Andreessen lifts the Clouds
The Sun comes out.
The Sun came out for the first time in months in the Land of AI.
Certainly since ChatGPT’s debut six months ago. And the subsequent frenzy of frantic fear by most luminaries who should know better. Egged on by the media who like all sides of their bread well buttered.
By Sun, I’m referring of course to the one luminary who launched the last ‘ChatGPT moment’ in August 1995, when the Netscape browser electrified mainstream audiences with the possibilities of the Internet.
Which got him on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Barefoot. The only other one with that honor was Gandhi. Had the pleasure of hanging with him in those days (Marc, not Gandhi).
Marc Andreessen put out a seminal post yesterday, where he said what needed to be said about AI: “Why AI will save the World”. Yes, this version of AI, after over decades of its imminent arrival.
It’s a long and comprehensive post. And you should read it. Or at least the Twitter “tweetstorm” version of it (also a Marc Andreessen trademark).
But if even that is too long for you, the core message is “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. Yes, you can just ask Siri to play the song now.
Look, AI isn’t going to be risk free. No technology since fire, ever has been. But as Bobby McFerrin put it so well,
“Now listen to what I said, in your life expect some trouble
But when you worry, you make it double
But don’t worry, be happy, be happy now.”
Human brains have been trained from the earliest of times to be scared of the unknown and the ununderstood. But we can also be trained to go for the good. With gusto.
Am going to have so much more to say about the merits of his arguments around “Why AI will save the world”.
This whole Substack, “AI: A Reset to Zero”, you’re reading now, was started because I got tired of the months of doom and gloom around Large Language Model AI (LLM AI), Generative AI (GAI), and Machine Learning (ML) in its humbler incarnation.
And yes, I believe it will save the world. It’s a bigger deal than we even now think it is. And it will likely take longer to do the things good and bad we think it will do. It always takes longer than we think.
And I do believe that AI will eat Software (the non-AI kind). Yes, I am paraphrasing Marc here. And Yes, do read Marc’s 2011 seminal piece on “Why Software is eating the World”. (He was right on that one too).
And yes, all software is Code. And all Code is Math. And Math is the Language of God. But none of it is sentient (The Math part, not the God part). (Not picking that fight today).
Have spent over three decades understanding and communicating why previous technology waves are more good than the bad.
Even when they’re occasionally very bad, edging on Evil. Was there at the Table when the PC and the Internet did their thing.
So there’s a lot I have to say on why Marc is right. But that is for another day.
Today is just the day to enjoy the Sun.
“Be happy, be happy now.”
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