On June 7, the international multimedia press center “Russia Today” held a press conference “Neural Networks Era: What Professions will be in Demand in Five Years?”
The speakers were: Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Russian Language Institute of the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia Angela Dolzhikova, accredited expert in the scientific and technical sphere of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Anatoly Tsaregorodtsev, Head of the Department of Applied Computer Science and Intelligent Systems in the Humanitarian Field of the RUDN University Stanislav Strashnov, Head of the Russian Language Department of the RUDN University, Program Director of the bachelor's program "Applied Digital Philology" Marina Bragina and teacher of the Department of Applied Informatics and Intelligent Systems in the Humanities of RUDN University Vladimir Kalinin.
The participants discussed what digital humanities is, what professions will be in demand in five years in the world of neural networks, how global digitalization is changing the requirements for linguistic specialties and creating new educational trajectories, who is a digital philologist and whether they will be able to fill vacancies for copywriters, screenwriters, programmers, and content specialists.
Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev noted that now there are various tasks that should be solved not by technical specialists, but by people with interdisciplinary skills:
“It is obvious that digital humanities is taking over the labor market, because training AI and people, who will work with it is not the task of techies. In addition, there are many threats like deepfakes that are quite difficult to recognize using technical means; this must be done based on the context. And in my opinion, people from the humanitarian sphere will play an increasingly important role in the IT sector and be increasingly important for IT companies.”
He also added that modern scammers often use not so much technical means as social engineering methods, playing on psychology and humanitarian aspects rather than technology.
Andrey Vorobyev urged not to overly romanticize or dramatize the current situation with the labor market in the IT field: “It seems to me that after the next five years the ratio of “physicists” and “lyricists” will change. Now there are more techies in IT, but soon, perhaps, there will be significantly more people in the humanities.”
Director of the Russian Language Institute of RUDN University Angela Dolzhikova said that when preparing new educational programs, she and her colleagues look not only at the Atlas of New Professions, but also at the real market - advertisements on job search and personnel selection services.
“The main trend of modern education, not only in Russia, but also worldwide, is interdisciplinarity. If you open the websites of educational institutions, you will find not only narrow-profile programs, but also interdisciplinary ones, among which there are even such unusual ones as, for example, digital urbanism,” she said.
She was supported by Anatoly Tsaregorodtsev, an expert in the scientific and technical sphere of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation:
“We often hear the idea that it is easier to train a technician in the humanities than a humanist in technical sciences. But in fact, both options will soon end up losing. It is extremely important to train specialists comprehensively, using an interdisciplinary approach. Educational institutions need to focus on training specialists who will have complex knowledge.”
This idea was developed by Stanislav Strashnov, Head of the Department of Applied Computer Science and Intelligent Systems in the Humanities of RUDN University. He noted that humanists make significant contributions to technical fields not only through their creative thinking and analytical skills, but also through their ability to meaningfully analyze the sociocultural and ethical aspects of the implementation of new technologies.
“It is important to note that it is the humanities that provide the necessary tools for solving current problems related to the impact of digital transformation on society and individuals,” he emphasized.
As part of the event, new educational programs of RUDN University “Cyber technologies and data analysis in the humanitarian sphere” and “Intelligent technologies and data analysis in the humanitarian sphere” were also presented.
