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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I am here with Vinod Khosla. Vinod, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the podcast. It's great to be here. So how would you describe your background in business and tech before we jump into all things in your wheelhouse here?
You know, I can do the business part, but I've never really had an interest in business. I'm sort of just very curious about tech and the impact it can have. So most of my focus is what technology is coming down the line and what impact can it have and what does it take to do that? So it's more about making things possible.
I like to say, I like to imagine the possible and then try and make that happen. That's sort of my main goal in life.
But you were a technologist first and then a venture capitalist second, correct?
Yeah. In fact, funny thing is I've never actually in 40 years called myself a venture capitalist.
Oh, sorry to insult you to your face.
No.
So what do you call yourself?
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of AI on job displacement?
Yeah.
Look, when I look forward 10 years from today, two big things stand out. One, we have AI progressing rapidly, and I'm not worried about its capability. Almost anything we wanted to do that's economically valuable, it'll be able to do over the next 10 years. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about robotics or AI or any, frankly, function that the human brain can do.
What worries me a lot is if you're going to maximize the impact of that AI for good purpose, societal good, we are going to have a lot of disruption and change. And my biggest worry, to get to your question, is AI may not be permitted because of that disruption.
So politics is most likely the biggest impact on AI the next decade, more than anything to do with technology or capital or data centers or power.
So you're fearing regulation that proves unwise? Does that summarize this concern?
I would say a simple idea, for AI to be fully effective, we should have large-scale job displacement. If we let things happen, just happen to be most efficient in a capitalist sense, we'd probably get to 50% unemployment or underemployment by 2035 or so. That obviously cannot happen without a lot of political pushback.
So the answer is we have to do something radically different for us to accept the level of disruption. And that worries me because politicians will take short-term advantage of things like job displacement. My nightmare would be Bernie Sanders or AOC get elected president. That'd be about as bad as Trump getting elected president.
So you could get AI being slowed down by politics of job displacement and fear. AI is as feared, as popular among general people as ISIS. And if you look at that perspective, then it's worrisome.
So if memory serves, and I think this is implicit in what you just said, you're not very concerned about the so-called alignment problem, the idea that we'll build superhuman AI that could be unaligned with our interests and pose some kind of existential risk to us.
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Chapter 3: How does Vinod Khosla view the future of the economy?
Now, that will be a source of income. It'll be a source of pride and dignity for every human being because they're their own boss. And we know people are happier when they are their own boss. Let's look at the other side. The first thing I would say, the vast majority of jobs in the US, and these jobs are better than jobs in most other parts of the world like India, are not really jobs.
I call them servitude to survivals.
Hmm.
And that servitude, if you're working as a farm worker for 40 hours a week for 40 years or an assembly line worker for 40 hours a week for 40 years or until your back gives out and you have injuries, is not human dignity. People like to equate it to that, but dignity comes from doing what you love, not the servitude to survive. It's just a new form of slavery to capitalism.
It is better than no other job, but it's not exactly human dignity or the most respectable job or one that gives purpose or meaning to these human beings. If they're these micro entrepreneurs, there will be dignity. There will be pride in doing that job. So that's that part of it. So let's talk about the income side of it. There's two periods to talk about, the 2030s and the 2040s. I think...
Starting 2030s, there's a lot of services that become free. An AI doctor will be a dollar an hour, which is compute costs. AI robot, maybe $2 an hour, add an extra dollar an hour for hardware. So almost all labor trends to that cost, resulting in free doctors for most people, free AI education or tutors, personal tutors,
Free legal services, free financial advisory services, all these things become near-free services. And I think we have a hugely deflationary economy for utility goods. That's my best guess today, and the government may actually provide that. In fact, I have a project to start providing some of these services for free in India because the cost is so low.
You develop them once, and then there's the cost of tokens, which is declining very, very rapidly. So basic services... with the one exception of housing, which we can get to, are going to be very free and accessible, I believe.
Then there's the question of in the transition period. Just tell me how a massively deflationary consequence to unlimited free intelligence, how do we navigate that with respect to... you know, the initial massive concentration of wealth that's going to go to all the investors such as yourself who funded this technology.
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