial intelligence can do so in seconds. However, this question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of humanities education.

Far from obsolete, liberal arts are indispensable in the era of ChatGPT, as they cultivate the very skills that machines can’t replicate: critical thinking, creativity and social competency.

We are witnessing a paradox where AI makes writing easier than ever, yet America’s literacy rates are in crisis. In 2024, 33% of eighth-graders failed to meet the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ basic reading benchmark — the worst performance in testing history. These students cannot identify the main idea of a text or determine the meanings of key words using explicit context. Meanwhile, any of these students with Wi-Fi connection can write a college-level essay in minutes.

The challenge isn’t technological — it’s intellectual. Large language models can analyze patterns and imitate writing styles with remarkable accuracy, but they cannot grasp emotional depth or contemplate ethical questions.

English, by contrast, teaches students to interpret complexity, navigate cultural nuance and wrestle with ambiguity. A chatbot might summarize “Paradise Lost,” but it cannot feel its tragic beauty or reckon with the theological weight of the fall.

Beyond academically enriching, these human capacities are professionally valuable. A Harvard University study attributed 85% of career success to “soft skills” like communication and emotional intelligence and only 15% to technical knowledge. Google’s Project Aristotle similarly found that the highest-performing teams weren’t the ones with the most engineers, but those with the most empathy. In an article published on Fortune.com, IBM’s Chief of AI predicted that as AI democratizes technical skills, demand will surge for right-brained thinkers who can communicate, connect dots and question assumptions.

In the book “Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit,” Henry Kissinger envisions an AI-saturated future where universities reclaim their historical purpose, not as credential factories, but as institutions dedicated to nurturing “learned individuals capable of diverse callings.” Humanities education, “once reserved for the privileged few,” may become central again precisely because AI can replace quantitative subjects.

Until then, our capacity for independent thinking is at stake. Increasingly, we are outsourcing thinking to machines we barely understand. The “black box problem” in AI reveals a troubling disconnect between what algorithms produce and how they arrive at those results — akin to using a GPS without ever learning the route. A 2024 study in the journal “Smart Learning Environments” found that this dependency on AI outputs without understanding the backend reasoning fosters dangerous binary thinking: Either the machine does the work, or we do.

The mental muscles that atrophy by deferring brain power to computers are the cognitive abilities we need most. The cost isn’t just convenience — it’s our capacity to think critically and act wisely in a world that rarely offers clear answers.

From climate change to misinformation and ethical governance, the world’s most urgent problems don’t have automatic answers. They demand nuance, imagination and people who can not only process information but also make sense of it.

To preserve intellectual autonomy in growing children, schools must build truly interdisciplinary curriculums that combine technological literacy with intensive communication practice. Students should learn to use AI tools effectively while developing the critical faculties to evaluate and improve their output, becoming digital bilinguals. The question isn’t whether to embrace or reject artificial intelligence, that decision has already been made. The challenge is preserving human thought and social intelligence in an increasingly artificial world.

Moreover, industry leaders should reimagine hiring practices to prioritize creative problem-solving and evidence-based reasoning alongside technical skills. Personally, we must each commit to practicing human-centered communication — reading deeply, writing thoughtfully and engaging with ideas that challenge us.

Losing the ability to interpret means losing the ability to decide what matters. If no one knows how to tell a story, who decides which ones are worth telling?

We don’t just need more engineers. We need readers, writers and thinkers — people who can ask not only how, but why.

Hannah Sellers is a nonfiction writer and senior at Brown University studying English and entrepreneurship. She grew up in Marin County and is a graduate of Redwood High School.