Amjad Masad on Rethinking College for the AI Era
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Why does Amjad say young people’s greatest value is to question deeply‑held beliefs?
Ultimately, the utility of young people is to question deeply held beliefs, is to be heretics. You need to learn our way so you can get a job and be a perfect citizen, get married, have kids, and get a house and a car and live happily ever after. And in today's college, it actually the opposite, it kind of beats any.
Any outside thought out of them. I just really want to see a world in which it's okay if you want to go on a side quest and go do something that's kind of oddball but also might end up being super amazing if it works out.
The future of companies is gonna change. I'd want to go to a college that's not prescriptive about what I learn. I'm motivated by what skills can give me in order to achieve.
What I want to build. One of the core tenants of the academy sidesteps this problem entirely. We don't care if you graduate or not. We don't have grades. We don't have tests. The amount of weight to push against should be a lot less.
When you see a eighteen year old that is really inspiring to you, that you're like, I gotta spend time with this person, what are they doing that is capturing your interest? The real civilizational missing opportunity is What if the most valuable thing young people bring to society is their willingness to question what everyone else takes for granted? Today I sat down with Replit founder and CEO Amjag Masad and Horowitz and Andreasan Academy co-founder and CEO Gagan Viani to rethink what education should look like in the AI era. We discuss why students need more freedom to follow their curiosity. learn by building, and take intellectual side quests, and why Amjad thinks some young founders may actually be starting companies too soon.
We also get into how AI could change the way companies themselves operate. Why trust and judgment matter as much as technical skills, and what Amjad looks for when he needs exceptional young builders.
As we were talking, I remembered this sci-fi story that I read once. It's called The City and the Stars. And it's about this future city. That's governed by AGI. We sort of invented AGI. It now governs all of our lives. It solves all problems, all human problems. There's no wars, there's no disease. Everyone lives forever. And people spend their time working on like a thousand year art projects and doing all sorts of random things to fill up their time. But they found this problem where they accumulate so much knowledge and memory, it becomes like harder to keep it all in their heads. So they invented this technology where they go into some kind of laboratory. and they compress their memory, sort of like context compression that we do with AI today.
They go through all the memories and they compress them and then they go through a boot camp. To retrain them for their life. So They invented a new way to be born, but you're not fundamentally new person. You're still the same person. You're just editing your memory. But there's a glitch that happens in this system, in this machine, and there's a new person that is fundamentally born new. And he immediately starts causing problems. In the boot camp, he starts doing weird things, new things, and everyone's like, Whoa, that's crazy. You shouldn't be doing that. That's not how we do things. It becomes very disruptive. And then when they go out into this like city, he starts asking questions like what's out there?
What's in the SARS? What's outside our city borders? They're like, oh, we don't talk about outside our city borders. Uh that's silo a little bit. It's probably dangerous out there. Yeah. A little bit like silo, a little bit like Fallout. Yeah. And I don't wanna get into the spoilers too much, but eventually that's what he has so much drive. to change things and go discover the stars. That's why it's called the city and the stars. He in in the story unfolds in that way and he finds all sorts of interesting things out there. And I'm reminded of this because as we're talking about what is college and what is it for, and I think a related question is what is the utility of young people in society?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why does Amjad say young people’s greatest value is to question deeply‑held beliefs?
0:00–6:43
2
How does the Andreessen Academy propose a non‑prescriptive, project‑based college model?
6:43–8:28
3
What is the sci‑fi “City and the Stars” story used to illustrate memory compression and AI?
8:28–18:33
4
Why does the current college system suppress curiosity and how could side‑quests be encouraged?
18:33–32:08
5
How do trust, judgment, and transparent funding affect early‑stage founders?
32:08–47:36
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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