Forget Coding - Anthropic Co-Founder Reckons Your Kids Should Study Philosophy

Who would have thought a few years ago that studying liberal arts would be a safer bet than programming or coding.

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark studied literature at the University of East Anglia. Not computer science or mathematics. And he now helps run one of the most influential artificial intelligence companies in the world.

His path to success is either reassuring or a sign of a significant shift in how we view education for the next generation.

Speaking to an audience of parents, educators, and professionals quietly panicking about what the AI revolution means for the next generation, Clark made the case that few in Silicon Valley have been willing to state openly: That the liberal arts like history, philosophy, and literature may just turn out to be exactly the right subjects to study for a world reshaped by AI.

It's rather ironic that the subjects we've spent decades telling our kids were dead ends might just be the most in-demand in ten years' time.

"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," Clark said on Monday during Semafor's World Economy Summit. "That's turned out to be like, extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn't have predicted."

Clark said that the best areas of study are those that have a lot of overlap.

"I think that majors which are going to become more important are ones which involve like synthesis across a whole variety of subjects and analytical thinking about that."

Clark says learning how to ask the right questions is crucial, and "rote programming" is something he would avoid. His Anthropic colleagues, including Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, seem to agree with him after recently saying the title of software engineer will start to be phased out this year.

This doesn't mean coding will be worthless. "Some people need to know the fundamentals, but we do see that technology move up the stack."

Clark said that majors that may seem mismatched to the age of AI will actually be fairly worthwhile. He pointed out that Anthropic employs philosophers.

"When was the last time you heard that a philosophy degree was like a great job prospect?" he said.

Who would have thought a few years ago that studying literature, philosophy, or history would be a safer bet than programming or coding? Instead of asking which skills will be needed, the better question seems to be What kind of thinker does my child need to become?

The future seems to, at this point, favour someone who can learn, adapt, and ask better questions than the machine in front of them. The problem is finding that particular course in a university prospectus.