Egg-headed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is an optimist when it comes to artificial intelligence. The reasons for this are well known: through his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the billionaire has invested in a broad array of AI-related ventures, which, he assumes, will both pay dividends and make the world a better place. This week, we found out another reason that Andreessen doesn’t have any worries about the technology: he doesn’t think AI could ever possibly replace him.
During a recent a16z podcast appearance, Andreessen predicted that venture capital (you know, his job) might be one of the last remaining vocations after AI has replaced large swaths of the human labor force.
“Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation,” Andreessen said during the podcast. “So, the great VCs have a success record of getting, you know, two out of 10 or something of the great companies of the decade.”
Andreessen described his job as a nuanced combination of “intangible” skills, including psychological analysis of the entrepreneurs he works with: “A lot of it is psychological analysis, like, ‘Who are these people?’ ‘How do they react under pressure?’ ‘How do you keep them from falling apart?’ ‘How do you keep them from going crazy?’ ‘How do you keep from going crazy yourself?’ You know, you end up being a psychologist half the time.”
“So, it is possible—I don’t want to be definitive—but it’s possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AI is doing everything else, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.”
It’s just funny to hear Andreessen repeat the oft-heard refrain that “technology is awesome and everything, but there’s just no way it could ever do what I do.” This is what people have been telling themselves since forever, and it’s usually right before they lose their job to whatever the current form of automation is. Surely, a powerful future AI of the sort that Marc and his cohort often speak about could, when fed with ample amounts of psychiatric data, swiftly surpass a human VC’s powers of psychological divination, and make informed decisions about how to manage business leaders. Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that people like Andreessen have long been telling everybody AI is capable of doing?
That said, Andreessen’s powers of self-delusion are well known. His Techno-Optimist’s Manifesto, published a few years ago, was another great window into a mind addled by too much cash and too little common sense. If you’re one of Silicon Valley’s Masters of the Universe, I guess having weird, self-serving views just comes with the territory.
