Brian Barrett: The irony is my favorite part because I feel like venture capitalists largely position themselves as immune to the effects of AI because they are very unique and certainly a machine can…
Zoë Schiffer: It’s an art, not a science.
Brian Barrett: Yes. It’s an art, not a science. Machines can take on any task, but not us. The ladder stops for them just below the VC in a fun and entertaining way. So I wonder how many people are actually using it these days, especially since venture capitalists themselves are as skeptical of it as they seem. Who is the audience? Is it finding real traction there?
Zoë Schiffer: Yes. So the way ADIN works is that it employs scouts who go out and look for potential trades, and then those scouts can make money on those trades. So I think it would be something where VCs wouldn’t necessarily adopt the network, but people would circle around them and they wouldn’t be as necessary and useful. I think there was another great irony that Arielle brought up in her article, which is that if you can start a company with just yourself and a bunch of AI agents, coding your way to success, do you even need all that venture capital to get started?
Leah Feiger: I don’t know. There is so much in me, so much fear of AI taking my job. I feel like every other article is like, “And these people are upset and these people are upset.” Brian’s right, the funniest thing is that these people just jumped on the AI, but I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for AI to take over this job. Has he done it yet? Will it happen again?
Zoë Schiffer: Yes. I think there is recent research. I was talking to Will Knight, one of our fantastic AI reporters, about this yesterday, and he said, “Look, the evidence is simply not there yet for many, many industries. The hype, as is often the case, has far outweighed the actual data. We don’t know if AI is taking away jobs.” I will say, however, that while I was in San Francisco, I heard a lot of people say that engineering teams in particular are very bloated these days. Agents can actually do a lot of work, and you certainly need people to manage them, but many teams can be reduced by 80 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent. That’s why I believe we’ll see more AI-related job losses, first in engineering and then in other sectors.
Brian Barrett: Marc Andreessen, celebrated venture capitalist and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, said just that in a recent podcast. Listen to how unique his profession is.
Marc Andreessen, archival recording: Every great venture capitalist over the last 70 years has missed out on most of the great companies of his generation. If it were a science, you could eventually have someone just check it out and get an 8 out of 10, but in the real world that’s not the case. You’re just dealing with flukes. So there’s a certain elusiveness to it. There is an aspect of taste, an aspect of interpersonal relationships and psychology. I don’t want to be definitive, but it’s possible that it’s literally timeless. And when AI takes care of everything else, it may be one of the last areas humans still care about.