A Philosophy PhD Who Built an AI Empire Just Declared His Own Degree Worthless—But the Data Tells a More Complex Story

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At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Alex Karp—billionaire CEO of Palantir Technologies—made a startling prediction that sent shockwaves through the education world. The irony? A man with a philosophy degree from Haverford College, a law degree from Stanford, and a PhD in neoclassical social theory from a top German university just declared that humanities education is doomed in the age of AI.

“It will destroy humanities jobs,” Karp told BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. “You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy—hopefully you have some other skill, that one is going to be hard to market.”

His prescription? Vocational training. Battery factory workers. Technicians. People who can be “rapidly” retrained for whatever industry needs them next.

But here’s where it gets interesting: The employment data and corporate hiring trends suggest Karp might be spectacularly wrong about the very degree that made him successful.

The Case FOR Karp’s Prediction: Vocational Skills Are Rising

Let’s start by acknowledging where Karp has solid ground beneath his argument.

The Numbers Don’t Lie About Entry-Level White Collar Jobs

The statistics on entry-level professional positions are genuinely concerning for humanities graduates:

• Entry-level hiring at the 15 biggest tech firms fell 25% from 2023 to 2024
• Computer programmer employment in the United States dropped a dramatic 27.5% between 2023 and 2025
• 30% of U.S. workers fear their job will be replaced by AI or similar technology by 2025
• By 2030, roughly 30% of current U.S. jobs could be fully automated

The World Economic Forum projects that machines and algorithms could take on more work tasks than humans by 2025, with 85 million jobs potentially eliminated by AI and automation.

Even Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei confirmed during their joint Davos panel that entry-level hiring at their companies was already declining due to AI, with software and coding roles down at both junior and mid-levels.

Vocational Trades Show Real Resilience

Karp’s emphasis on vocational skills isn’t just corporate propaganda. The data backs up significant protection for hands-on trades:

• Construction and skilled trades are among the least threatened by AI automation
• Over 663,000 openings are projected yearly in construction and extraction fields through 2033
• Healthcare vocational roles (medical assistants, dental hygienists, nursing aides) are projected to grow as AI augments rather than replaces these jobs
• Nurse practitioners are projected to grow by 52% from 2023 to 2033
• Personal services jobs (food service, medical assistants, cleaners) are expected to add over 500,000 positions by 2033

Skills requiring physical dexterity, on-site problem-solving, and human interaction in unpredictable environments remain stubbornly resistant to automation. You can’t automate fixing a burst pipe in a 100-year-old building or reading a patient’s non-verbal cues during a medical exam.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found strong growth at community colleges and among trade programs, suggesting students are already voting with their feet toward vocational paths.

China’s Data Supports Karp’s Concerns

The situation for humanities graduates looks particularly grim in China’s competitive market:

• Among the top 20 highest-earning majors for 2023 graduates in China, no liberal arts majors made the list
• China’s National Natural Science Foundation enjoyed a budget of RMB 36.3 billion in 2024, while funding for the National Social Science Foundation was only around one-thirtieth of that amount
• Universities are cutting humanities programs: Harvard cancelled more than 30 liberal arts courses in 2024, while Chinese institutions like Northwest University and Sichuan University withdrew several liberal arts majors

When money talks, it’s saying “go technical.”

The Case AGAINST Karp: Liberal Arts Are the New Premium

But here’s where Karp’s thesis falls apart—spectacularly. While he was busy declaring his own educational background obsolete, the world’s leading companies were quietly doing the exact opposite.

Tech Giants Are Hiring Humanities Grads for AI Oversight

The evidence that contradicts Karp is both recent and compelling:

McKinsey just reversed course entirely. The consulting firm’s CEO Bob Sternfels revealed they’re now “looking more at liberal arts majors, whom we had deprioritized” as potential sources of creativity. Why? Because AI models have become expert at problem-solving, but McKinsey needs people who can think beyond “logical next steps.”

BlackRock’s own COO contradicts Karp. Robert Goldstein told Fortune in 2024 that his company was actively recruiting graduates who studied “things that have nothing to do with finance or technology.”

Major tech companies are building humanities divisions:

• Apple recruits graduates from arts and humanities because designing products people want requires empathy and cultural awareness
• Microsoft has added ethicists and humanists to its AI teams to test for fairness, privacy, and cultural sensitivity
• Google employs philosophers, linguists, and sociologists to confront algorithmic bias and inclusivity
• OpenAI has professionals trained in liberal arts helping guide responsible AI development

The editorial director of Google’s NotebookLM—one of their largest AI products—explicitly stated that philosophical and psychological skills are particularly valuable for addressing AI-related questions and fine-tuning conversational tone.

The Employment Data Contradicts Karp’s Prediction

Here’s the stunning reversal in actual employment statistics:

• Art history graduates show 3% unemployment versus 7.5% for computer engineers
• Philosophy and history graduates outpace many tech specialists in the job market
• Liberal arts majors demonstrate far greater career resilience, with agility to move between jobs, careers, and industries

Why? Because while AI eliminated 27.5% of programmer jobs, it only reduced software developer roles (the more design-oriented positions) by 0.3%. The creative, strategic thinkers survived while the code writers got automated.

Cognizant’s CEO Flips the Script on Entry-Level Hiring

Perhaps most damaging to Karp’s thesis is what Ravi Kumar S, CEO of IT consulting giant Cognizant (with 350,000 employees), told Fortune:

“We are now going to hire non-STEM graduates. I’m going to liberal arts schools and community colleges.”

Kumar’s reasoning directly contradicts Karp: “I think we’ll need more school graduates in the AI era… AI is an amplifier of human potential. It’s not a displacement strategy.”

His company is hiring more school graduates than ever before in 2025, giving them AI tools so they can “punch above their weight.”

The Skills Gap Employers Actually Report

When you dig into what employers say they need versus what they’re getting, the humanities suddenly look essential:

• 64% of employers say oral communication is “essential,” but only 34% feel graduates are “very well prepared”
• Nearly 90% of employers stressed the importance of exposure to diverse perspectives and ideas—a hallmark of liberal arts education
• National Associate of College and Employers (NACE) 2023 ranked critical thinking second only to communication as the most important career competency
• Deloitte’s 2025 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey found younger generations place even greater value on soft skills like empathy, leadership, and adaptability in an AI-driven workplace
• McKinsey projects that by 2030, demand for social and emotional skills in the United States will rise by 14%

The Problem With AI That Only Humanities Grads Can Solve

Here’s what Karp conveniently ignores: AI has fundamental limitations that require liberal arts training to overcome.

AI cannot generate original questions. It recombines patterns from training data. Someone needs to ask the right questions to get useful outputs—and that requires broad knowledge across disciplines, exactly what humanities education provides.

AI outputs are plagued by bias and errors. Who identifies algorithmic bias rooted in Western cultural assumptions? Who questions the exclusion of Indigenous knowledge? Who challenges phantom responses? People trained in sociology, history, philosophy, and ethics.

AI lacks judgment about what problems are worth solving. As one Reddit analysis put it: “AI pushes us toward creating more humanistic service roles that demand genuine empathy… machines don’t have hearts.”

Stanford research found the key dividing line: AI struggles with tasks requiring genuine human emotion, creativity, physical dexterity, and ethical judgment. Three of those four are exactly what humanities education cultivates.

So Who’s Right? Both. And Neither.

The truth is more nuanced than either extreme position suggests.

Karp Is Right About the Short-Term Pain

Entry-level humanities grads without technical skills are facing a brutal job market. The data on this is unambiguous:

• Nearly 50 million U.S. jobs at entry-level are at risk in coming years
• The unemployment rate for young workers ages 16 to 24 hit 10.4% in December 2025
• 39% of current skillsets will be overhauled or outdated between 2025 and 2030
• Many companies expect new hires to already come up to speed without extensive training

A philosophy grad who can’t code, can’t use AI tools, and has no practical skills is in serious trouble. Karp is correct that a pure humanities degree with zero technical augmentation is increasingly unmarketable for entry-level positions.

But Karp Is Spectacularly Wrong About the Long Game

What the employment data reveals is this: AI is creating a bifurcated job market.

The bottom tier gets automated. Entry-level programmers, data entry clerks, basic content writers, junior analysts—all getting displaced by AI. This is brutal for recent grads trying to get their foot in the door.

The middle tier needs technical skills. Battery factory workers, technicians, vocational specialists—these roles are secure and well-paying. Karp is absolutely right about this tier.

But the top tier increasingly demands humanities thinking. Senior developers who design systems, not just code them. Leaders who can ask the right questions. Ethicists who can prevent AI disasters. Creative directors who envision what doesn’t exist yet. Strategic thinkers who can pivot when industries transform.

And here’s the kicker: That top tier is where the philosophy PhD sits—precisely where Karp himself ended up.

The Real Answer: Hybrid Education

The most successful educational approach combines both:

1. Liberal arts foundation: Critical thinking, ethics, communication, creativity, cultural awareness
2. Technical augmentation: AI tool proficiency, data literacy, some coding ability
3. Lifelong learning mindset: Adaptability across changing industries

As one educator put it: “Liberal arts students will need to gain competency on the technical side. But the emergence of AI will also require people who are really thoughtful about: How do we prompt? Should we prompt in certain instances? How do we filter bias?”

Cognizant’s CIO Neal Ramasamy noted that the best programmers he’s hired came from music, philosophy, and literature backgrounds—because with AI handling the mechanical coding, “what’s left is the harder stuff: understanding problems deeply, communicating with stakeholders, and designing solutions that make sense.”

The Uncomfortable Truth Karp Won’t Admit

Alex Karp stands on stage at Davos—invited because of his success, credibility, and influence—and declares that the educational path that got him there is worthless.

Think about that logic.

His philosophy degree taught him to think critically about complex systems. His law training gave him frameworks for arguing positions. His PhD in social theory equipped him to understand how societies respond to technological change. These skills enabled him to co-found a company now worth $177 billion.

And his advice to young people is: “Don’t do what I did. Learn to build batteries instead.”

The real message should be: “Do what I did, but also learn to code and use AI tools.”

The Bottom Line for Students and Parents

If you’re choosing an educational path in 2025:

Don’t choose pure humanities without technical skills. The data on entry-level employment is too stark to ignore. You’ll struggle to get your foot in the door.

Don’t choose pure vocational training if you want long-term career flexibility. You’ll be secure in your specific trade, but vulnerable when that industry transforms. And it will transform.

Do choose liberal arts WITH technical augmentation. Study philosophy, but take computer science courses. Major in history, but learn data analysis. Get an English degree, but master AI tools. This combination is what employers are increasingly desperate to find.

As the Globe and Mail put it: “What’s the value of a liberal arts degree? The AI-world answer: exceptionally high and rising.”

But only if you pair it with the ability to actually use the technology transforming the world.

Final Thought: The Irony of Karp’s Position

Perhaps the most revealing part of this entire debate is that Alex Karp is using his humanities education to make the argument that humanities education is worthless.

His philosophical training gave him the abstract thinking to envision Palantir. His social theory background helped him understand how governments and institutions work. His ability to articulate complex ideas—honed through years of humanities education—is exactly why people listen when he speaks at Davos.

And now he’s climbing up the ladder and trying to pull it up behind him.

The vocational workers Karp celebrates are essential and deserve respect and good pay. But when those battery factory jobs get automated in 2035 by the next wave of robotics, those workers will need to pivot. And pivoting requires exactly the kind of adaptable, creative, critical thinking that humanities education provides.

Karp is living proof that philosophy graduates can build AI empires. Perhaps instead of declaring humanities doomed, he should be honest about what actually made him successful: a combination of deep humanistic thinking and the technical knowledge to apply it.

That combination—not vocational training alone—is the real future of work in the AI age.