Andrew Ng
Managing General Partner, AI Fund · 1 appearance on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
scientistfounderinvestoracademicauthorengineer@AndrewYNg ↗LinkedIn ↗andrewng.org ↗Wikipedia ↗
Andrew Ng is a computer scientist who co-founded Google Brain, served as Chief Scientist at Baidu, and co-founded Coursera. He currently leads AI Fund, an early-stage venture studio, and directs DeepLearning.AI to provide online machine learning education.
33statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 3.76/5average certainty → 2.82/5average debate potential → 4said about them ↓
3 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 1 assertion · 9 opinions · 16 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 3 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.
Everything Andrew Ng said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Ng: Advising people not to learn to code is terrible career advice
“Over the last year, a bunch of people have advised others not to learn to code on the ground so AI will automate it. I think we'll look back on this as some of the worst career advice ever given, because as better tools make software engineering easier, more p…”
Ng: Employees across every job role should learn how to code
“I have a controversial opinion, which is, ah, I think it's time for everyone of every job role to learn to code, and in fact, on my team, you know, my CFO, my head of talent, my recruiters, my front desk person, all of them know how to code, and I actually see…”
Ng: AI existential risk claims are ridiculous hype used to aid fundraising
“This idea that AI is so powerful, we might accidentally lead to human extinction. That's just ridiculous, but it is a hype narrative that made certain businesses look more powerful, and it got Yeah, ramped up and actually help certain businesses fundraising go…”
Ng: Sensationalized AI danger hype is being weaponized against open-source software
“And I feel like this has been used as a weapon against open source software as well, right? Which is really unfortunate.”
Ng: California's SB 1047 would have harmed open-source AI without improving safety
“So I think typing up dangers, supposed false dangers of AI, in order to get regulators to pass laws, like the proposed SB-SB-Ten-Forty-Seven in California, which, thank goodness, we shut down, Would have put in place really burdensome regulatory requirements t…”
Ng: AI companies have made untrue statements to regulators behind closed doors
“I've been in the room where some of these businesses said stuff to regulators that was just not true.”
Ng: The biggest AI economic opportunities must be at the application layer
“And even though a lot of the PR excitement and hype has been on these technology layers, it turns out that almost by definition, the biggest opportunities have to be at the application layer. Because we actually need the applications to generate even more reve…”
Ng: Agentic AI is the most important technology trend in artificial intelligence
“And in terms of AI tech trends, if you ask me what's the most important tech trend in AI, I would say Is the rise of agentic AI.”
Ng: Subject matter expert intuition beats slow data for startup decisions
“Getting data for a lot of startups is a slow mechanism for making decisions. And a subject matter expert with a good gut is often a much better mechanism for making a speedy decision.”
Ng: Code itself is becoming much less valuable as engineering costs drop
“One surprising thing is, we're used to thinking of code as this really valuable artifact because it's so hard to create, but because the cost of software engineering is going down, code is much less of a valuable artifact as it used to.”
Ng's teams rebuilt a codebase three times in one month using AI
“So I'm on teams where, you know, we've completely rebuilt the code base three times in the last month, right? Because it's not that hard anymore to just completely rebuild the code base, pick a new data schemer, it's fine, because the cost of doing that has pl…”
Ng: AI turns software architecture decisions into reversible two-way doors
“So choosing the software architecture of your tech stack used to be a one-way door. Once you're built on top of a certain tech stack, you know, set a database schema, really hard to change it. So that used to be a one-way door. I don't want to say it's totally…”
Ng: Product management is becoming the software bottleneck as engineering accelerates
“With software engineering becoming much faster, the other interesting dynamic I'm seeing is that the product management work, getting user feedback, deciding what features to build, that is increasingly the bottleneck.”
Ng: One project team proposed staffing twice as many PMs as engineers
“So literally yesterday, one of my teams came to me, and for the first time, when we're planning a head comfort project, this team proposed to me not to have one PM to four engineers, but to have one PM to 0.5 engineers. So the team actually proposed to me. I s…”
Ng: New foundation models will not casually wipe out thousands of startups
“We're so powerful that by training a new model, we will casually wipe out thousands of startups. That's just not true. Yes, Jasper ran into trouble, small number of companies got wiped out, but it's not that easy to casually wipe out Thousands of startups.”
Ng: AI safety is a function of the application, not the technology
“Safety is not a function of technology. It's a function of how we apply it. So like electric motor, you know, You can't, the maker of electric motor can't guarantee that no one will ever use it for an unsafe downstream task. Like using electric, electric motor…”
Ng: Agentic workflows determine whether AI applications work or fail
“So for a lot of the projects that AI fund has worked on, everything from pulling out complex compliance documents, to medical diagnosis, to reasoning about complex legal documents, we found that these agentic workflows are really a huge difference between work…”
Ng: AI coding makes prototyping 10x faster, production only 50% faster
“When writing production quality code, maybe we're at 30 to 50% faster with AI systems. Hard to find a rigorous number. Maybe. Be as plausible to me. But in terms of building quick and dirty prototypes, we're not 50% faster. I think we're easily 10 times faster…”
Ng: Engineering teams should write insecure code for local prototypes
“I routinely go to my teams and say, go ahead, write insecure code, because if this software is only going to run on your laptop, and if you don't plan to maliciously hack your own laptop, It's fine to have insecure code, right? But of course, after it seems to…”
Ng: A/B testing is now one of the slowest product feedback tactics
“And I know Silicon Valley, you know, we like to talk about A-B testing. Of course, I do a ton of A-B testing, but contrary to what many people think, A-B testing is now one of the slowest tactics in my menu, because it's just slow to ship it.”
Ng: AGI is overhyped; humans will outperform AI for a long time
“I feel like AGI has been overhyped.
And so for a long time, there'll be a lot of things that humans can do that AI cannot.”
Ng: AI compute does not exclusively require nuclear power
“AI needs so much electricity, only nuclear power is good enough for that. You know, that wind, solar stuff, not, this is not true.”
Ng: Startup moats are overhyped and evolve after launching a loved product
“I find that moats tend to be overhyped, actually. I find that more businesses tend to start up with a product and then evolve eventually into a moat.”
Ng: Early-stage startups should not worry about API token costs
“My most common advice to developers is to first approximation. Just don't worry about how much tokens cost. Only a small number of startups are lucky enough to have users use so much of your product that the cost of tokens becomes a problem.”
The other half of the tape: Andrew Ng's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Andrej Karpathy 2Jake Heller 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI · Y Combinator | Jul 10, 2025 | 37m |