AI is changing tech careers, but it won’t eliminate the importance of a STEM degree, says Demis Hassabis.

In an interview at a business conference in London, video of which was posted Wednesday, DeepMind’s CEO said that knowing the fundamentals of the software can give you an advantage in using AI.

“It was absolutely necessary to lean toward STEM and computer science,” Hassabis said. “It’s just a higher-level programming language, it’s the way you can think about what programming is going to be.”

Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, which Google acquired in 2014, said that people first used machine code, then C, then Python. But the future of programming languages ​​may be English.

“You’ll still need to know about architecture and software engineering best practices,” he said. “Those people who understand the deep technical aspects will be able to use these tools 10 times more effectively than people who don’t have that technical knowledge.”

The CEO of DeepMind said that AI also creates the need for people to study ethics and social sciences.

“I also think the time has come for the humanities like philosophy and economics. I think we really need them in the world we are about to enter,” he said.

Hassabis is among technology leaders who are quelling fears that degrees such as computer science and engineering are becoming redundant due to vibration coding.

In an interview with Business Insider in December, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” highlighted the value of careers in computer science.

“Obviously, being a competent mid-level programmer isn’t going to be a career for much longer, because AI can do it,” Hinton said. But the value of a computer science degree is much more than just coding, which is why he believes that “a computer science degree will be valuable for quite some time.”

Max LevchinCEO of Affirm, has also said that computer science fundamentals are key to distinguishing good code from “garbage.”

“There’s a question of taste and elegance in programming,” he said in a podcast earlier this year. “That’s certainly important to me as a programmer, and without having a strong foundation in computer science, I wouldn’t be able to have that conversation.”