Being Obsolete
A long time ago I wrote about the idea of making yourself obsolete. “True success,” I said “is when good outcomes continue to happen after you are no longer around.”
This was before AI became such a big thing.
Our MD Emily, the other day, sent me a link to Marc Andreesen talking about AI on Lenny’s Podcast and said I should give it a listen. I did and was intrigued by the lengthy discussion about what might happen if or when AI displaces a lot of people’s jobs.
While Andreesen was ever upbeat about the future (the consummate VC) and there were lots of interesting threads to pull on, he said some things that felt a bit contradictory. On the one hand, if humans were automated out of jobs, Andreesen argued that massive productivity gains and a cheaper welfare state would follow, leaving us richer with a higher quality of life. I don’t think I buy this (it feels like the plotline of WALL-E), but maybe?
Alternatively, he said that jobs are really just a collection of tasks and that even though AI would change what tasks belonged to which jobs, there would still be jobs – spectacular ones – for people who could understand what the AI was doing in more than one field. Again, maybe.
If I have guff with Silicon Valley, it’s that it always seems so overconfident. But absent delusion, no one would ever do anything that was potentially important, but very low-probability.
I don’t know what’s going to happen because of or due to AI. On the one hand, The Jetsons. On the other, The Matrix. As I thought about that, I remembered writing about making yourself obsolete and got really excited for what AI might mean for people.
But then I thought, “Wait.”
Because it’s one thing to make yourself obsolete and another to be made so.
– Tim
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