5 questions for a16z's Martin Casado

Jun 28, 2024

Martin Casado

Martin Casado. | Andreessen Horowitz

Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of the Future in Five Questions. Today features Martin Casado, a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz who leads their $1.25 billion infrastructure AI investment practice. He discusses why he sees people using AI for expressive, emotional purposes as a good thing, the possibility of “unemployable AIs,” and what he sees as academics’ unwillingness to push back on tech regulation. The following has been edited for length and clarity:

What’s one underrated big idea?

Most people view the latest AI wave from the vantage of previous waves. In particular, they think it's most suitable for helping improve existing businesses, whether by automating existing tasks or providing natural language interfaces.

But if you really look at what is going on, the current AI wave has largely been a consumer phenomenon where AI programs are being used in two areas computers have not had great solutions for in the past: creativity and emotional connection. AI programs are creating images, music and videos as beautiful as those created by humans. And AI companions have entered the social dynamic. What does this all mean? AI will make business more efficient, but it's also going to push us into a weirder, wilder and more wonderful future than most realize.

What’s a technology you think is overhyped?

In a way, artificial general intelligence. Despite not having a consensus definition, it's become the focal point of every fear and hope in the industry. Most likely, we'll slowly work our way to more and more general intelligence. And when we achieve it far in the future, the economics will likely be so bad that you'll have a lot of over-qualified, unemployable AIs. Perhaps if we're lucky we'll make them practical enough to work alongside us, but that's going to take a long, long time.

What book most shaped your conception of the future?

“The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch. He beautifully articulates that the universe is the mother of all escape rooms, and how the meaning of life is to figure out what the hell is going on.

What could government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t?

I think the U.S. government has historically been a marvel when it comes to supporting and investing in science and technology. Because of that public and private partnership, the U.S. has led every technical wave since the microchip. All it has to do is remember that, because over the last decade it's lost its way and has chosen instead to fear and regulate innovation rather than support it.

What surprised you most in the past year?

How utterly silent academia has become in the face of growing regulation against innovation. In the past, academia was at the forefront pushing for investment and openness in technology. Now, at best academics are silent on the issue, and many are complicit in calling for strong regulations on emerging tech.

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People stand on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

People stand on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. A case involving fees for commercial fishermen ballooned into a challenge against the federal government's entire engine of rulemaking. | Mariam Zuhaib/AP

The Supreme Court made its long-awaited ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo today — better known as the Chevron case — ruling against federal regulators in a manner that could have sweeping implications for the future of technology policy.

In a 6-3 decision that fell cleanly along ideological lines with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting, the Supreme Court ruled that judges no longer have to defer to agencies’ interpretations of federal statutes when making regulations. That means judges will have far more authority to intervene in regulatory matters regarding the environment, technology, education and any number of other subjects.

As POLITICO’s Alex Guillen and Josh Gerstein pointed out in their report on the decision this morning, during January’s oral arguments for the case Justice Elena Kagan said artificial intelligence could be a sensitive area where judges might get over their skis when it comes to effectively making policy.

Dissenting from today’s decision, Kagan wrote: “What rules are going to constrain the development of A.I.? In every sphere of current or future federal regulation, expect courts from now on to play a commanding role. It is not a role Congress has given to them….It is a role this Court has now claimed for itself, as well as for other judges.”

POLITICO’s Mohar Chatterjee wrote today as part of a story examining the potential policy implications that the decision is likely to fuel legal efforts by conservative critics and industry groups to push back on President Joe Biden’s administration’s AI regulation efforts.

Shobita Parthasarathy, director of the University of Michigan’s program on science, tech and public policy, wrote on X that the decision “is a disaster for science and tech policymaking,” and that “it says that legal expertise trumps technical expertise and agencies will have to wait for Congress (gridlocked) or courts to address new challenges and regulate new technologies.”

ai at state

A program at the State Department will help its bureaucrats harness AI resources in the course of their work.

POLITICO’s Maggie Miller reported today for Pro subscribers on the new initiative dubbed “AI.State,” which will provide information to State employees on the AI tools available to them for their work, and inform them about AI-related policies and training opportunities.

The State Department set a goal of hiring 38 additional bureau chief data officers over the next five years, Maggie writes, and says it’s already provided more than 80,000 hours of data and AI training to its staff over the past three years. Roughly 4,000 State employees are currently beta testing a chatbot the department rolled out earlier this year, the agency says.

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The Future in 5 links

Amazon is using generative AI to help control its finances.
The allure of companion chatbots might prove double-edged.
Google used its PaLM 2 LLM to add 110 languages to Google Translate.
Mark Zuckerberg went on the offensive against closed-source AI developers.
AI-generated images of Jesus Christ, but hot are flooding the internet.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@politico.com); and Christine Mui (cmui@politico.com).

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