Hayes: Useful technology and lucrative technology are fundamentally distinct
Chris Hayes · AI Content and the War for Your Attention · Jul 30, 2025 · at 14:55
Chris Hayes, MSNBC host and author, discusses the misaligned economic incentives of modern technology products while on The a16z Podcast.
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“We tend to conflate, particularly in this era, like, useful tech and lucrative tech, and those are not, like, there's technologies that are incredibly useful that are not particularly lucrative, like penicillin right now, like antibiotics are not, it's not, no one's making enormous fortunes off them. Even solar power, which is arguably the most useful technology of our age is a perfectly profitable enterprise, but no one's making, like, You know, Rockefeller fortunes off of solar right now. And then there's tech technologies that are incredibly lucrative, but not particularly socially useful.”
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