Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make people smarter, and, as a result, improve virtually every domain of the human experience, says billionaire investor Marc Andreessen.
According to Forbes, Andreessen has a net worth of $1.8 billion.
Business Insider reported that, on an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast, Andreessen extolled the virtues of AI as a teaching device.
“One of the fun things you can do with ChatGPT is you can say, ‘Explain X to me,’” Andreessen said. “Then you can say, ‘Explain X to me as if I’m 15.’ And then you can do it as if I’m 10, then you can do it as if I’m five. It kind of works down to about age three. So you can do, ‘Explain quantum mechanics to me like I’m a three-year-old.’ And it will.”
Recounting his experience trying to teach his eight-year-old son how to use ChatGPT as a learning device, however, the venture capitalist recalled receiving a tepid response. The boy, reportedly, only shrugged and replied, “ok.”
Further efforts to attempt to convey to his son how significant technology AI tools are was similarly met with a lukewarm response.
“Well it’s a computer,” Andreessen recounts his son saying. “Of course, you ask it questions and it gives you answers. What else is it for?”
Ultimately, Andreessen noted, this technology is not something new for the youngest generation. It is not something that is beyond the ordinary in their experience. It’s normal.
Still, he notes, it will be a technology that grows up with his son’s generation, and as a result, AI will know everything about them.
By the time his eight-year-old son is 20, he says, AI will have been with him for over a decade.
“It will know everything he’s ever done. It will know everything he ever did well. It will know everything he did that took real effort. It will know what he’s good at. It will know what he’s not good at. It’ll know how to teach him. It’ll know how to correct for whatever limitations he has. It’ll know how to maximize his strengths. It’ll know what he wants,” Andreessen said.
Andreessen expresses hopes for AI in manifesto
This, according to the billionaire investor, is a good thing. In a manifesto on AI published on his website, Andreessen addresses some of the largest concerns about AI and proposes a plan for how we should approach the technology.
Additionally, he lays out an argument for why he believes AI can make everything better.
“The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. Smarter people have better outcomes in almost every domain of activity,” Andreessen writes.
To this end, AI will markedly augment human intelligence, he argues. Among other things, AI will be an infinitely patient, knowledgeable, and effective tutor, a supercomputer able to digest and explain enormous amounts of complex data, and a visionary artist able to produce music, art, and literature.
In short, Andreessen argues, it will exponentially expand what we are capable of.