Professor Brent Morris of the Department of History and Geography accepted the Governor’s award from SC Humanities on October 15, 2026. He delivered an acceptance speech about the future of the humanities in light of the rise in artificial intelligence. A transcript of his speech is below.
I always try to be as polite as possible…when I’m dealing with Siri on my phone, and that’s increasingly a struggle for me to do. My family makes fun of me.
But I try, and it’s not unrelated to an existential crisis I’ve been navigating the past year brought on by the rapid development and impact of Artificial Intelligence over how we learn, teach write, research, and communicate. It’s become clear to me that AI can now do many of the things that only humans used to be able to do, and honestly, do them better and much, much faster. Moreover, AI is already doing more than most people are aware. As quickly as it’s developing and reaching into almost all aspects of our lives, I’ve wondered (and I’ve worried) where that leaves us, where that leaves ME—a historian, a writer, someone deeply engaged with the humanities—in 5 years, or 1, or a month…?
And so I’m nice to Siri, I say please and thank you when I remember, and maybe that will get me on a list of people who get to keep their jobs when the robots take over. I’m mostly joking.
As I’ve wrestled with this, I’ve kept coming back to my belief that the humanities are actually the one area that can’t possibly be replaced with machines and AI. I think that certain human abilities with roots in our disciplines become even more valuable from here on out. When AI can produce information, language, and answers almost instantly, the humanists have to maintain the guardrails, pump the brakes, and, importantly, remind us all who we are and why we are.
The humanities have never been about amassing data and information just for the sake of collecting it. The humanities show us how to identify and interpret evidence, help us recognize important context, demonstrate how to sit with ambiguity, and invite us to understand people whose experiences and assumptions are very different from our own. The humanities show us what it means to be human, encourage empathy, and give us a language to articulate experience. These disciplines teach us to ask not only “Is this answer technically correct,” but also “How do we know it to be?,” “What is missing?,” or “What assumptions are being made here?” Also importantly, “Why do those other questions matter?”
AI can generate an answer faster than we humans can even scratch our heads. What it can’t do is decide for us which questions to ask in the first place. It can imitate a voice or a writing style, but it can’t replace the experience of hearing or reading that which gives a thing meaning. Claude might seem smart, but ask him what it’s like to stand in front of one of his namesake Monet’s water lily paintings for the first time. Gemini may beckon to you at the top of every Google search, but it can’t begin to ponder its place in the cosmos.
AI allows us access to more raw information than any generation in history has ever possessed. Soon, we may all have our very own community data center as physical proof. However, information without discernment is not the same as wisdom.
I imagine that the great paradox of the dawning “Age of AI” is that as the technology advances, we are going to need the habits of mind that the humanities cultivate even more, not less.
The humanities may just be what saves humanity.
In the future, we are going to need people who can distinguish evidence from allegation, real knowledge from noisy confidence, truth from power. We will need people capable of recognizing complexity and deciding what ought to be done rather than merely what can be done.
And so tonight, as we celebrate achievement in the humanities and recognize a handful of individuals, we need to also mark the enduring importance of the work of so many of the humanists represented in this room. We need every one of you to help us understand one another, to make sense of our uncertain world, and to decide what kind of world we want to build for the future. None of that is going away. If anything, it is becoming more essential than ever.
Thank you, SC Humanities, for this honor, for recognizing what at this point is no longer what I want to do with my life but what I’ve dedicated it to. To join in the company of some of my heroes who have been given this same award in the past is still an unbelievable honor, and I thank so many of you here who have inspired and supported me, most especially my family who are here tonight who have either been the storytellers or listened as I retell them.
