An Interview with Marc Andreessen about AI and How You Change the World
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
As I've progressed in my career my view of them has changed dramatically. They're the money men who in many cases got lucky a few times. Sometimes really just once.
Now I don't mean to completely diminish their role. I've pretty much only worked at VC funded startups in my career and so imo there's no underselling the importance of having some cash in the bank so you can work. But the people providing that cash are not visionaries. They are simple investors chasing returns. Whatever they think is the current thing that will generate returns that's what they want to talk about. Whether it's social media, new media, crypto currencies, or now AI they're all just chasing returns and trying to hype the space their portfolio companies are in. It doesn't really feel so visionary or special after all.
One thing that's very obvious is that you can't really predict how smart a person is based on their level of business success, what their profession is, how wealthy or poor they are, etc.
What you can predict is what their skillset is, but being "smart" and being highly skilled are two different things.
So, yeah, Marc Andreesen says lots of things.
FWIW, I've been recommended a lot of videos from the recent Bloomberg Invest summit. There are tons of people from traditional finance (e.g. Goldman Sachs), Hedge Funds, Private Equity, people from the Fed, SEC, etc. The main questions they've been asking are related to inflation and interest rates but crypto comes up in almost every single conversation. Mostly crypto comes up because of the FTX fiasco and questions about regulation (also regulation related to recent bank collapses like SVB). But the constant refrain is "crypto is clearly here to stay".
The prevailing narrative seems to be that the adults are going to come in and take it over. Finance works very slow, but like a glacier it also has tremendous mass and therefore power. What is absent in the conversations is the snide derision and outright dismissal I often see on HackerNews.
I think we focus here on NFTs, shit coins and other token IPO scams. But the finance industry seems to accept some kind of digital currency is inevitable. There is going to be insanely big money to be made in that space.
It also leads to situations where people with skills not associated with truth finding can be more persuasive than they should be - eg charismatic or comedic people will be able to more readily persuade you than people without those skills, even though there is nothing about those skills that leads people towards more correct opinions.
> If I’m right about that and that’s how this is going to play out, then this is the most important technological advance with the most positive benefits, basically, of anything we’ve done probably since, I don’t know, something like fire, this could be the really big one.
And then, when existential risk is mentioned, saying that AIs are "math and code" and "you're completely capable of understanding what it is":
> The thing is, what we’re dealing with here is something that you’re completely capable of understanding what it is. What it is it’s math and code. You can buy many textbooks that will explain the math and code to you, they’re all being updated right now to incorporate the transformer algorithm, there’s books already out on the market.
How can a technology be as transformative as fire, and simultaneously have implications that are easy to understand in the moment?
And for someone in Andreessen's position, who is positioned to profit enormously from unrestrained AI growth, what could explain this dissonance except for motivated reasoning?
The difference between the two is purely academic, though.
You don't get to be connected and lust after 'moar money'. The two are incompatible.
If you were one of those people, do you feel the same way about Marc downplaying the dangers posed by technology that a16z has heavily invested in?
> The moral of every story is "the good guys win"
I thought he had very, very weak arguments and defenses, especially the "thermodynamic" argument he keeps going on with. It was a very, very stark contrast between his interview with Lex Fridman, who really didn't give him much else but a platform with zero push back. Sam made him work a lot harder to explain his often naive and overly optimistic views.
Side note: It actually made me think that Sam's podcast is probably worth paying for. Glad people like that exist.
"Doomerism can be dispelled.
Believe that this universe is the one, maybe the only one in the multiverse, where things work out.
Otherwise humans, life, earth would be long gone by now."
> The correct way to explain this concept of course is to note that in every story with a moral, the winners are designated as the good guys.
That doesn't salvage it. His statement (and your rephrasing) is demonstrably false, as illustrated many if not most cautionary tales.
Notwithstanding that this text appeared on a web page, no such link is evident there. Is the audio formatted version re-hosted somewhere?
I'm listening in preview mode, ben says he prefers open standards for the podcast but it appears paywalled and personalized on top of an open standard.
I think it's great to hear counter points to the dystopic fear mongering, in fact, I would love to hear more of it. But "It's not alive, it's like your toaster!" just isn't very convincing when talking about what is probably the most disruptive technology since fire, by his own words.
Now, a mechanic....
X-risk, of course, is leveraged as a powerful argument for regulation which narrows the field to a small number of favored firms which have privileged mutual relations with government, with a difficult on-ramp for anyone else, and minimum public transparency.
Changing the world requires changing the software of society. We already have all the tech we need for that. But its not happening.
EDIT: e.g. @FistedFoucault, @empathyhaver, @0x49fa98, see also: https://theoutline.com/post/6708/marc-andreessen-twitter-fav...
Can you go into more details about that? Who exactly are the "creepy ones" he's following on Twitter?
> Makes me hope he won't be in charge of changing my world.
He won't be in charge, but he'll have a disproportionate influence. After all, he's rich and powerful.
A while ago, someone wrote an article on it: https://theoutline.com/post/6708/marc-andreessen-twitter-fav...
But that's very out of date. I found out (before reading that) by following him, and then for a month my "for you" feed was full of cringy far right accounts (not Robert Spencer-level, but not too subtle either). Just some random ones I saw recently: @FistedFoucault, @empathyhaver, @0x49fa98
Simply following someone doesn't count as "broadcasting". If you don't like things being recommended by the Twitter algorithm, just use the "following" tab. If you don't, that's on you.