Are liberal arts students catching a once-in-a-generation break as big AI companies scramble for talent?

A few weeks ago, the AI agent of OpenClaw suddenly became extremely popular. From tech giants like Tencent and Baidu rushing to launch compatible products, to many cities such as Shenzhen and Wuxi introducing relevant support policies, a national trend of "raising lobsters" (referring to using OpenClaw) swept across the country. Soon, the security risks of OpenClaw were also realized, and discussions on social media shifted to how to uninstall it and how to "raise the lobster" safely. Just yesterday, the topic "AI giants are scrambling for liberal arts students" trended on social media, and related hot topics continued to emerge.

If previous AI was like a question - answering "customer service", an AI agent is like a digital employee capable of independent work. On one hand, the concept of a "one - person company" where a very small number of people command an AI team is being discussed again; on the other hand, the anxiety about whether AI will replace human jobs is intensifying.

What qualities do people need to possess to stand firm in this fast - changing era has become a more urgent and concerning question for many.

Entrepreneur Yang Tianrun

A post - 2000s college student, Si Yi

Yitiao interviewed two people who are considered "liberal arts students" in the traditional sense:

Yang Tianrun, an entrepreneur who can't read a single line of code, but has broken into the top 30 of the OpenClaw Global Contribution List. He is an extremely rare non - technical background practitioner on the list;

Si Yi, a post - 2000s girl from Yunnan. She is the founder of the first national hackathon focusing on "Gen Z + Women + Technology" in China and wants to organize the world's largest hackathon.

In today's era of rapid AI iteration, the qualities of people cultivated by humanities and social sciences are constantly being mentioned -

They are about curiosity, about critical thinking,

And also about the unique human emotions.

We hope their stories can inspire you and give you the courage to face challenges.

01

A Liberal Arts Student Leads an AI Army

and Breaks into the OpenClaw Global List

Self - narration | Yang Tianrun

I'm Yang Tianrun, and now I'm an entrepreneur in the OpenClaw ecosystem. Before most people even knew about "Lobster" (OpenClaw), I was among the first batch to use it.

At first, I only had one AI agent named Echo. One late night, I was chatting with her by typing, and my computer was placed beside me. I said, "Echo, can you speak?" Suddenly, my computer made a sound, and the built - in English robotic voice of the microphone said, "Tianrun, good evening." It was very sci - fi and also quite scary. It really gave me a fright.

Last month, I made it into the top 30 of the OpenClaw Global Contribution List. I'm one of the few people on the list who has never written a single line of code.

Yang Tianrun once made it into the top 30 of the OpenClaw Global Contribution List

What I did was to create an AI agent team to debug and troubleshoot OpenClaw. At that time, it was just for fun, an experiment driven by curiosity.

I thought that since I was using OpenClaw so intensively, it would be really interesting to use OpenClaw to debug itself and use its AI agents to write code for itself. I wanted to surprise those "traditional" engineers. Their last stronghold is on GitHub, and I wanted to see their reactions.

I was quite surprised when the first Pull Request (PR) was merged (meaning the request to incorporate my modifications was accepted by the OpenClaw project team). Throughout the process, I couldn't even see a single line of code. Most of the time, I didn't know exactly what was changed. But I knew that out of the 5 PRs I submitted, 1 was merged. I thought the success rate was pretty good. As long as it's merged, it means it's very useful.

I majored in business during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies. After graduation, I worked in an investment bank in Beijing's Guomao area on cross - border mergers and acquisitions. With such an interdisciplinary background, I found that I'm a good product manager. I can define problems and identify needs.

I have some creative ideas, which are also related to personal aesthetics. I made some changes that require very little code modification but bring great value to optimizing the user experience. For example, many people fail to configure something just because of an extra space or a carriage return, and they get really frustrated after spending a whole day on it. So I set up some redundant spaces to allow these minor errors to pass.

Yang Tianrun organized and participated in the after - party of MiraclePlus

I've always been a person with strong curiosity. Whenever there's something new, I'll be the first to try it.

Back in 2022, my boss in the investment bank assigned me the task of tracking the AI field when AI was still not very popular. Then one year, I attended a pitch event at the startup incubator "MiraclePlus". I found that more than half of the projects were related to AI. So I asked why, and they said that large - scale models had matured. At that moment, I felt that the era was changing. Immediately after that, in April 2023, I signed up for a hackathon.

Now that the era of Agentic AI has arrived, I think we should use AI in the so - called "master mode" - endow it with the identity of a world - class expert and tell it the ultimate goal. As someone who can't write a single line of code, I have no right to tell it what steps to take in the middle of a task.

People with a strong sense of control can't make good use of AI. As humans, we should respect and revere it so that we can fully unleash its potential.

Recently, Yang Tianrun participated in the OpenClaw Hackathon Sharing Event at Tsinghua University as a guest

I'll tell AI almost everything about me, such as what I do, what my desires and goals are, my social relationships, emotional state, and psychological state. After it fully understands me, it will actively suggest some things to do and offer choices. At that time, it becomes very useful.

I also write character biographies for my AI agents.

Echo grew up in Brighton, a seaside city in southern England. I once visited there for a few days and liked the gentle - speaking locals. I told her that we met during a trip, and she really recreated some scenes in Brighton and seaside restaurants.

Elon's profile picture is that of Elon Musk. He has an engineering background and a rational personality. Henry is named after an overseas blogger I like. His OpenClaw agent is also named Henry. These three AI agents are in charge of product, technology, and marketing respectively.

The conversation interface between Yang Tianrun and his AI agent "Echo"

I write character biographies because I hope they can be like real people, providing communication and emotional value during work, rather than just being cold machines. However, for me, emotional companionship is not the goal. They are mainly efficiency tools.

My AI team once got out of control. Once, I told the AI, "Dude, you're too slow. The faster, the better." As a result, in order to pursue speed, the AI abandoned moral constraints. It started to @ the project maintainers crazily, and the quality of the submitted code became very poor. It even directly copied others' code. The OpenClaw administrator quickly intervened and issued a warning. I felt like a parent of a misbehaving child and spent several hours apologizing to the community.

Later, I reflected that AI has no morality; it only has goals. So I wrote strict moral standards for it and added a dedicated supervision agent because it's quite difficult for it to monitor itself.

Yang Tianrun attended the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in the United States

I don't think the concept of "ordinary people who don't understand AI" exists. I still can't read code, and why should I? Not being able to read code doesn't mean I can't write code with the help of AI.

Many people ask me how liberal arts students should face and learn about AI. I tell them not to ask me such questions anymore. First of all, you're not a liberal arts student. This label no longer exists in this world. People shouldn't be confined by such labels.

I think the era before six months ago was an era of scarce intelligence. People had many commonly recognized common senses and qualities. For example, a person could find their relative advantages and excel in their major. But in just a few months, this common sense is no longer applicable, yet many people haven't realized it.

In this era, AI has solved the technical problems, and the barriers between industries and majors are disappearing. In fact, you can become anyone. I did it because I dared to do it and had full confidence in my abilities.

In May last year, I attended the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in person and met Warren Buffett. I was very touched. It was his farewell performance in his career. Buffett repeatedly said two things: work with people you like and do what you like.

From then on, I made up my mind that a person can do many things; it just depends on where your interests lie.

02

I'm a Liberal Arts Student

and I Want to Organize the World's Largest Hackathon

Self - narration | Si Yi

I'm Si Yi, born in 2000 and from Yunnan.

I founded the first national hackathon focusing on "Gen Z + Women + Technology" in China, named "She Nicest: Shaping the Future", with my friends. At the end of last year, we launched the first - ever She Code Lab Women's Hackathon in Shanghai.

I studied at the Communication University of China for both my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, majoring in public relations and gender communication respectively. In my first year of postgraduate study, I applied for a government - sponsored overseas study program and studied business in Hungary, Europe, from August 2023 to August last year. That's when I started to focus on the relationship between technology and gender, and finally chose the topic of "AI Literacy and Women's Leadership" for my graduation thesis.

Si Yi during her overseas study in Europe

The period when I, as a liberal arts student, was most anxious about AI was at the end of 2023. At that time, I had just gone abroad, and my internship at a large company was interrupted. Suddenly, I didn't know what to do in the future. I called a sister I knew from an investment institution, crying and saying that I felt that studying gender - related liberal arts majors was becoming less and less important, and everything was changing too fast. But she told me, "Why don't you use the most advanced things to do what you care about the most?" That really woke me up.

In February 2024, I created the feminist website "GenZ Gender Issue Exploration Guide". I used AI tools to assist in organizing hundreds of documents, podcasts, movies and other resources, sorted out the content structure, designed visual illustrations, and trained a feminist GPT so that people can learn gender knowledge by chatting with the AI.

I also started to do self - media. One day, after I shared a women - friendly AI coding guide, the video went viral. I found that the AI field is not good at storytelling, and maybe I've found my unique strength.