YC Group Partner Jared Friedman reacts to college computer science classes banning AI tools like Cursor and vibe coding.
Insight
Friedman: Worrying about security and privacy limits AI agent power
“It turns out that, like, the thing that was hampering the world was being worried about security and privacy and all the things that could go wrong, and when you, like, worry a bit less, you're like, oh my god, these things are unbelievably powerful.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Friedman: Majority of Software Code Is Probably Already Written by AI Agents
“It's already probably the case that the majority of code being written is written by agents.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Friedman: Tan replicated years of startup work in two weeks using Claude
“I feel like your real feel the AGI moment, Gary, was like getting Claude Code to build basically an entire startup for you, like replicating years of work of your previous startup in like two weeks, which is like insane.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Friedman: Future SOTA Benchmarks May Come From Swarms of Cheaper AI Models
“It might be that like the next stuff that like is soda on benchmarks is not the most expensive newest foundation model with the most like GPU training. It's like a swarm of lower cost cheaper models working together just like humans do to solve a problem.”
Insight
Friedman: Cheap AI makes developers rewrite code rather than debug it
“Like it's wild how your coding style changes when actually writing the code becomes a thousand X cheaper. Like as a human, you would never just like blow away something that you'd worked on for a long time and rewrite it from scratch because you had a bug. You…”
Insight
Friedman: AI coding agents will bullshit founders just like human employees
“The AI agents, incidentally, will do exactly the same thing. They will absolutely, like, The AI agents will bullshit you just like a human employee will if you don't, like, if you're not technical enough to, like, call them out on their bullshit and be like, n…”