Andreessen uses AI to steelman both sides of controversial issues
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen & Amjad Masad on “Good Enough” AI, AGI, and the End of Coding · Oct 23, 2025 · at 47:19
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), explains how he prompts advanced AI models to reason through polarized debates.
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“Here's the thing I do a lot with this, is I just say, like, take, take a provocative point of view and then steel man the position. Take your COVID thing. Steel man, so I often, I have a pair of these. Steel man the position that it was a lab leak and then steel man the position that it was natural origins. And again, like, is this creativity or not? I don't know, but like what comes back is like 30 pages each of like, wow. Like, that is, like, the most compelling case in the world I can imagine with, like, every, you know, everything marshalled against it, like, the argument structured in, like, the most possible way.”
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