Skills for the AI Era: Native-Language Fluency, Expression, and Thought Matter More Fundamentally Than Foreign-Language Ability

Command of your native language matters more. We all want to strengthen our children’s foreign-language abilities. Yesterday, I spoke with a startup CEO who had studied in the United States from a young age. He believes AI will provide a certain level of translation and effective communication in the future. But he thinks people must be very fluent in at least one language: able to think deeply, analyze, organize, synthesize, explore, exchange questions and answers with AI, express their ideas clearly, and communicate effectively with others—for example, through fluent writing and clear, logical expression. He also believes the future belongs to humanities graduates. Science and engineering have thoroughly overshadowed the humanities for the past thirty years. In the future, however, AI will perform basic logical operations and similar tasks better than humans. The AI era should bring us back to human nature and human value, which may instead highlight the strengths of the humanities: feeling, understanding, and imagining. The future calls for people who can connect emotionally with others, show empathy, use their imagination, and observe, understand, and empathize well… In the Industrial Revolution, humans used machines to free physical labor on a comprehensive scale. In the coming AI era, we will use AI to free mental labor on a comprehensive scale. Society’s underlying operating logic will need to be reconstructed and renewed. What needs to be valued and cultivated will also be completely different. The future may involve more exploration and inspiration concerning our humanity and spirituality. Anyone with children worries about the challenges they will face and the abilities they will need to navigate a rapidly changing future with confidence.