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Frank Chen

Partner, Andreessen Horowitz · 33 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investoroperatorexecutiveanalysthost@withfries2 ↗LinkedIn ↗a16z.com/author/frank-chen ↗

At Andreessen Horowitz, Chen leads Early Stage Venture Programs and previously built the firm's deal and research team, becoming known for primers on emerging technologies. Prior to venture capital, he held senior product and user experience leadership roles at Netscape, Loudcloud, Opsware, and HP Software.

259statements → 214claims → 45claims resolved → 69%fully supported → 3.93/5average certainty → 2.04/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 8said about them ↓

31 supported 13 partly supported 1 contradicted 7 not yet assessed 82 not checkable as stated how the 214 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

75 predictions · 139 assertions · 10 opinions · 30 insights · 4 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 214 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 125 are resolved, 7 are not yet assessed, and 82 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Frank argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Chen: AI models predict suicide risk years ahead with over 80% accuracy
“Study one basically looks through electronic health records and based on the data in electronic health records is able to predict people who are likely to commit suicide. And these people might be two or three years away from that event, but they are able to p…”
Frank Chen Jul 16, 2017 ▶ 43:01 The Promise of AI

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Chen: Autonomous EV fleets will drive most global miles within years
“In particular, I believe that in a handful of years, we're gonna be driven around in electric cars rather than driving around in our own gas-powered cars. In other words, most of the miles driven on the planet will shift to self-driving electric car fleets as …”
Frank Chen Feb 3, 2018 ▶ 1:25 The Autonomy Ecosystem: Where and How It Begins (1 of 8)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
64% certainty 3
80% certainty 4
75% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

265 words/min while actually speaking · 11.2 um and uh per 1k words

Um and uh per 1,000 words, year by year. Hover a point for the year's tape.

5101520162017201820192016 · 8.6 per 1k · 3 episodes2017 · 5.4 per 1k · 3 episodes2018 · 14.6 per 1k · 2 episodes2019 · 12.3 per 1k · 18 episodes

No argument clarity score for Frank Chen: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 3 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 49,292 words across 26 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Frank Chen said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Partly held up
Chen: Deep learning will outperform trained radiologists within five years
“It takes five years to train a radiologist, and in five years, deep learning will get better results than a trained radiologist, so we should stop training them right now.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:34 a16z Podcast | Machine Intelligence, from University to Industry
Opinion
Geoffrey Hinton: Backpropagation is a dead end for reaching general intelligence
“He says, I think we need a reboot. I think the path that I set everybody on, and fundamentally an algorithm called backpropagation, I think that's a dead end. I think if we want general intelligence, we're going to need to invent a new technique. We're going t…”
Frank Chen Dec 8, 2017 ▶ 20:15 AI: What's Working, What's Not
Assertion Supported
Chen: AI models predict suicide risk years ahead with over 80% accuracy
“Study one basically looks through electronic health records and based on the data in electronic health records is able to predict people who are likely to commit suicide. And these people might be two or three years away from that event, but they are able to p…”
Frank Chen Jul 16, 2017 ▶ 43:01 The Promise of AI
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chen: Most AV Experts Require LiDAR, With Tesla as Key Outlier
“Most people that I talk to think definitely LiDAR. There's a couple of big outliers. I think Tesla is trying a system without LiDAR, but we'll see.”
Frank Chen Jul 16, 2017 ▶ 5:20 16 Questions About Self Driving Cars
Opinion
Chen: Society Must Deploy Autonomous Cars Immediately Despite Temporary Accident Increases
“Morally, from a social point of view, we should try to get self-driving cars on the road as soon as possible, even if we get this small tick up in new types of accidents that we've never seen before due to the interaction, because the self-driving algorithms w…”
Frank Chen Jul 16, 2017 ▶ 25:46 16 Questions About Self Driving Cars
Prediction Not checkable as stated
AI diagnosis will make empathy the primary reason patients choose doctors
“And I think as we introduce machine learning into the doctor's office, two things will happen. One, most doctors will get very good at diagnosis because we're going to use machine learning algorithms to figure out what's wrong with you. And then most doctors w…”
Frank Chen Feb 9, 2019 ▶ 10:05 Better Together: Humanity + Machine Learning
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Having gambling apps on your phone correlates with higher loan repayment rates
“So being a gambler or using gambling apps actually makes you more likely to repay a loan, which might be counterintuitive.”
Frank Chen Feb 9, 2019 ▶ 27:36 Better Together: Humanity + Machine Learning
Insight
Chen: Effective crisis intervention skips rapport-building to directly address root solutions
“One of them is that the most successful counselors get right to the core issue and begin working with the person on a solution, which is a little counterintuitive. You might expect that you want to develop rapport so that they trust you. The data shows the exa…”
Frank Chen Feb 9, 2019 ▶ 41:39 Better Together: Humanity + Machine Learning
Insight
Chen: AlphaGo Zero proves reinforcement learning succeeds without labeled data
“Right, where there's so much momentum right now that says, basically, we're one labeled data set away from glory. Right, and this result basically shows you, wow, there's a lot of mileage that you can get out of reinforcement learning where there's no data, no…”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 34:50 a16z Podcast | Revenge of the Algorithms (Over Data)... Go! No?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chen: Automakers will shift to Boeing-style B2B fleet sales
“Well, one of the big changes, especially if we're going to switch to fleet ownership, is the car manufacturers will start being a lot more like Boeing and Airbus than they will be like Ford and BMW today.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:34 a16z Podcast | Cars and Cities, the Autonomy Edition
Assertion Supported
Chen: The introduction of ATMs actually increased total U.S. bank teller jobs
“After the introduction of the ATM for banking, the total number of bank tellers in the country increased, right? Because what we did was we built banks with ATMs in convenient places and put tellers in them. So we expanded the reach of banks so that you're, yo…”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 33:48 a16z Podcast | Cars and Cities, the Autonomy Edition
Insight
Chen: Deep learning represents the triumph of data over algorithms
“So the big trend is the triumph of data over algorithms. Which is you try to make more and more sophisticated edge detection algorithms, feature recognition algorithms. The big advance with deep learning was, screw all that. I'm not going to try to figure out …”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:25 a16z Podcast | The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go
Insight
Chen: Deep learning generates non-human insights that humans cannot debug
“So I think maybe this is the vector, which is these deep learning techniques, which we can't completely characterize and describe, much less debug, are leading to these flashes of insight, and they might not be human insight.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 28:10 a16z Podcast | The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chen: Legacy insurance data will lose value against real-time IoT streams
“The way to think about it is the data that insurance companies had will become less and less important over time as these new data streams get unlocked.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:07 a16z Podcast | Reinventing Insurance
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chen: Autonomous vehicle ethical programming choices will affect insurance rates
“And I, one of the really interesting trends is this is going to extend to algorithms. In other words, there are going to be ethical programming that we have to do for our cars, right? So the protocol example is, look, you're building the self-driving car, and …”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:00 a16z Podcast | Reinventing Insurance
Prediction Held up
Chen: Insurance sales will move to Amazon, Costco, and Facebook Messenger
“Why aren't I buying more insurance products at Costco or Amazon or through Facebook Messenger? And so, like, that will come.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:04 a16z Podcast | Reinventing Insurance
Opinion
Chen: Apple's single wallet model will outperform fragmented Android payments
“And if you contrast what's happening in Apple land with what's happening in Android land, if you've tried NFC payments in Android land, you have lots of stakeholders with their own applications clamoring to be your wallet. So you have ISIS now known as soft ca…”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:19 a16z Podcast | Apple Takes on Payments and Your Wrist
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2019
Chen: Apple will never make an Apple Watch compatible with Android
“So you're never, you're not going to see watch that works with an Android phone, right? Like, they're just not going to do that.”
Frank Chen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 27:29 a16z Podcast | Apple Takes on Payments and Your Wrist
Insight
Chen: Normal historical grid expansion rates can support an all-electric fleet
“So if you added 15 gigawatts every year for 30 years, you could get to 450 gigawatts, which is just about the forecast capacity needed. So it looks like we don't have to do anything incredibly unnatural to get to the electricity production levels that we're go…”
Frank Chen Feb 3, 2018 ▶ 5:06 The Autonomy Ecosystem: Energy (4 of 8)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chen: Traditional car dealerships will vanish as autonomous fleets take over
“If most of us are driven around by fleet operators, we don't buy our own cars, which means, of course, that the car dealerships will vanish.”
Frank Chen Feb 3, 2018 ▶ 7:47 The Autonomy Ecosystem: Energy (4 of 8)
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Chen: Autonomous EV fleets will drive most global miles within years
“In particular, I believe that in a handful of years, we're gonna be driven around in electric cars rather than driving around in our own gas-powered cars. In other words, most of the miles driven on the planet will shift to self-driving electric car fleets as …”
Frank Chen Feb 3, 2018 ▶ 1:25 The Autonomy Ecosystem: Where and How It Begins (1 of 8)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chen: Electric vehicles are expected to last up to one million miles
“As a result, most people expect electric cars to last for 500,000 to a million miles compared to internal combustion engine cars which have an expected lifetime of closer to 200 or 300,000 miles.”
Frank Chen Feb 3, 2018 ▶ 5:12 The Autonomy Ecosystem: Where and How It Begins (1 of 8)
Opinion
Andrew Ng: Worrying about Super AI is like worrying about Mars overpopulation
“Andrew Ng, who is one of the foundation researchers in this area, said, I worry about super AI in exactly the same way that I worry about overpopulation on Mars.”
Frank Chen Dec 8, 2017 ▶ 16:24 AI: What's Working, What's Not
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Frank Chen predicts hundreds of billion-dollar AI augmentation startups will emerge
“And I'm convinced over the next 2030 years, dozens if not hundreds of billion dollar companies will get created building Jiminy Cricket.”
Frank Chen Dec 8, 2017 ▶ 23:15 AI: What's Working, What's Not

Show 24statements(235 left)

The other half of the tape: Frank Chen's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 6 episodes on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sonal Chokshi 3Stuart Butterfield 2Steven Sinofsky 1Alex Rampell 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00326420192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
02420192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
000.821.5420192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (33)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
How to Get the Most from Your Board Jun 14, 2019 5m
How to Understand and Choose a Venture Investor Jun 14, 2019 6m
How to Raise Money from a Venture Investor Jun 14, 2019 6m
What's Next for Esports Startups Jun 7, 2019 4m
Founding Stories: Sandbox VR May 4, 2019 1m
The a16z Pitch Room: Sandbox VR May 3, 2019 2m
Clippy: The Unauthorized Biography Apr 27, 2019 8m
The Future of Decision-Making: 3 Startup Opportunities Apr 13, 2019 6m
Network Effects: Categories & Debates (2 of 3) Mar 30, 2019 2m
3 Ways Startups Are Coming for Established Fintech Companies -- And What To Do About It Mar 9, 2019 8m
What’s with All the Bio M&A in 2019?: A Quick Take Feb 28, 2019 3m
Inside the Apple Factory: Software Design in the Age of Steve Jobs Feb 24, 2019 15m
Better Together: Humanity + Machine Learning Feb 9, 2019 39m
What's Next for Education Startups in 2019 (Part II) Feb 2, 2019 10m
What's Next for Education Startups Jan 10, 2019 8m
a16z Podcast | Self-Driving Cars — Where Are We, Really? Jan 2, 2019 2m
a16z Podcast | Revenge of the Algorithms (Over Data)... Go! No? Jan 2, 2019 11m
a16z Podcast | Companies, Networks, Crowds Jan 2, 2019 3m
a16z Podcast | What Technology Wants, Needs, Does Jan 2, 2019 8m
a16z Podcast | Cars and Cities, the Autonomy Edition Jan 2, 2019 8m
a16z Podcast | Machine Intelligence, from University to Industry Jan 2, 2019 6m
a16z Podcast | New Year, New Horizons -- Pluto! Jan 2, 2019 4m
a16z Podcast | All About Microservices Jan 2, 2019 3m
a16z Podcast | It's Complicated Jan 2, 2019 4m
a16z Podcast | When Humanity Meets A.I. Jan 2, 2019 5m
a16z Podcast | Apple and the Widgetification of Everything Jan 2, 2019 6m
a16z Podcast | The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go Jan 2, 2019 10m
a16z Podcast | Reinventing Insurance Jan 2, 2019 9m
a16z Podcast | Verizon Plus AOL -- Why? -- The Short Answer is Mobile Jan 2, 2019 2m
a16z Podcast | Apple Takes on Payments and Your Wrist Jan 2, 2019 3m
What's Next for Marketplace Startups Dec 21, 2018 10m
10 Years Too Early: On a Tech Career, Business, and Investing Aug 3, 2018 36m
The Autonomy Ecosystem: The Value Chain (3 of 8) Feb 3, 2018 10m

Played on the show (8)

Episodes where a recording of Frank Chen was played rather than Frank taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
Imagining Our Future Through Tech Dec 30, 2019 31m aired address
The Autonomy Ecosystem: Energy (4 of 8) Feb 3, 2018 10m aired address
The Autonomy Ecosystem: Where and How It Begins (1 of 8) Feb 3, 2018 12m aired address
AI: What's Working, What's Not Dec 8, 2017 25m aired address
The Promise of AI Jul 16, 2017 39m aired address
16 Questions About Self Driving Cars Jul 16, 2017 23m aired address
AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer Jul 15, 2017 42m aired address
Quantum Computing: A Primer Jul 15, 2017 24m aired address
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