Brian Barrett: The irony is my favorite part because I think venture capitalists have largely made themselves immune to the effects of AI because they’re so special and sure a machine can do it too—
Zoe Schiffer: This is art, not science.
Brian Barrett: Yes. This is art, not science. Machines can take over every job, but not us. The staircase stops right below the VC for them which is amusing and fun. So I wonder how many people are actually using it now, especially because venture capitalists themselves are so skeptical about it, it seems. Who is the audience? Is it getting real traction there?
Zoe Schiffer: Yes. So the way ADIN works is that they have scouts that go out and look for potential deals, and then those scouts can make money on said deals. So I think it will be something where VCs may not necessarily be adopting the networks, but people will be moving around them and they may not be as essential, as useful. I think there was another big irony that Ariel highlights in her article, which is also that, if you can start a company with just you and a bunch of AI agents and you’re working your way to success, do you even need all that venture capital money to get started?
Leah Fieger: I don’t know. There’s a lot to me, there’s a lot of fear about AI taking over jobs. I feel like every other article is like, “And these people are nervous and these people are nervous.” Brian is right, the funny thing is, these are the people who have just moved on to AI, but I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for AI to take over the jobs. Is it there yet? Will it still happen?
Zoe Schiffer: Yes. I think there has been some research recently. I was talking to Will Knight, one of our brilliant AI journalists, about this yesterday, and he was saying, “Look, for many industries the evidence isn’t there yet. The hype, as is often the case, far outweighs the actual data here. We don’t know that AI is taking jobs.” But I will say that living in San Francisco, I’m hearing a lot of people saying that engineering teams in particular are very bloated right now. Agents can really do a lot of work and you certainly need humans on top to manage those agents, but you can reduce many teams by 80 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent. And so I think we’ll see more AI-related job losses first in engineering and then in other fields.
Brian Barrett: Renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, said this in a recent podcast. Hear how special he considers his profession.
Marc Andreessen, archival audio: Every great venture capitalist over the last 70 years has lost most of the great companies of his generation. If this were a science, eventually you would have someone who dialed it in and got an 8 out of 10, but in the real world, that’s not the case. It’s just you’re in the temporary business. And so there’s an abstraction to it. There’s the taste aspect, the human relations aspect, the psychology. And I don’t want to be certain, but it’s possible that he is literally timeless. And while AI is doing everything else, this may be one of the last remaining areas that people are still doing.
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