A.I. has inspired both frenzied panic and passion since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in 2023. Some think it will turn the world into a utopia, while others think it spells the doom of humankind. Marc Andreessen, billionaire co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, thinks it could go either way. On the Bio Eats World podcast on Tuesday, Andreessen discussed the possibility of A.I. turning the world into a laborless paradise—or maybe an authoritarian hellscape instead.
Andreessen, who is known for his occasional and sometimes prescient essays on tech, published the 7,000-word manifesto “Why AI Will Save the World” in June, predicting a future in which everyone has an A.I. personal assistant and the technology helps decode the laws of nature. He expanded on his theories in his conversation with Vijay Pande on the podcast.
“Productivity growth is the ability of the economy to produce more output with less input, which is literally the economic result of applying technology,” Andreessen said on the podcast. “It's the equivalent of basically giving consumers a raise…and then that spending power is new demand. That new demand leads to the creation of new industries, new products, new jobs, expansion of existing industries.”
In a possible ideal situation, he said, artificial general intelligence (i.e., A.I. that can do anything humans can) would be applied effectively to the economy and its benefits would be distributed across the population. In such a case, U.S. economic growth could soar to 100% annually (compared to 1.5% now). Then the cost of goods would collapse and consumers would have a “cornucopia” of spending power.
However, there are legal barriers to this, he added. It’s illegal to apply new technology to most industries without oversight, and Andreessen said lawyers would be likely to slow rapid economic expansion.
The billionaire also said that A.I. could ameliorate inequality, because capitalism would motivate tech companies to expand to the largest possible market, referencing Elon Musk’s “secret plan” for Tesla to continue expanding its consumer base by making cheaper cars. Likewise, Andreessen predicted that A.I. companies would try to make the tech available to as many people as possible to maximize reach and profitability. According to him, that could improve standards of living globally.
Despite being highly optimistic about A.I.’s future, the venture capitalist acknowledged a darker timeline. He said he fears that China could use A.I. for world domination if the West doesn’t develop it competitively enough.
“[The] Chinese Communist Party has a very specific vision for how A.I. is to be used, they talk about it publicly,” Andreessen said. “They're gonna hand a lot of other authoritarian rulers the technology to basically run a perpetual A.I.-enforced authoritarian state.”
Andreessen, who created Mosaic, one of the first widely used web browsers, said that the world is at a crossroads, and the West has to fight to maintain democracy.
“What is the future shape of the world that we're gonna live in? Is it going to be a free world or authoritarian world?” Andreessen asked.
The billionaire said that the West needs to preserve the American tenets of freedom and democracy, and to do that needs to have winning technology. The A.I. that disseminates across the globe can either carry authoritarian or American ideals, he explained, and the U.S. has to be proactive to ensure it’s the latter.
“The logic of Washington is to just attack U.S. tech companies,” Andreessen said. “It's a fine and good, fun game for a while to attack yourself, but if there is this other kind of force out there, at some point, there's big decisions to be made.”
