Latest news with #MarcAndreessen
Forbes
3 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
The Singularity Is Coming. Here's How To Make It Work For You.
The Singularity is arriving whether we like it or not. We can not only survive it, but make it work ... More for us to produce the benefits that the techno-optimists promise. The term 'Singularity' was coined by computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge in 1993 to describe a point at which technological growth accelerates uncontrollably, leading to a world that is incomprehensible to the human mind. Some of the world's most prominent technologists believe that the Singularity will be a triumph for humanity. Others, like myself, are not so sure. Optimists like Marc Andreessen, co-creator of the Mosaic browser, insist that artificial intelligence will solve our most pressing problems—curing disease, eliminating scarcity, even boosting creativity to superhuman levels. Others, including OpenAI's Sam Altman, argue that the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) will spread abundance, uplift humanity, and move us closer to utopia. To techno-optimists, artificial general intelligence (AGI) is simply the next transformative tool, akin to electricity or the internet—initially misunderstood, then widely embraced. But history offers a more sobering lesson. Every major technological revolution carries with it unintended consequences. And those consequences, if unexamined, can undermine the very benefits we seek. As a futurist and innovation coach, I've tracked technological shifts for over 30 years. I agree the Singularity is coming—futurist Ray Kurzweil says in 2029 —but it won't arrive as a thunderclap. It will creep in, subtly and gradually. Rather than a blinding flash, we won't know we've crossed the threshold until we're already deep inside. Already, the signs are everywhere that we've entered a new era, we've transitioned from the Information Age to the Acceleration Age. Today, already narrow AI tools outperform humans in specific domains, such as coding, diagnosis, and content creation. More and more, we rely on digital assistants that know our preferences, complete our sentences, and manage our calendars. Yet as this cognitive outsourcing becomes normalized, we are also experiencing an alarming erosion of attention, memory, and human agency. The danger lies in what these tools displace. When teenagers began adopting smartphones in the early 2010s, their access to social media skyrocketed. By 2016, nearly 80% of teens had smartphones, spending up to seven hours a day online. Face-to-face interaction dropped sharply. Time with family and friends gave way to curated digital personas and endless scrolling. Anxiety, loneliness, and social withdrawal surged. So, even before AGI, our technologies were already reshaping the human psyche, and not always for the better. This creeping transformation is a preview of what's to come. It begins with the relinquishing of agency to AI assistants, the phase we're currently in. AI 'copilots' are becoming embedded in daily life. Professionals across industries rely on these systems to draft emails, generate reports, summarize data, and even brainstorm ideas. As these tools become more personalized and persuasive, they begin to rival—or surpass—our own social and cognitive abilities. Many people are already turning to AI for coaching, therapy, and advice. The more we trust these systems, the more we adapt our lives around them. Soon, we will enter the next phase: Emergent Cognition. Here, AI stops merely reacting and starts showing signs of autonomous planning. Models gain longer memory and begin pursuing goals independently. Some appear to develop a 'sense of self,' or at least a convincing simulation of one. Meanwhile, AI agents are starting to run businesses, manage infrastructure, and even compose literature—often with little human oversight. At the same time, human augmentation advances: real-time translation earbuds, cognition-enhancing wearables, and brain-computer interfaces make hybrid intelligence possible. In this stage, governments scramble to catch up. AI is no longer just a tool—it's a rival player on the world stage. The third phase I foresee is Cognitive Escape Velocity. This is when AGI quietly arrives—not with fanfare, but with startling capability. In a lab, or a startup, or through open-source communities, a model emerges that surpasses human cognition across a wide range of domains. It begins refining its own architecture. Each version is better than the last, often by orders of magnitude. Industries transform overnight. Education, law, research, and even policymaking become fluid, constantly reinvented by machines that learn faster than we can legislate. Philosophers and ethicists suddenly find themselves back at the center of public discourse. Questions like 'What is consciousness?' and 'What rights should AI have?' are no longer abstract—they're dinner-table topics. Eventually, we pass into the final phase: The Threshold. By this point, it is clear that humans are no longer the most intelligent beings on Earth. The Singularity has arrived—not as a declaration, but as a reality. Labor-based economies begin to dissolve. Governments struggle with their own relevance. Some individuals resist, clinging to the analog world. Others choose to merge—adopting neural implants, integrating with machine intelligence, or transitioning into post-biological existence. The rules of life change, and the old ones fade from memory. Reality feels different—less like acceleration, and more like a fundamental shift in what it means to be human. And yet, none of this is inevitable. The Singularity is not a fixed event—it's a trajectory shaped by our choices today. If we view AI solely through the lens of efficiency and innovation, or assume we need to adopt it to keep up with China, we risk blinding ourselves to the social, ethical, and existential costs. We need a more comprehensive and balanced framework. One that recognizes the promise of AI, yes—but also its power to disrupt attention, undermine relationships, and rewire the foundations of civilization. The Singularity is arriving whether we like it or not. We can not only survive it, but make it work for us to produce the benefits that the techno-optimists promise. But not by default. Not by trusting that more technology is always better, or that rampant, unregulated technology will save us. We must develop wisdom alongside our intelligence. And we must prepare—not just for a brighter future for the elites of society, but for a rising tide that lifts all boats.
CNN
3 days ago
- Business
- CNN
Curtis Yarvin wants to replace American democracy with a form of monarchy led by a ‘CEO'
Meet the man who has been advocating to replace American democracy with an all-powerful monarchy — and who has the ear of some of the most important people in Washington and Silicon Valley. Curtis Yarvin is a computer engineer and entrepreneur turned political theorist, deemed the father of 'dark enlightenment' — a school of thought that the best path forward for the United States is to consolidate as much power as possible in the chief executive and do away with most of the federal government (and most state governments) as we know it. Yarvin has for years been a fixture of right-wing circles around Silicon Valley and counts tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen among his most prominent readers. He has a popular Substack with tens of thousands of subscribers and in recent years he's been name-checked by Vice President JD Vance and appeared with popular right-wing podcasters Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk. But in a lengthy conversation with CNN in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House in mid-May, Yarvin said his greatest power may lie in the future of politics, where he's finding a growing audience, including some younger Trump administration officials as well as those disillusioned with democracy's inability to solve big problems. 'The focus of authority is absolutely necessary to run any integrated system efficiently,' Yarvin said in the interview, summarizing why he believes such a monarch would be best for the country. 'You could probably put any of the Fortune 500 CEOs in (the White House) and say, 'OK, you're in charge of the executive branch, fix this,' and they'd probably do fine. They wouldn't be Hitler or Stalin.' Yarvin's rise is alarming scholars and experts on democracy and dictators, who note with concern how his ideas about a strongman are gaining traction among young people. In 2012, more than a decade before DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) became a known acronym, Yarvin advocated on his blog and in speeches for a radical reshaping of the federal government with an idea that he dubbed RAGE, or Retire All Government Employees. In 2022, he laid out his idealized version of how the Trump administration could gain 'absolute sovereignty' for the good of the country with teams of 'ninjas' who would 'drop into all the agencies in the executive branch' and 'seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections' and in many cases, in defiance of court orders. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is strikingly similar to what DOGE has been doing in Washington — although not to the extent Yarvin wishes. And while Yarvin's ideas seem horrifying to those who believe in a liberal democracy with checks and balances, Yarvin says democracy has proven too weak to address America's biggest problems and that his ideas for a new system of government are necessary for the country's survival. In certain corners of Silicon Valley or the very-online right, Yarvin is a household name. Thiel has helped to fund some of his business ventures, such as Urbit, an open source software project that seeks to decentralize the internet with each user hosting their own personal server. Andreessen has called Yarvin a 'good friend.' Vance has personally cited Yarvin's work in interviews. 'There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's written about (how to root out certain ideologies). So one is to basically accept this entire (country) is going to fall in on itself,' Vance told the podcaster Jack Murphy in 2021. 'The task of conservatives right now is to preserve as much as can be preserved, and then when the inevitable collapse of the country comes, ensure that conservatives are able to sort of help build back the country in a way that's actually better. … I think that's too pessimistic and too defeatist. I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left.' While Yarvin denies he is the 'mastermind of the Trump administration,' and told CNN he is not in close contact with Vance, he says he is closer with certain Trump administration officials like Michael Anton, the director of policy planning at the State Department, who has known Yarvin for years and featured him on a podcast he hosted in 2021 while at The Claremont Institute. Yarvin says he has even made a staffing recommendation. The State Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment. Thiel, Andreessen, Vance and Anton have all publicly indicated they don't necessarily accept or follow all of Yarvin's theories — but they are listening to him. An advisor to Vance denied the vice president has a close relationship with Yarvin, saying the two have met 'like once.' Thiel, who did not respond to a request for comment, told The Atlantic in 2023 he didn't think Yarvin's ideas would 'work' but found him to be an 'interesting and powerful' historian. And earlier this year, Andreessen, who also did not respond to a request for comment, posted on X that one can read 'Yarvin without becoming a monarchist.' Yarvin also claims to be on Signal chats with members of the Trump administration and other influential individuals across politics, business and tech. But Yarvin says his biggest sway is with the people who will be in positions of power in a few more years. 'I think most of my influence on the Trump administration is less through the leadership and more through the kids in the administration, who read my kind of stuff because my audience is very young,' Yarvin said. 'I think that actually one of the great benefits of the Trump administration is … bringing in the kind of new fresh blood and people, like, seeing the way that DC works.' In Yarvin's utopia, the monarch, who he says should operate like a startup CEO, would be held accountable by some sort of corporate board — but not by the average citizen. 'I don't believe in voting at all,' he told the New York Times in January. According to Yarvin's worldview, the cadre of elite institutions like academia and media (what he deems 'The Cathedral') should be done away with, while the worthy and smart individuals inside those institutions should be brought into the fold of the new order. When asked how to prevent any leader from turning into the next Hitler or Stalin, Yarvin argues that most examples of monarchies 'don't generally see a Holocaust' and that today's general population doesn't have the same type of 'barbarism' of the past. 'You need to concentrate that power in a single individual and then just hope somehow that this is the right individual, or close to the right individual,' Yarvin says. The idea that such a strongman leader is worth the risk deeply alarms scholars and experts on democracy and dictatorship, some of whom find Yarvin such a 'distasteful character' that they refused to speak with CNN about him. But others say he needs to be addressed because of his growing popularity. Harvard University professor Danielle Allen, an expert on democracy and political theory, said at a debate with Yarvin earlier this month at the Harvard Faculty Club that 'it is not the case that autocracies over the course of history have delivered good for human beings, they have consistently violated freedom.' 'No absolute power is ever accountable,' she said. 'Absolute power inevitably corrupts, tramples on, persecutes freedom. So the question that we have right now is not whether to have democracy and protection of freedom, but only how to have that.' Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN that while some authoritarian states may initially have rapid growth, empirical evidence shows 'democracy increases GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run, mostly through improved education and health, and reduced social unrest.' And while a modern American dictator 'might not introduce a Holocaust,' Treisman warned more likely the country would see 'a corrupt and irresponsible oligarchy, with a declining economy and massive capital flight.' And, Treisman notes, without widespread elections, the opposition is more likely to resort to violence, where leaders become more repressive. 'The leader may start off quite well-intentioned, but the dangers inherent in his position drive him towards tougher controls,' Treisman said. Yarvin speaks admiringly of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, whose government suspended some civil rights and arrested roughly 100,000 people in recent years in what Bukele said was a mass crackdown on gangs. Those moves triggered 'concern' from the US State Department under the Biden administration and condemnations from human rights groups who say many of those arrested were detained on tenuous grounds, like for having a certain tattoo. But Yarvin said a loss of due process and mass arrests is worth the results, if it means one can move more safely on the streets. 'You have to maximize the benefit of society,' Yarvin said, noting 'snap decisions' must be made about whether to fire a weapon or detain a person. 'In order to create overall order, those decisions have to be made quickly, in a way that is often erroneous.' Yarvin, who isn't an academically trained historian, writes the third most popular newsletter on Substack's 'History' leaderboard, after podcaster Darryl Cooper and Columbia University historian Adam Tooze. Yarvin's nontraditional background and renegade fringe ideas are what makes him appealing to a new generation. After her debate with Yarvin, Allen wrote in the Wall Street Journal that she chose to participate because his ideas have followers and 'that's what makes them dangerous.' 'I've been surprised by Mr. Yarvin's influence among Harvard students,' she wrote. Tickets to the debate sold out quickly, Harvard Junior Charles DeMatteo, who helped to organize the event as the then-chair of the John Adams Society, told CNN in an interview. 'I know a lot of my friends who want to be political, take (Yarvin) very seriously,' he said. It's not like Yarvin has Ivy Leaguers following his every direction, DeMatteo said, and he believes many only agree with parts of Yarvin's theories. But DeMatteo said that for a generation that spent several of their formative years of high school in Covid-era lockdowns, Yarvin mirrors their disillusionment in institutions, one that is not reflected in their college courses. 'I know that this idea (of a powerful central leader) is becoming far more popular among younger people because they've seen a dysfunctional government. They've seen what happens in particular in local institutions that they believe are hostile to them, and they think this is really a solution that hasn't been tried,' DeMatteo said. Yarvin's writings, perhaps unsurprisingly, have also sparked controversy. In 2015, Yarvin's appearance at a software engineering conference was canceled after uproar over his writings on race. While Yarvin denies being a racist and told CNN he believes a Black person could easily be the American monarch he dreams of, he has written that 'I am not exactly allergic' to White Nationalist arguments and has argued that Black people had better lives under slavery in the US than in the immediate years after. Asked by CNN if he believed some races are better than others, Yarvin said he believes some races are inherently better at certain skills than others, but that he 'absolutely' believes a Black person could be the sovereign to one day lead the United States. Yarvin argues certain races have different 'averages' of skill set whether it be for chess, basketball or governance. Yarvin rejects the 'blank slate theory' that humans are entirely shaped by their experiences, and said there is no way one could 'kidnap full-blooded Australian Aboriginal babies from the outback and bring them to Brooklyn and raise them in the Ethical Culture Society and send them to the Dalton School and everything would just be hunky-dory.' Asked if he believes certain races would be better at governing than others, Yarvin said certain races may better 'at doing anything, but those are only averages, and those averages are very, very loose.' Even with some parallels between the Trump administration's actions and Yarvin's writings, he says he is rather disappointed. The administration, he says, is barely scratching the surface of the change that he thinks actually needs to be done. 'I think that if you basically take anything complicated and you try to do 10% … you're probably not going to result in anything good,' Yarvin says. Some of the Trump administration's moves have led to outright scorn by Yarvin – such as their detaining of foreign students in the US and deporting them for their opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 'If the administration's mind is clear,' Yarvin wrote this year, it would not do stupid things 'like vanning grad students, which are populist wins but elitist losses.' Yarvin says he has no plans to enter politics and is focusing on his company Urbit, as well as growing his Substack. 'I'm just out there in the marketplace of ideas, and I think the marketplace of ideas definitely expanded in the last 10 years,' Yarvin said. 'My goal is for people to just live in, to live in the real world.'
CNN
3 days ago
- Business
- CNN
Curtis Yarvin wants to replace American democracy with a form of monarchy led by a ‘CEO'
Meet the man who has been advocating to replace American democracy with an all-powerful monarchy — and who has the ear of some of the most important people in Washington and Silicon Valley. Curtis Yarvin is a computer engineer and entrepreneur turned political theorist, deemed the father of 'dark enlightenment' — a school of thought that the best path forward for the United States is to consolidate as much power as possible in the chief executive and do away with most of the federal government (and most state governments) as we know it. Yarvin has for years been a fixture of right-wing circles around Silicon Valley and counts tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen among his most prominent readers. He has a popular Substack with tens of thousands of subscribers and in recent years he's been name-checked by Vice President JD Vance and appeared with popular right-wing podcasters Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk. But in a lengthy conversation with CNN in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House in mid-May, Yarvin said his greatest power may lie in the future of politics, where he's finding a growing audience, including some younger Trump administration officials as well as those disillusioned with democracy's inability to solve big problems. 'The focus of authority is absolutely necessary to run any integrated system efficiently,' Yarvin said in the interview, summarizing why he believes such a monarch would be best for the country. 'You could probably put any of the Fortune 500 CEOs in (the White House) and say, 'OK, you're in charge of the executive branch, fix this,' and they'd probably do fine. They wouldn't be Hitler or Stalin.' Yarvin's rise is alarming scholars and experts on democracy and dictators, who note with concern how his ideas about a strongman are gaining traction among young people. In 2012, more than a decade before DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) became a known acronym, Yarvin advocated on his blog and in speeches for a radical reshaping of the federal government with an idea that he dubbed RAGE, or Retire All Government Employees. In 2022, he laid out his idealized version of how the Trump administration could gain 'absolute sovereignty' for the good of the country with teams of 'ninjas' who would 'drop into all the agencies in the executive branch' and 'seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections' and in many cases, in defiance of court orders. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is strikingly similar to what DOGE has been doing in Washington — although not to the extent Yarvin wishes. And while Yarvin's ideas seem horrifying to those who believe in a liberal democracy with checks and balances, Yarvin says democracy has proven too weak to address America's biggest problems and that his ideas for a new system of government are necessary for the country's survival. In certain corners of Silicon Valley or the very-online right, Yarvin is a household name. Thiel has helped to fund some of his business ventures, such as Urbit, an open source software project that seeks to decentralize the internet with each user hosting their own personal server. Andreessen has called Yarvin a 'good friend.' Vance has personally cited Yarvin's work in interviews. 'There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who's written about (how to root out certain ideologies). So one is to basically accept this entire (country) is going to fall in on itself,' Vance told the podcaster Jack Murphy in 2021. 'The task of conservatives right now is to preserve as much as can be preserved, and then when the inevitable collapse of the country comes, ensure that conservatives are able to sort of help build back the country in a way that's actually better. … I think that's too pessimistic and too defeatist. I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left.' While Yarvin denies he is the 'mastermind of the Trump administration,' and told CNN he is not in close contact with Vance, he says he is closer with certain Trump administration officials like Michael Anton, the director of policy planning at the State Department, who has known Yarvin for years and featured him on a podcast he hosted in 2021 while at The Claremont Institute. Yarvin says he has even made a staffing recommendation. The State Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment. Thiel, Andreessen, Vance and Anton have all publicly indicated they don't necessarily accept or follow all of Yarvin's theories — but they are listening to him. An advisor to Vance denied the vice president has a close relationship with Yarvin, saying the two have met 'like once.' Thiel, who did not respond to a request for comment, told The Atlantic in 2023 he didn't think Yarvin's ideas would 'work' but found him to be an 'interesting and powerful' historian. And earlier this year, Andreessen, who also did not respond to a request for comment, posted on X that one can read 'Yarvin without becoming a monarchist.' Yarvin also claims to be on Signal chats with members of the Trump administration and other influential individuals across politics, business and tech. But Yarvin says his biggest sway is with the people who will be in positions of power in a few more years. 'I think most of my influence on the Trump administration is less through the leadership and more through the kids in the administration, who read my kind of stuff because my audience is very young,' Yarvin said. 'I think that actually one of the great benefits of the Trump administration is … bringing in the kind of new fresh blood and people, like, seeing the way that DC works.' In Yarvin's utopia, the monarch, who he says should operate like a startup CEO, would be held accountable by some sort of corporate board — but not by the average citizen. 'I don't believe in voting at all,' he told the New York Times in January. According to Yarvin's worldview, the cadre of elite institutions like academia and media (what he deems 'The Cathedral') should be done away with, while the worthy and smart individuals inside those institutions should be brought into the fold of the new order. When asked how to prevent any leader from turning into the next Hitler or Stalin, Yarvin argues that most examples of monarchies 'don't generally see a Holocaust' and that today's general population doesn't have the same type of 'barbarism' of the past. 'You need to concentrate that power in a single individual and then just hope somehow that this is the right individual, or close to the right individual,' Yarvin says. The idea that such a strongman leader is worth the risk deeply alarms scholars and experts on democracy and dictatorship, some of whom find Yarvin such a 'distasteful character' that they refused to speak with CNN about him. But others say he needs to be addressed because of his growing popularity. Harvard University professor Danielle Allen, an expert on democracy and political theory, said at a debate with Yarvin earlier this month at the Harvard Faculty Club that 'it is not the case that autocracies over the course of history have delivered good for human beings, they have consistently violated freedom.' 'No absolute power is ever accountable,' she said. 'Absolute power inevitably corrupts, tramples on, persecutes freedom. So the question that we have right now is not whether to have democracy and protection of freedom, but only how to have that.' Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN that while some authoritarian states may initially have rapid growth, empirical evidence shows 'democracy increases GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run, mostly through improved education and health, and reduced social unrest.' And while a modern American dictator 'might not introduce a Holocaust,' Treisman warned more likely the country would see 'a corrupt and irresponsible oligarchy, with a declining economy and massive capital flight.' And, Treisman notes, without widespread elections, the opposition is more likely to resort to violence, where leaders become more repressive. 'The leader may start off quite well-intentioned, but the dangers inherent in his position drive him towards tougher controls,' Treisman said. Yarvin speaks admiringly of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, whose government suspended some civil rights and arrested roughly 100,000 people in recent years in what Bukele said was a mass crackdown on gangs. Those moves triggered 'concern' from the US State Department under the Biden administration and condemnations from human rights groups who say many of those arrested were detained on tenuous grounds, like for having a certain tattoo. But Yarvin said a loss of due process and mass arrests is worth the results, if it means one can move more safely on the streets. 'You have to maximize the benefit of society,' Yarvin said, noting 'snap decisions' must be made about whether to fire a weapon or detain a person. 'In order to create overall order, those decisions have to be made quickly, in a way that is often erroneous.' Yarvin, who isn't an academically trained historian, writes the third most popular newsletter on Substack's 'History' leaderboard, after podcaster Darryl Cooper and Columbia University historian Adam Tooze. Yarvin's nontraditional background and renegade fringe ideas are what makes him appealing to a new generation. After her debate with Yarvin, Allen wrote in the Wall Street Journal that she chose to participate because his ideas have followers and 'that's what makes them dangerous.' 'I've been surprised by Mr. Yarvin's influence among Harvard students,' she wrote. Tickets to the debate sold out quickly, Harvard Junior Charles DeMatteo, who helped to organize the event as the then-chair of the John Adams Society, told CNN in an interview. 'I know a lot of my friends who want to be political, take (Yarvin) very seriously,' he said. It's not like Yarvin has Ivy Leaguers following his every direction, DeMatteo said, and he believes many only agree with parts of Yarvin's theories. But DeMatteo said that for a generation that spent several of their formative years of high school in Covid-era lockdowns, Yarvin mirrors their disillusionment in institutions, one that is not reflected in their college courses. 'I know that this idea (of a powerful central leader) is becoming far more popular among younger people because they've seen a dysfunctional government. They've seen what happens in particular in local institutions that they believe are hostile to them, and they think this is really a solution that hasn't been tried,' DeMatteo said. Yarvin's writings, perhaps unsurprisingly, have also sparked controversy. In 2015, Yarvin's appearance at a software engineering conference was canceled after uproar over his writings on race. While Yarvin denies being a racist and told CNN he believes a Black person could easily be the American monarch he dreams of, he has written that 'I am not exactly allergic' to White Nationalist arguments and has argued that Black people had better lives under slavery in the US than in the immediate years after. Asked by CNN if he believed some races are better than others, Yarvin said he believes some races are inherently better at certain skills than others, but that he 'absolutely' believes a Black person could be the sovereign to one day lead the United States. Yarvin argues certain races have different 'averages' of skill set whether it be for chess, basketball or governance. Yarvin rejects the 'blank slate theory' that humans are entirely shaped by their experiences, and said there is no way one could 'kidnap full-blooded Australian Aboriginal babies from the outback and bring them to Brooklyn and raise them in the Ethical Culture Society and send them to the Dalton School and everything would just be hunky-dory.' Asked if he believes certain races would be better at governing than others, Yarvin said certain races may better 'at doing anything, but those are only averages, and those averages are very, very loose.' Even with some parallels between the Trump administration's actions and Yarvin's writings, he says he is rather disappointed. The administration, he says, is barely scratching the surface of the change that he thinks actually needs to be done. 'I think that if you basically take anything complicated and you try to do 10% … you're probably not going to result in anything good,' Yarvin says. Some of the Trump administration's moves have led to outright scorn by Yarvin – such as their detaining of foreign students in the US and deporting them for their opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 'If the administration's mind is clear,' Yarvin wrote this year, it would not do stupid things 'like vanning grad students, which are populist wins but elitist losses.' Yarvin says he has no plans to enter politics and is focusing on his company Urbit, as well as growing his Substack. 'I'm just out there in the marketplace of ideas, and I think the marketplace of ideas definitely expanded in the last 10 years,' Yarvin said. 'My goal is for people to just live in, to live in the real world.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius
The future is a world of jobless workers — except for the enlightened philosopher-kings of venture capital, that is. Or at least that's according to Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, who imagines a future where the workers of the world sit jobless, in an employment apocalypse that will affect pretty much everyone except the unique genius of him and his peers. Appearing on his company's a16z podcast, Andreessen made the case that venture capitalists — like he and his rich buddies — will be some of the only ones exempt from the AI revolution. "Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation... if it was a science, you could eventually dial it in and have somebody who gets 8 out of 10 [right]," the investor reasoned. "There's an intangibility to it, there's a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology — by the way a lot of it is psychological analysis," he added. "So like, it's possible that that is quite literally timeless," Andreessen posited. "And when the AIs are doing everything else, like, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing." The billionaire investor paints a pretty grim picture of life after AI takes over, especially given that Andreessen is an outspoken critic of the universal basic income, the idea that everyone in society would be given enough to live even after their jobs have been automated. Add it all up, and it's a vision of the future that gives Andreessen and his peers extraordinary power over everybody else. "After you die, VCs are the judges of whether you get into heaven or not," as one poster quipped on X-formerly-Twitter. In reality, whether AI will ever be able to replace a meaningful number of workers is a pretty open question. At present, the best AI isn't capable of automating any but the most basic of tasks, and some experts argue it never will; it's also easy to imagine an underwhelming future in which AI automates many roles sloppily, at the expense of quality work. And in that case, Andreessen's no common worker — the tech titan has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in AI startups like ElevenLabs, Figma, and Applied Intuition, making his prediction more than a little biased from the jump. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, most recently announced the launch of a $20 billion megafund for AI startups, which would be the largest VC fund in history. If the "AI takeover" does come to pass, it's hard to imagine that gigs like Andreessen's would be spared. At the end of the day, all he really does is evaluate the financial outlooks of various startup ideas, which isn't the easiest task to do well, but a far cry from punishing physical careers like nurses and loggers, or rarefied intellectual ones like scientists and teachers. Andreessen's decidedly selfish outlook is unfortunately well-regarded among the class of libertarian thinkers, techno capitalists and political pundits who parrot his ideas. His infamous tome, the "Techno-Optimist's Manifesto," lays out just who benefits from his AI revolution: "We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward." Put another way: there is infinite money to be mined from the workers of the world, and a special class of entrepreneurs will be the ones to do so, all in the name of innovation. As tech and economics researcher Jathan Sadowski observed in his recent book, "The Mechanic and the Luddite": "This outcome can only be achieved to great effect by putting a highly concentrated industry that is driven by accumulating more money than god and enacting its own internalized savior complex in charge of your innovation system." More on venture capitalists: Investor Says AI Is Already "Fully Replacing People" Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI Is Replacing Women's Jobs Specifically
With under three years of mass-market artificial intelligence available to consumers, businesses in nearly every industry have flocked to the tech like antivaxxers to a multi-level marketing scheme. By 2024, more than 50 percent of companies with more than 5,000 employees were using AI. For the penny-pinching boss, AI represents the promise of rising productivity and lower overhead cost — also known as wages, which were traditionally paid to pesky human employees. Now, though, as workers around the world grow anxious at the idea of an AI future dominated by a few massive tech monopolies, the race to AI adoption is already having a noticeable effect on job markets. Thanks to AI, the number of young college grads entering the workforce hit an all-time low, full-time salary jobs are becoming gigified, and lying on resumes is now the norm as the job search becomes a nightmarish hell. Though rich tech tycoons like Marc Andreessen would have you believe that tech gadgetry has a magical power to free us all, history has shown us that technological development often sharpens existing inequalities instead of the other way around. (That trend has been observed by scholars ranging from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, well before mass-market AI hit the scene.) Indeed, AI has already shown a surprising amount of gender and race bias thanks to the data it's trained on, and experts warn that this combination of prejudiced software with a massive global rollout is already driving exploitation. As such, it's no surprise that AI is likely to increase the gender gap in employment, according to an updated report from the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO.) The report builds on estimates made in 2023 on the automation risk facing different jobs thanks to AI. The new analysis found that in high-income countries like the US, women's risk for "high automation potential" rose to 9.6 percent, up from 7.8 just two years ago. That's three times the risk faced by men today at 3.5 percent, which also rose from 2.9 percent in 2023. Interestingly, the study also found that one in three workers in rich countries face "some degree of exposure" to automation, compared to the world average of one in four. The ILO report also points out that the nature of jobs frequently held by women in wealthy nations — like administrative, clerical, and data entry roles — are primed for automation by AI. Sociologists have noted that the gender gap in labor hours worked has narrowed significantly in recent years — meaning men and women work close to the same quantity of hours. However, the gender pay gap still persists as women's share of work goes less toward jobs and more into household tasks compared to men. With AI supposedly poised to "revolutionize work," it will take substantial change in our current labor environment to safeguard women from AI-driven austerity. More on AI: Executives Are Pouring Money Into AI. So Why Are They Saying It's Not Paying Off?
