Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark is making a case for the liberal arts at a moment when AI is rewriting the labor market.
Clark, who is a billionaire cofounder of Anthropic and a former journalist, studied English literature and creative writing. He said that background helped him become influential in AI because it gave him exposure to history and to 'the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future.'
'That’s turned out to be, like, extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn’t have predicted,' Clark said during a conference earlier this year.
He added that young people should focus on 'the right questions' and on 'synthesis across a whole variety of subjects and analytical thinking about that.' Clark also said they should avoid basic or 'rote programming.'
The numbers come first. Enrollment in science and engineering graduate programs rose by more than one-third between 2000 and 2015, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, part of the National Science Foundation. Between 2013 and 2023, STEM job growth outpaced non-STEM job growth, with a 26% increase compared with a 9% increase, according to the same source.
But the AI threat is now showing up in the work itself. A report by Anthropic researchers Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory found AI can theoretically take over 94% of computer and math tasks. The report said computer programming jobs are among the most exposed to AI.
That shift is already changing how company leaders talk about hiring. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI would eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, before later softening that view. Boris Cherny, creator of Anthropic’s Claude Code, said this year that 'coding is practically solved' and that 'we’re going to start to see the title 'software engineer' go away.'
Clark himself said, 'I see potential weakness in early graduate employment in some industries,' though he did not specify which ones. He also said, 'I haven’t seen anything beyond that,' when asked about AI-linked layoffs, while emphasizing that AI will upend businesses and how business is conducted.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said the unemployment rate for recent college graduates was 5.7% as of June, up from 3.6% before the pandemic in 2019 and above the 4.1% unemployment rate for all workers as of June.
The market has already voted in part. Vocation-focused community college enrollment rose 16% last year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, as some young people look toward the trades, multiple part-time jobs, or their own ventures.
Microsoft chief scientist Jaime Teevan said earlier this year that liberal arts education will matter for the soft skills still needed when other work is delegated to AI. She said 'metacognitive skills will be very important' and pointed to flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, and critical thinking.
For workers, the lesson is simple: capital is rewarding breadth, judgment, and adaptability more than narrow credentialing. If AI keeps shrinking rote tasks, the people who can think across disciplines may have the edge the labor market is beginning to price in.
