Humanistic skills that will drive technologies

'The things that make us human will become even more important over time'. So says Daniela Amodei, with her brother Dario at the head of Anthropic, the American giant behind the AI that is giving Altman's direct competitor ChatGPT a run for its money. It may seem like an anti-technological tack, yet in the age of artificial intelligence, studying the humanities becomes a strategic lever, as well as a visionary option. So much so that it is directing the search for new profiles to hire even in the AI giants, writes Fortune. Thus, in what has been defined precisely by Amodei as the 'compressed century', the weight of the so-called embedded creatives is growing, i.e. creative professionals with humanistic skills inserted into the production and technological processes of contemporary organisations.

This is underlined by the Italia 'I am culture' report by the Symbola Foundation. Today, creative skills are integrated in business services and production-intensive sectors, thus in innovative contexts. The report reveals a supply chain that no longer represents a side sector of the Italian economy, but a competitive infrastructure. Creativity generates EUR 112.6 billion in added value and activates a total of almost EUR 303 billion in the national economy, confirming its strategic role in contemporary innovation.

Its geography confirms the weight of the large metropolitan areas in which manufacturing, design and technological innovation contaminate each other. Milan, Rome and Turin lead the ranking. In particular, the Lombard capital confirms itself as Italy's main hub with 15.8% of the provincial added value linked to the cultural and creative production system. This is followed by Rome (8.5%) and Turin (7.9%). An attractive model for young people: as many as 1 in 4 of those employed in the sector are under 35, a higher share than the national average for other sectors.

"The report shows how embedded creatives are finding a place in non-traditionally cultural spheres, from fashion to automotive to advanced services. Thus many realities seem to be moving from a purely technological logic to one in which humanists become architects of innovation,' says Domenico Sturabotti, director of the Symbola Foundation. The challenge is to maintain human direction even within increasingly automated processes.

"What we once saw as a potential element of backwardness, today becomes a lever for growth. The aim is to simplify complex things: these figures are better equipped to synthesise, even in technology. Many leading Italian companies are made up of engineers with humanistic studies,' says Sturabotti. This is highlighted by the British Jobs of the Future report: 50 per cent of business leaders believe that humanities graduates will be crucial to harnessing AI, and as many as 61 per cent of Fortune 500 leaders rate the grafting of embedded creatives into technical teams as essential. "Every time an industry evolves it starts with intangible elements. It happened in manufacturing and today it happens in digital. What counts are user experiences. I think of Matías Duarte, VP Design at Google, who in 2014 presented Material Design, a unified visual language that redesigned Android. Even in Airbnb, the founding figures did not come from engineering, but from design and design culture: Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, bringing a strongly human-centred approach to the start-up. In this way, we move from tool to sense. For Italia, this is good news, because faculties with a humanities focus are ranked among the best in the world,' Sturabotti points out.