Marc Andreessen says the fear of AI eliminating work on a massive scale is misplaced, arguing that the technology is set to expand productivity and ultimately lift jobs and incomes.
In a new Cheeky Pint interview, the co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) says that the AI doomsday view, where automation leaves workers behind and power concentrates into a handful of corporations, is a false narrative.
Andreessen says he subscribes to the conventional view of economics, where AI is seen as a massive productivity booster, benefiting companies while also driving employment growth.
“When you put a technology in the hands of an individual, that massively increases their productivity. And the way I think about that is AI just makes every individual a super PhD in every topic. That’s like the most dramatic increase in what economists call marginal productivity of the worker that has ever existed.
And so as a consequence, every single one of those people is now capable of doing so much more than they were ever capable of doing before, whether they’re doing that as like a solo entrepreneur or whether they’re doing that as somebody who works in an organization. And so in that version of the world, you don’t get the aggregating effects. You get some, but they’re swamped by the democratization superpowers that every individual gets.”
Andreessen says that within a decade, AI will create jobs that don’t exist today, driving major employment and income gains.
“And we will be shocked by how much AI drove both employment growth and drove incomes. Because again, the conventional economic view is marginal productivity improvements, like you want to hire more people at higher levels of productivity because they can do more, and then you pay them a lot more because they can.”
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