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Ben Horowitz debunks AI job apocalypse fears as misguided
Ben Horowitz advises keeping investment teams as compact as basketball starting five
Ben Horowitz challenges the notion that artificial intelligence (AI) will obliterate the realm of work as it exists today.
The cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz argues that many predictions of AI-induced mass unemployment are based on the faulty assumption that we can foresee the future of work.
According to him, history suggests otherwise. "It seems people are behaving as if it's a given when, in fact, it's anything but certain," Horowitz mentioned in an interview on the "Invest Like The Best" podcast on Tuesday.
"How can you be so certain it's imminent? And how can you be so sure that no new jobs will be created? I don't think it's nearly as foreseeable as some people suggest," he further remarked.
Horowitz's remarks come amidst ongoing discussions among tech leaders, economists, and policymakers regarding AI's potential impact on employment, the speed of these potential changes, and whether such shifts are unavoidable.
Some prominent AI researchers, such as computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the "Godfather of AI," UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, University of Louisville computer science professor Roman Yampolskiy, along with certain tech figures like Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei, have issued warnings about AI potentially replacing numerous jobs.
Others, including OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, suggest that AI is more likely to transform jobs and generate new roles instead of entirely removing them.
In contrast, Horowitz takes a broader historical view, seeing AI as the latest phase in the evolution of automation, which has consistently wiped out jobs yet ultimately broadened opportunities.
As the most dramatic instance, he points to agriculture. In the early American economy, nearly 95% of jobs were agriculture-based, he notes, and now almost all of them are gone.
"Automation has been around since farming," Horowitz explained. "Virtually all those jobs have disappeared. Today's jobs, people involved in agriculture back then wouldn't even recognise as work."