It's not just in the US that the humanities and liberal arts are under threat! In China 12,000 degree programs have been shuttered in the last few years.
Degrees in arts and humanities are increasingly seen by administrators as “obsolete” and oversaturated, the South China Morning Post reported, while new degrees like ‘embodied intelligence’ are seen as better aligning with Beijing’s economic development goals.
I wondered what "embodied intelligence" (具身智能) might be. Something to do with the exciting phenomenological discoveries in psychology and philosophy known as "embodied cognition"? Sort of, perhaps, but not. "Embodied intelligence," the description of the new program at Beihang University in Beijing explained, is short for for "embodied artificial intelligence." The degree is interdisciplinary, but every part of it is STEM: "Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Control Science and Engineering, and Aerospace Science and Technology." Another name for the program: "intelligent robotics."
What place for the humanities there? I've read that "artificial intelligence" spooks folks in East Asia less than here because "intelligence" itself is understood in a broader, not-just-human way. The Chinese term for AI, 人工智能, literally means human-made intelligence, as though there are obviously other kinds. So different from our term which presupposes all intelligence is human, including our artifices.
Maybe the term "humanities" is obsolete - unless we coopt 人工智能 ;).b But don't we need something like the arts and sciences - including sciences religieuses! - to make sense of all this?
