Andreessen Horowitz’s AI Crusader Emerges as a Confidant of the Founders
A former VMware executive wields increasing influence inside Andreessen Horowitz as he champions the firm’s views on artificial intelligence.
“Will AI kill us all?” Andreessen Horowitz general partner Martin Casado asked his boss Marc Andreessen in early June. The bleary-eyed Casado had dialed in from a desk in a dimly lit hotel room in Washington, D.C., where he’d been meeting with regulators. His boss grinned, retorting, “I have good news!…AI is not going to murder every person on the planet!”
The exchange was part of the pair’s hour-plus banter, uploaded to Andreessen Horowitz’s YouTube channel, on why the “doomerist takes” on artificial intelligence are wildly off the mark. Casado had been trying to drive home that message in Washington in an effort to counter the alarms—raised by tech luminaries such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—that AI could eventually think and learn like humans, posing a threat to our very existence. “The backlash on this stuff to me…has been absolutely shocking,” Casado said.