Daily Times

Sir, I want to catch the attention of our policy makers towards the paramount importance of social sciences and arts. In our academic institutions, the subjects related to social science or arts have had to take the back seat in comparison to other subjects of pure science. The sole reason is the belief that there will be fewer chances for getting jobs and a handsome pay for those people who choose to pursue a degree in the social sciences or arts.

Pakistan is going to launch 5G networks next year. It will bring a revolution to the life of human beings. Everything in our daily lives will be affected gradually and then eventually human beings will be replaced with machines.

Jack Ma, a Chinese business tycoon and CEO of AliBaba, once said in his address to the public on the platform of the World Economic Forum that a human being can never beat a computer in resolving any mathematical problem, and that it can never do work tirelessly and accurately like a robot can. He went on to say that in the years to come, all sort of work in markets will be accomplished through robotic machines alone.

Yuval Noah Harari, a venerable historian, had expounded the life in the age of machines in his bestselling book — Homo Dues. In his recent interview to Al-Jazeera, he highlighted three big challenges facing humankind in the 21st century: climate change, nuclear war and technological disruption. According to him, we can prevent nuclear war and climate change from happening but technological disruption is bound to happen. The rise of technology, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence and bio engineering will change the world more than anything else.

The question that rises in this situation is how will human beings survive in the age of machines? The answer is simple that human beings will have to do something different to those robotic machines.

Machines have no emotions, and they can’t think or analyse anything, or have any artistic expressions. A human being has all these qualities and it can imbue its offspring with these qualities as well, by promoting the arts, music, literature, painting and other such subjects, along with the subjects that focus on the social sciences. These can be implemented in academic institutions and can someday lead to good jobs and better life.

So it is a humble solicitation to the policy makers and concerned bodies like HEC that they should pay some special attention to promoting social sciences and arts.

ALI HASSAN

Mandi Bhauddin

Published in Daily Times, September 16^th 2018.