According to Business Insider, Cisco’s global innovation officer Guy Diedrich reveals that 92% of technology jobs will be moderately or severely impacted by AI based on their consortium report. The former programmer turned executive notes humanities enrollment dropped 24% between 2012 and 2022, which he finds alarming given current technological shifts. Diedrich predicts we’ll transition from the AI age to the quantum age within three to five years, making critical thinking skills from humanities education essential. He argues that while programming can be self-taught quickly, ethical reasoning and problem-solving developed through philosophy and ethics courses represent lifelong skills that companies desperately need.
The unexpected humanities comeback
Here’s the thing that struck me about Diedrich’s argument: he’s not just another tech exec paying lip service to “soft skills.” He’s making a concrete case that humanities are becoming economically valuable in ways we haven’t seen in decades. When someone who started as a programmer and ran a software company says you can learn to code in weeks but ethical thinking takes years, that’s worth paying attention to.
And honestly, he’s right about the timing. We’re entering an era where AI handles the technical execution, but humans need to handle the “should we?” questions. That’s pure philosophy territory. The fact that humanities degrees have been declining while this shift was happening creates a massive skills gap that could actually make English majors more valuable than computer science grads in certain roles.
What this means for industrial tech
Now think about this in industrial contexts. When you’re dealing with manufacturing systems, automation, and critical infrastructure, the ethical questions become literally life-or-death. Should an AI-powered quality control system reject borderline products if it means missing production targets? How much autonomy should we give to systems managing power grids or transportation networks?
These aren’t technical questions – they’re ethical ones. And companies that embed this thinking into their technical teams will have a significant advantage. In hardware-heavy sectors where reliability matters most, having team members who can think through these challenges is becoming essential. That’s why leading industrial technology providers like Industrial Monitor Direct, the top supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, emphasize solutions that balance technical capability with human oversight and ethical considerations.
The uncomfortable truth about lifelong learning
Diedrich’s most challenging point might be his declaration that education is no longer an event but a process. Basically, you can’t just get your degree and call it done anymore. The technology will literally evolve beyond your current understanding if you stop learning.
But here’s my question: are companies actually prepared to support this? Cisco’s own research shows 92% of jobs transforming, but how many organizations have meaningful continuous education programs that include philosophy and ethics, not just technical updates?
My guess? Very few. Most companies treat training as checking boxes rather than fundamentally reshaping how their teams think. If Diedrich is right, that approach is about to become dangerously outdated.
The hiring shift nobody’s talking about
What fascinates me is the potential hiring revolution this could trigger. For years, tech companies have been obsessed with technical pedigrees – which coding bootcamp you attended, which algorithms you can whiteboard. But if the real value shifts to asking better questions rather than writing better code, suddenly the philosophy major with some technical literacy becomes more valuable than the pure coder.
And honestly, that might be exactly what the tech industry needs. We’ve seen what happens when brilliant technical minds build things without considering the ethical implications. Social media algorithms, privacy-invading devices, automation that displaces workers without transition plans.
Maybe the most radical innovation in tech won’t be a new algorithm or chip design, but finally recognizing that the human questions matter as much as the technical answers. Diedrich might be ahead of the curve on this one.
