The billionaire Anthropic cofounder who majored in literature says knowing how to ask the right questions beats knowing how to code

AI may be restoring the importance of the liberal arts degree, at least according to the cofounder of one of the industry’s biggest players.

Jack Clark, a billionaire cofounder of Anthropic and former journalist who majored in English literature and creative writing, said his literary education helped him become an influential figure in the world of AI.

“I’m a literature graduate, and I don’t think you’d put that as a cofounder of a frontier AI company, but what turned out to be useful is that I got to learn a lot about history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,” he said during the Semafor World Economy Summit on Monday.

“That’s turned out to be, like, extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn’t have predicted,” he added.

For young people trying to figure out where they fit in the increasingly AI-fueled economy, their best bet may be learning to ask the right questions, he added.  

“The really important thing is knowing the right questions to ask and having intuitions about what would be interesting if you collided different insights from many different disciplines,” he said.

Clark claimed young people should avoid pursu...