TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Economic development should be about more than just the search for more wealth, Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, said in Taipei Thursday (June 27).
He had been invited to speak by an alumnus of the Illinois-based college, Bank of Taiwan Chairman Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠), the Liberty Times reported.
In his address, Schapiro underlined the growing importance of artificial intelligence as a replacement for human labor, but he also called on the public to pay more attention to the liberal arts, music, literature, and education.
The university president is a leading thinker on education in the United States and has repeatedly attended Congressional hearings, the Liberty Times noted.
Economics should learn from the liberal arts, Schapiro said, while Lyu remarked on how scientists were succeeding in extending people's lives but that a longer life needed to be given more meaning.
Economic development is also a way of developing and protecting the democratic political system, the U.S. academic reportedly said.
Source Taiwan News
