AI
also referred to as: artificial intelligence
98 statements across 44 episodes · 46 bullish · 23 bearish · 43 people on the record · first statement Nov 13, 2015 by Chris Dixon · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
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brought up most by Pedro Domingos (1)
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2016 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about AI, oldest first
Nov 13, 2015
Dixon: AI is simply human expertise embedded into regular software
“A lot of automation,
Doesn't really look like automation.
It looks like just regular software.
That's a lot of ways what AI really is.
It's sort of taking what smart people do and embedding it in software and giving that software out to lots of people.
and so…”
Aug 30, 2016
Domingos: White-Collar Jobs Like Engineering Are Easier to Automate Than Blue-Collar Work
“So people often think that the easiest jobs to automate are like the blue collar ones. But actually our experience in AI is that it's actually more the opposite. It's often white collar jobs that are easy to automate. For example, things like engineering and, …”
Aug 30, 2016 bearish
Jul 11, 2018 negative
MacAskill: AI creates severe risk when optimizing improperly specified goals
“There's significant risks that the, you develop artificial intelligences where you haven't specified their goals properly, and they don't do what you want. You give them more power, and that results in very bad outcomes because they optimize for what they've b…”
Aug 21, 2018 bullish
Dec 26, 2018 bearish
AI Will Exponentially Exceed Human Intelligence in Hours in New Domains
“Now imagine that computer is unleashed not in the domain of chess, but in other domains. It'll totally recreate everything we know and then go beyond it in hours. So the scary thing with AI is this, that it will become exponentially smarter than we are in minu…”
Dec 26, 2018 bearish
Mar 5, 2019 bearish
Marks: AI developers will thrive while displaced workers face dystopian hardship
“The people who can develop the personless bookstore or the robot will be in great demand, and the people who can create artificial intelligence will be in great demand and very valuable, and they'll all live in a small community just south of San Francisco. An…”
May 28, 2019 positive
Tull rejects the 2-and-20 VC model to build an AI holding company
“So the thesis is basically, it's a holding company. It's not a fund or a, you know, a two and 20 model. It's an operating company. And in the middle of it is Tolco Labs, in which we have a bunch of incredibly talented folks in machine learning and AI and data …”
Oct 27, 2020 neutral
Cubitt: AI Is Math, Not a Sector, and Useless Without Domain Collision
“AI is not a sector.
AI is math.
AI is an algorithm that's enabled by very fast processors with new ways of thinking about how to analyze big sets of data and now smaller and smaller sets.
But AI in and of itself is not that useful.
But AI combined with a subje…”
Mar 23, 2021 bullish
Ridley: The first half of the 21st century will center around biotechnology
“By the way, the message of my argument that we had transport innovations in the 20th century, and then in the first half of the 20th century, and communications innovations in the second half, is that the first half of the 21st century may not be all about com…”
Mar 8, 2022 neutral
McChrystal: AI and Big Data Will Not Solve Intelligence Detection Overload
“Now, some people will say, well, big data will solve this. We use artificial intelligence and we'll crunch and we'll see patterns and trends. And to a degree that will be of help. But I don't think it will be the panacea. I think there will still be too much n…”
Jul 26, 2022 bearish
Tiny avoids capital-intensive sectors to focus on predictable businesses
“Now I really focus on businesses where I think that I can predict the outcome where, with reasonable certainty, and I'm not having to compete with the venture folks. So I don't want to get into AI and drones and, you know, vaccines. I don't want to get into ar…”
Oct 4, 2022 negative
Jan 10, 2023 bearish
Kornfield argues AI and technology cannot solve human-driven conflicts
“Anybody who looks can see That no amount of computers, and artificial intelligence, and space technology, and nanotechnology, and biotechnology, and all that is going to stop continuing warfare, stop racism, stop climate destruction you know, or economic injus…”
May 16, 2023 neutral
Parrish: Independent thinking rises in value as AI commoditizes standard thought
“And that's going to become more valuable because AI, at least at first, is going to give away standard thinking for free. So it'll raise the bar for some people, but it'll be so conventional for independent and original thinkers.”
May 16, 2023 neutral
Kelly: AI-based religions will inevitably emerge first in China and Russia
“It would not surprise me to see
Some new religions based around AI emerging in the kind of vacuum of the waning of the established religions.
And let me say one last thing.
And I would expect it to see these first in China and maybe Russia because they have a …”
May 16, 2023 bullish
May 16, 2023 bullish
May 16, 2023 bearish
Kelly: Bottom-up neural nets will never achieve full AI without top-down control
“That bottom up
Will take you much further than you thought you could go, but will never take you all the way to where you want to go. So Wikipedia, this classic bottom-up thing, over time, there's a more and more top-down editorial control, and eventually, ov…”
May 16, 2023 positive
Kelly: Unpredictable thinking prevents individuals from being imitated by AI
“If you're unpredictable in that way, you're much less likely to be taken over by an AI. You want to live your life in a way that the AI cannot They predict what you're going to do. They cannot kind of fake you or cannot imitate you.”
May 16, 2023 neutral
Kelly: Advanced rogue AI is impossible because complex technology requires IT support
“The fantasy, the Hollywood fantasy of the lone villain on the mountaintop who has all this technology that works, and there's no IT support, it just works the first time, and they can gain control of these very complicated, that's just, it's like dragons. It's…”
May 16, 2023 neutral
Kelly: AI has synthesized pattern recognition but not symbolic reasoning or deduction
“So far we've synthesized basically two varieties, a pattern recognition and a little bit of kind of generative ability. There's this logical deduction
You know, symbolic reason. None of these things have we come close to synthesizing.”
May 16, 2023 positive
Kelly: Aim to be the only, not the best, to resist AI
“Really, what you want to be able to do is to have a style, so to speak, to have something that's unpredictable, that's imitable, that you can't be imitated. And this, again, goes back to my other piece of advice about don't aim to be the best, aim to be the on…”
Aug 8, 2023 bullish
Aug 8, 2023 bearish
Dec 26, 2023
Kelly: To survive AI, aim to be the only, not the best
“Don't aim to be the best, aim to be the only. So if you are in this category that it's hard to imitate you, that's a That's a really good place to be in the human world, and also a really good place to be in the AI world, because AIs will have difficulty in im…”
Mar 5, 2024 bullish
Nov 26, 2024 neutral
Nov 26, 2024 bearish
Holiday: Predictive AI Consistently Fails to Anticipate Sentences by Master Writers
“Never is the AI able to predict the next couple words in that sentence. I've always found that very interesting. And it's a reminder to me that still the act of creative genius of doing Not any sentence, but like the right sentence, the right way with the righ…”
Nov 26, 2024 negative
Nov 26, 2024 neutral
Dec 10, 2024 negative
Jan 21, 2025 bearish
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Lin: Regulate AI applications and consumer deployment, not foundational lab research
“As an example, with the combustion engine, nobody regulated the engine. We regulated what engines can go on the streets, what can go into a plane. We regulated how it was applied. But in a lab, and people were, you know, sort of doing research and trying to ma…”
Mar 4, 2025 positive
Wolfe: AI already detects subtle CEO sentiment and linguistic shifts in earnings
“Already, there are AIs that can not only go through Qs and Ks, 10 Qs and 10 Ks, and can listen to quarterly earnings reports and CEOs that are talking at conferences or on podcasts and can get an emotional sentiment, can see where they're varying their languag…”
Mar 4, 2025 positive
Wolfe: In-Person Human Interactions Will Become Increasingly Scarce and Valuable
“Your reactions right now, I might say something, and you might say, ah, and maybe you actually thought it was profound, or maybe you're like, ah, this is not interesting at all, but there's something authentic, right, about this, and we are reading each other,…”
Mar 4, 2025 neutral
Wolfe: Physical reactions will bottleneck AI-driven scientific breakthroughs
“So, I definitely think that there will be this recursive improvement, but you're still going back to being rate limited by time and biological or chemical reactions. You still need to instantiate this into a physical experiment. And so you can model and simula…”
Mar 4, 2025 positive
Wolfe: AI-Generated Art Should Belong to the Human Prompter
“To your core question, yes, I think that if I do a calculation, and I'm using a calculator instead of like doing math by pencil, that calculation is still an input into my output. If I'm using AI to generate Art and it's my prompt instead of the gesture of my …”
Mar 4, 2025 positive
Mar 4, 2025 bearish
Josh Wolfe: AI will never replicate shared human experience and memories
“And the great human feeling is commiserating about the thing that we experience together, or the memory and laughing hysterically, which I still do with my childhood friends, of this shared moment, and AI will never get that.”
Apr 1, 2025 bullish
Flatt: AI's Real Money Is in Applying It to Business Processes
“Ah, but really what the, where the money is going to be made is the application of artificial intelligence into business. And simply stated that's taking processes in service and industrial businesses And making them more efficient by using advanced robotics w…”
Apr 13, 2025 negative
Apr 15, 2025 bullish
Apr 15, 2025 bullish
Taylor: AI disproportionately benefits sectors where intelligence limits growth
“AI will probably benefit different parts of the economy disproportionately. There will be some parts of the economy that can essentially Where intelligence is a limiting factor to its growth and where you can absorb almost arbitrary levels of intelligence and …”
Apr 15, 2025 neutral
Taylor: Superintelligent AI will not accelerate all industries equally
“The progress in that domain isn't necessarily limited by intelligence but by other social artifacts. So as an example, and I'm not an expert in this area, but if you think about the pharmaceutical industry, my understanding is, you know, the, one of the main b…”
Apr 15, 2025 neutral
Apr 15, 2025 bullish
Taylor: AI will shift intellectual power from deep specialists to cross-domain generalists
“I have a completely personal theory that it will benefit deep generalists in a lot of ways, too, because your ability to understand a fair amount in a lot of domains, and leveraging AI knowing where to prompt the AI to go explore and bringing together those do…”
Apr 15, 2025 positive
Apr 15, 2025 bearish
Taylor: AI agents will rapidly erode legacy seat-based software pricing models
“AI, I think, will change the landscape of software to be tools of productivity that, to agents that actually accomplish tasks, and I think it will Help some companies who, for whom that's a amplifies their existing value proposition and it will really hurt oth…”
Apr 29, 2025 bullish
Garry Tan: AI passing the Turing test will jump to 30% this year
“I think in a lot of domains, and this is sort of the year where, like, Maybe there's, like, five or 10% of things that, like, it's, you know, sort of hitting the Turing test and, you know, really satisfying that, but, you know, I think maybe this is a year whe…”
May 13, 2025 positive
May 13, 2025 neutral
Gil: AI is the only market where learning more decreases predictability
“AI is the only market where the more I learn, the less I know. And in every other market, the more I learn, the more I know, and the more predictive value, or the more I'm able to predict things, and I can't predict anything anymore, you know? I feel like ever…”
May 13, 2025 neutral
May 13, 2025 bullish
May 13, 2025 bullish
Jun 10, 2025 positive
Hastings: Teachers will stop instructing and evolve into social-emotional motivators as AI teaches
“Well, the teacher will evolve to be a little more like a social worker and a motivator so they're not actually giving the instruction in that long-term case. All the AI is doing that, and they're doing the social emotional learning.”
Jun 10, 2025 bullish
Jun 10, 2025 positive
Hastings: Entertainment workers will lose jobs to AI-using producers, not AI
“You're not gonna lose your job to AI, you're gonna lose your job to a producer who uses AI. And, you know, it's a tool for people to use and hopefully everybody will use it and raise the level of performance just as they did with, say, digital filmmaking.”
Jul 8, 2025 bullish
Finkelstein: Shopify expects employees to test AI before hiring additional headcount
“The expectation is before you go and try to hire another person for your team, you ask yourself and you test whether or not some sort of AI tool can actually do it better for you. And if it can, that's what you should be doing.”
Jul 8, 2025 bullish
Finkelstein: AI will allow businesses to reach $100M GMV within three years
“I think you're going to have another step function. Like, I think that you will have this incredible hockey stick curve of businesses that grow from zero to a hundred million dollars in GMB inside of three years, instead of, inside of, like, 10 years.”
Jul 8, 2025 bullish
Finkelstein: Abandoning AI over occasional hallucinations will cause professionals to fall behind
“I think one of the things that you have to have if you're going to be successful in this new era of business and actually in any era with all this new technology is you have to be a techno optimist. You have to believe that things are getting so good at such a…”
Sep 2, 2025 negative
Sep 2, 2025 neutral
Sep 2, 2025 bearish
Sep 2, 2025
Sep 2, 2025 neutral
Evans: AI's impact equals the iPhone, not the Industrial Revolution
“It's funny, my, I suppose my take on AI, controversial take on AI, rather like my controversial take on crypto is being a centrist, in that it seems to me very clear this is like the biggest thing since the iPhone, but I also think it's only the biggest thing …”
Sep 30, 2025 bullish
Diller: The scale of Las Vegas entertainment is impervious to AI disintermediation
“There's no way to disintermediate the experience. I mean, again, if we're in a simulation, we can go into that route, but there's no way as humans, you can find an experience that's going to divert you from all the entertainment offerings that a Las Vegas has …”
Sep 30, 2025
Diller: The early internet was fundamentally easy to master, unlike modern AI
“If you were sitting in 1995 or 2000 at the beginning of the things you did not know, and there were plenty of those, there was nothing that
Cracked your mind and astounded you and said,
oh my god, this is beyond me.
This is magic.
You could master it.
It wasn'…”
Oct 14, 2025 neutral
Cool: AI is increasing tech capital intensity and raising entry barriers
“If you look at the tech businesses, historically, there wasn't a lot of capital required. Google or others, they had network effect and these other dynamics that drove the moat, and so you didn't have capital. Now with AI, that's shifting quite considerably bu…”
Oct 28, 2025 negative
Oct 28, 2025 positive
Parrish: AI-Native Students Now Outproduce Professionals With 15 Years Experience
“There's this weird path where students are coming out and they're more powerful and capable than ever because they use AI by default. And so they can get more output Than somebody who's maybe been in their career, 1520 years.”
Oct 28, 2025 neutral
Scilipoti: Investors Must Master Financial Fundamentals Before Relying on AI
“You need to learn it without the calculator, and then you can use the calculator, which is the same with AI. You need to understand how the financial statements are prepared, understand the linkages, developmental models, so that when the AI gives you informat…”
Oct 28, 2025 neutral
Oct 28, 2025 neutral
Scilipoti: AI Cannot Link Historical Patterns Without Directed Human Mental Models
“And I think that's something that the AI can't quite do, unless you tell it where to look, because it doesn't know the link to it that I'm thinking about. But if I can make the initial stage, it can help me get there quicker. And more accurately, but if I don'…”
Dec 9, 2025 negative
Dec 9, 2025 neutral
Tech competitors battle on specs until someone builds a UI that wins
“The lesson of all tech is that loads and loads of geeks compete through, for technological numerical superiority by some measure or other, And then someone else comes along with a cute user interface and makes all the money. It's basically Steve Jobs. Yeah. No…”
Dec 23, 2025 neutral
Scilipoti: AI information is useless without prior domain expertise and direction
“The AI makes me get to the answer perhaps more quickly, but it's my, if I don't already know where I want to go, then AI just gives me information. But that information doesn't help my decision if I didn't start with where I want to get to.”
Dec 23, 2025 bullish
Parrish: AI-native graduates can outproduce professionals with 20 years of experience
“There's this weird path where students are coming out and they're more powerful and capable than ever because they use AI by default. And so they can get more output Than somebody who's maybe been in their career, 1520 years.”
Dec 23, 2025 bearish
Feb 3, 2026
Ovitz: Founders unable to explain their business in 20 seconds should quit
“If you can't tell me what your business is about in 20 seconds, you should not do your business because how are you going to market it to the world? You've got, and I'm not talking about that technical algorithms of AI. I'm talking about What does it do?”
Feb 17, 2026 positive
Feb 17, 2026 bullish
Feb 17, 2026 neutral
Feb 17, 2026 bearish
Mar 3, 2026 positive
Mar 3, 2026 bullish
Tenev predicts AI mathematical proofs will scale to 100,000 pages in three years
“So, you know, right now, let's say you can easily at low cost produce a proof that's 10 pages long and actually we can produce longer ones, but just as an example per per unit cost and time, you can produce a 10 page proof while in a year it'll get to a hundre…”
Mar 31, 2026 neutral
Mar 31, 2026 positive
Apr 14, 2026 positive
Harik: XPO Uses AI to Summarize Structured Operating Review Meetings
“Depending on the meetings and not, not all of them, we use AI, but any type of structured meeting where we are discussing effectively, say an operating review, we do use AI to both take notes and summarize the meetings. And in many cases we send back out the t…”
Apr 22, 2026 positive
Brockman: Code written without AI is now a vanishing fraction
“It's hard to know what percent of the code is not written by AI. It's a vanishing fraction. The actual Writing of code. Currently, the AI is much better than humans at writing code, given the right context, given the right structure. Now there's parts of the a…”
Apr 22, 2026 bullish
Apr 22, 2026 positive
Brockman: AI Users Need Legal Privilege Protections Similar to Doctors and Lawyers
“You talk to a doctor, you talk to a lawyer, those are privileged conversations, right? You feel comfortable sharing them. There's certain guardrails on when the healthcare provider would have to, you know, provide that information to law enforcement or alert s…”
May 12, 2026 positive
Jun 9, 2026 positive
Jun 9, 2026 positive
Gurley: Outlier founders differentiate through obsessive learning on the technological edge
“I would say that, that a more common trait that's related in the entrepreneurial world is obsessive learning, like constant learning, because the disruptions that allow for the technology waves that allow for companies to be disruptive and take market share fr…”
Jul 21, 2026 positive
Nejatian: AI lowers management needs by collapsing corporate communication barriers
“One, it lowers the need for human management, right? If you look at any company, you end up with these very long tails of managers, managing managers. Before anyone does any actual work. And AI, because it takes the communication barrier down so much, we can s…”