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Tech founders and CEOs are all rapidly adopting AI, deploying it across their companies and personally using it to handle emails and other busywork.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Paul Graham, the cofounder of startup accelerator Y Combinator and one of the most venerated names in Silicon Valley, has already grown tired of the tech\u2019s influence. When he receives pitches that are AI written, it\u2019s such a turn off that he now closes them on sight.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style,\u201d Graham wrote<\/a> this week. \u201d I know they\u2019re written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it\u2019s hard not to ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n To say his feelings were mixed on this would be an understatement.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI,\u201d Graham added. \u201cIt feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that?\u201d<\/p>\n This should be a warning sign to tech CEOs, if they\u2019re not too busy getting obsequious advice from a chatbot to notice. Graham, whose word goes far in tech circles, has historically been a major AI booster and investor. Just last month, he proclaimed<\/a> that AI was the \u201cbiggest opportunity for would-be startup founders.\u201d That makes his latest musings distinctly ironic, but all the same, if even someone who\u2019s advocated for AI\u2019s revolutionary power has already turned heel and decided that it reflects negatively on the person using it, it doesn\u2019t bode well for tech\u2019s long-term image.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes me think less of the author. It means they can\u2019t write well unaided (or feel they can\u2019t), and that they\u2019re trying to trick me,\u201d Graham said of AI emails. \u201cIt\u2019s not impressive to use AI to write stuff for you; any teenager can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Some accused Graham of \u201ccognitive dissonance.\u201d In addition to his usual AI boosterism, Graham also recently celebrated how AI was \u201cgiving a lot of hard-working founders the growth they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n Graham saw no contradiction between that sentiment and his latest post.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to use it,\u201d he said of AI, \u201cbut in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n But what is \u201cthe right way\u201d? AIs are large language models. Writing, be it language or code, is exactly what they do. If AI shouldn\u2019t be used to wholesale write emails or essays or pitch decks, how should it be? If the suggestion is that AI should be used more subtly and intelligently, fine, but means that its applications would be niche \u2014 and \u201cniche\u201d isn\u2019t what the investors pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in the industry are hoping.<\/p>\n All that is to say that the AI industry is fraught with contradictions, and so far it\u2019s survived because the tech\u2019s being built and deployed fast enough to outpace them. For now, at least. In response to Graham\u2019s post, one observed<\/a> the irony of how \u201cpeople who are pro AI don\u2019t want to be on the receiving end of AI work.\u201d<\/p>\n