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There\u2019s plenty of hype to go around about AI. It\u2019s going to revolutionize this and automate that. But how, exactly? It\u2019s a question that\u2019s become increasingly pressing as governments and investors bet increasingly massive gobs of cash on its power to change the world.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, even AI\u2019s move devoted acolytes are struggling to articulate how AI is actually going to help humanity.<\/p>\n
Case in point, on a recent podcast appearance<\/a> with Joe Rogan flagged by the Verge<\/a>, the billionaire AI evangelist Marc Andreessen \u2014 who\u2019s invested billions<\/a> into AI development through his venture capital firm \u2014 struggled when asked to articulate AI\u2019s benefits.<\/p>\n The conversation began, ironically enough, with Andreessen asserting that tech executives have done a terrible job explaining what makes AI so important.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, you\u2019re saying that the people running AI have done a terrible job of selling AI,\u201d Rogan said. \u201cSo sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes \u2014 oh, sell it, I mean, look, so it, it is, alright \u2014 I mean, alright I\u2019m gonna give you the deepest of all pitches, I\u2019m gonna give you the, the \u2014 okay,\u201d Andreessen stammered right out of the gate. \u201cSo, uh, Isaac Newton spent 20 years looking for this key to what he called \u2018alchemy.\u2019 Uhm, and the idea of alchemy was to transmute something that was very common into something that was very rare.\u201d<\/p>\n Andreessen goes on like this for the next minute, trying explain that Newton wanted to turn lead into gold, seemingly trying to draw a parallel to the tech industry\u2019s drive to turn sand \u2014 silicon \u2014 into thought.<\/p>\n \u201cIn any event, you may know that he never \u2014 we have never figured out how to do that,\u201d Andreessen continued. \u201cAnd gold is still rare and valuable, so, imagine a form of alchemy that turns sand into thought. Pause on that for a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s barely comprehensible, to put it charitably. At any rate, Andreessen immediately abandons the alchemy analogy to explain that AI is actually good because stuff like lawsuits, medical problems, and work is just too hard for humans to think about on their own.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re always all bumping up on these limitations on thought, like just how smart can we be, how many things can we know about, and so AI quite literally is that: it\u2019s thought at scale, for everybody, in perpetuity,\u201d he insists. Nevermind that AI compute is incredibly expensive \u2014 it certainly won\u2019t be free \u201cfor everybody\u201d for much longer<\/a> \u2014 it also isn\u2019t even close to performing human-level thought. Keep in mind, these are basically massive predictive algorithms<\/a>: a more accurate phrase would be \u201cdata at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Having made his grand point, Andreessen continues with an appeal to humanity: \u201cI guess I see this with my 11-year old right now, like everybody who grows up now is going to have AI.\u201d Of course, that\u2019s a self-reinforcing argument, a cop-out which doesn\u2019t explain why it\u2019s important to have \u201cthought at scale,\u201d or why thought is currently insufficient at its current, human-sized scale.<\/p>\n The fact that one of AI\u2019s loudest and richest devotees can barely articulate why he thinks the technology is important should be a telling sign, especially as productive returns on the tech remain far out of reach<\/a>.<\/p>\n Commenters posting under clips of the interview were unimpressed. \u201cBefore AI, if I didn\u2019t know something I would just google it,\u201d one TikTok user wrote. \u201cAI gets to the answer faster but it\u2019s only correct half the time. How is that revolutionary?\u201d<\/p>\n More on AI and humanity: Man Behind Simulation Hypothesis Warns That Extinction of Humanity Is a Risk We Have to Take<\/a><\/p>\n \t