“I think we should be sensible about the risks… because of the large impact technology is having on society… we have to do it with empathy and with care… we should be a values driven society… I ignore all the input I get on Twitter because it’s almost always either the extremist on the right or extremist on the left.”
now for our next conversation the midest touch battle for ai’s future please welcome interviewer Alex Conrad senior editor Forbes and vinode kosla entrepreneur investor and technologist awesome well I I would ask vode what you’re most excited about today but we have the cover of the current issue of Forbes right there behind us so it kind of gives gives the game away a little bit yeah why is AI so exciting to you having been through multiple technology Cycles in your career right well if you think about it the steam engine Amplified human muscle in every engine since has this is first time we get amplification of the human brain and within some short period of time and we can debate that almost every function human beings can do will be done more scalably POS probably better than humans can do and that’s exciting it’s a whole era in humanity I think in terms of its implication for human beings but also for all businesses so we we’ve gotten big promises in the past from Silicon Valley about um when when these technologies will replace uh humans that we have to maybe talk to like like right now I’m in the the hell of waiting months for a doctor’s appointment I know that you uh believe that AI can put a doctor basically on every smartphone how far off really is that possibility well two things first entrepreneurs won’t be entrepreneurs if they don’t have hubris and the Press loves to amplify the hubris so I’ll place it on you all would be you know you don’t get on the cover if you say world isn’t going to change tomorrow is going to be like today so um but we also tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term you know imagining a world without the internet imagine the world without mobile phones that was the prevailing par Paradigm in 2000 I remember talking to the prime minister of India about this they were still trying to increase the penetration of landlines in the country in the year 2000 wow and Technology always surprises so it’ll surprise us again it will surprise us again probably at a larger scale than most people imagine a big uh topic of conversation in the cover story that you participated in with us you know thank you for that was um the geopolitical implications of AI especially when it comes to other uh powers that might be uh in a race against the US in some ways like China what should this audience be you know thinking about when it comes to this geopolitical implication well we clearly in a technoeconomic war with China and whoever wins that will have huge economic influence and because of economic influence influence on policy and politics and ideology and I for one don’t want the Chinese ideology to win president CH clearly believes they have a superior ideology um I don’t think he’s doing it just to win he believes he has a superior ideology I happen to Value liberal values more what what um gives you confidence that the US can actually slow down China or stay in the lead in the AI race if um you know there are a lot of smart people and a lot of resources in China trying to copy a lot of our Cutting Edge AI technology so China has the advantage of directing bulk resources towards problems uh the West has advantages it’s not just the West there’s plenty of other countries around the world that have the same liberal democratic values and one of your Investments is a AI model company in India right uh we have a AI model company in India an AI model company in Japan because kanji is a different kind of script so you do things differently um even how you treat blue lights and green lights and traffic lights is sort of confusing it’s very cultural and local um but I think whoever wins this race uh will have social influence globally Latin America southeast Asia Africa most parts of the world and what can we do I think our entrepreneurial ecosystem is so robust and so much more open to creativity and Imagination that’s our strength Innovation is our strength are you optimistic that the US and um our private and public sectors are aligned and moving in the right direction to win the AI race you know so far it’s been pretty good it’s uh most innovation in AI has come from uh the US mostly um some in other parts of the world uh so am I optimistic about that yes am I complacent about that absolutely not I think we should do everything to increase our pace of innovation and slow down the Chinese including things like chip bands and things okay now I I know you’ve said you you broadly speaking supported uh the current administration’s executive order on AI last fall um and you believe that maybe a a light amount of of Regulation is is the correct course here um the obviously the opponent of the current Administration in the presidential election Donald Trump has signaled that he wants to sort of strip away any regulation about AI at all why why is that maybe not the right route to to move faster you know any powerful technology be it nuclear biotechnology AI has benefits and costs and risks so we have to balance as a society the risks and benefits there’s people extremists what I call the EA extremists um who are pressing for no AI development and then there’s people who just want a wild west I don’t think either is a good answer balanced approach to risk is what matters I do a I do think of China as the biggest risk there are other risks the risk like biot terrorism somebody in their lab alone doesn’t even have to be a nation state can uh wreck havoc so we have to be cautious we have to worry but that doesn’t mean we slow down progress one thing I do find interesting is that um in this AI debate in Silicon Valley anyone who who wants any sort of caution or you know rules at all is called a Doomer and and a desel or de accelerationist uh what you know if someone called you that why would you reject that uh label I I don’t care what people label right the the problem is if you add a label the Press reports that and it gets Amplified so people like Trump get used to attaching labels to things because they get Amplified um in fact I think we should be sensible about the risks and frankly look I’m a I’m a techno Optimist my Twitter handle has been about techno optimism for years and years but I say you have to practice because of the large impact technology is having on society uh and we come back to that we have to do it with empathy and with care so I sort of say I’m a techno Optimist with real empathy and care for the people who get disrupted when it’s when we have fun talking about disruption it’s not a lot of fun when you’re disrupted and the disrupted fight back uh we’ve seen this in the climate area and it slows things down so bringing everybody along is a good idea we’ll definitely come back um to some of that te te technology that has you optimistic in a couple minutes but first speaking of disruption uh you’ve been pretty outspoken about the presidential election I I it’s my understanding you are not a fan of former president Donald Trump um but you also identify as an independent right so so what is what is your uh big argument you know if you have some bus leaders here and a minute to kind of make your case but you’re talking about risks for a minute okay climate risk is the biggest risk so I used to be a fiscal vo now I’m a climate and fiscal vo right U my view is on Trump specifically there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans and frankly extremists like Tom uh would you want your children to have the values that Trump has accused of rape accused of lying cheating all those values that’s a very simple test for me that’s the first test I apply I couldn’t imagine no matter how much Trump promised me and he’s promising the crypto guys no regulation some other people reduce tax those are valuable but not the most valuable thing in deciding who should be president of this company we should be a values driven society and he’s basically ruined that and this is and and it really isn’t about Democrats and Republicans because most Republicans would agree with me um but they’re afraid to challenge him because if you’ve challenged him you sort of lost your vot because of this unusual uh voting system we have well you’d probably get a different next question if Steve Forbes was on stage right now but um my question is silkon Valley do you see it uh moving to support Donald Trump for business reasons or do you believe you know when you talk to your peers what is the sort of state of play when it comes to this election look a very small minority uh support Trump and they’re mostly after Liber Arian variety um so uh it’s a very small minority in my view I just saw an analysis yesterday that said Silicon Valley supporting Democrats over Republicans 4 to one in terms of dollar contribution so but not viral tweets not dollars maybe more than tweets because it seems from social media that there are a lot of outspoken people like David Sachs who are leading Silicon Valley right look Twitter has become sort of this megaphone for the extreme rights used to be a little bit to the extreme left there’s no middle ground in social media unfortunately we should be wary of that I ignore all the input I get on Twitter because it’s almost always either the extremist on the right or extremist on the left there’s Dei extremist and there’s MAA extremist you know I have a simple test you’re a Mara extremist if you believe the election was stolen it’s not about policy it’s not about other things if we believe that then we are on path to destroy democracy that’s another reason I think Trump is very very dangerous not for the next four years it’s for the next 15 that we should be worrying about and as a I know you don’t like to call yourself a venture capitalist but everyone else calls you one of the best Venture capitalists of all time you do think in these very longtime Horizons um when similar in technology or any other aspect of society right yeah so I gave a lot Ted Talk in April this year about a dozen really transformative Tech the approaches to society that almost certainly can happen if we let them happen I’m almost certain with the next 10 15 years we can have free doctors for everybody on the planet or near free is the cost of computing we have nearly nearly free personal tutors for every child on the planet because AI will be the AI tutor a doctor will be um an AI doctor and whether you’re talking about Structural Engineers or oncologists almost all expertise will be free think about it that will be possible in the next decade it may take 20 or 25 years for it to go from 2% or 3% adaption or early adaption to full penetration of society how deflationary is that so first we will see my bet is for the next 5 to 10 years huge productivity growth and I wrote about in 2016 I said we will see great abundance with AI that was 2016 we’ll see productivity growth uh GDP growth and increasing income disparity uh unfortunately I think we will see that and it’ll look like good economic metrics the next decade and companies on the margin will have their revenue grow faster than their employees Revenue per employee will go up for S but at some point this becomes very deflationary beyond the decade because you know you take the resources of a million doctors making 300K a year that’s $300 billion worth of value out of the economy I think the measure of GDP will be wrong interesting the way we measure GDP will no longer hold it’s already starting to be true because my iPhone has more power than a Cray computer uh but GDP in Computing has actually uh not gone up with the amount of compute so we will need new new metrics for productiv employees is meur I know energy is important to every part of employee role an AI accountant AI salesperson AI customer support all that is happening today MH and it’ll happen in the small companies first and then creep up but it is definitely going to happen it would be my dream to talk for an hour more about AI but I do want to make sure we just hear quickly about why you’re excited about your energy Investments and spending a lot of time there too well we made you know large bets is a lot of fun uh we made our first open AI investment in 2018 it was a very large one even by the scope of our investments but we invest in Commonwealth Fusion at the same time um one of my other forecast we can eliminate most cars in most cities why because AI self-driving allows not so much for self-driving which will increase congestion in cities but a new kind of public transit system interestingly this little startup uh has B down a couple of projects and never lost one it’s one outright against the big players in public transit so I would say in so many areas expertise will be near Free Labor through robotics will be near free computer programming will become so free that computer Computing will become more like electricity this utility in the background than something you use you know so far humans have had to learn computers whether it’s learning your Bloomberg terminal or learning sap or how to insert a row in Excel computers will learn humans so humans don’t have to learn computers you won’t have to say you know how to use an app an app will learn how to use you or serve your needs I don’t know if that’s if I think that’s cool or a little spooky or both but I do know that anyone here you don’t get a choice on whether it happens you can decide whether it’s spooky or not but it’s going to happen fair enough and anyone here working on alternatives to New York’s congestion pricing model sounds like they should be talking to V so um oh absolutely congestion model it’s such a silly idea to restrict consumption when you can do much better system there’s only one thing fixed in a city is Street wet if you can increase passengers per hour it’s a very big deal but I want to finish by saying almost all areas of climate because that’s where you took me whether it’s Fusion or super hard geothermal almost all areas of large carbon emission will be replaced by Technologies and watch this cheaper than their current uh fossil competitors we are well on our way over the next 10 15 years we won’t have to obsolete C plants I say we will re-equip them not obsolete them we won’t shut down cement plants we will re-equip them to be low carbon so very promising Technologies on the way almost all these areas well you’ll have to be very brave to bet against venod on one of these long-term predictions um thank you so much venod thank you everybody.