We sat down recently with Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker to talk about the AI technologies he’s most excited about, and where he sees them already creating billions of dollars in value.
Did you read the article? It actually addresses much of what you talk about. For example:
“The promise of AI is a stake in human judgment and trying to automate some of it so that humans can focus on higher-order tasks that are much more fruitful,” he said.
The point is not to remove humans entirely. It’s to automate the stuff that can be automated so that the humans you do have can focus on the important stuff that can’t be automated. Human employees are expensive so you’ll want to use them wisely, not doing busy-work that a machine can handle.
I’ll be supporting the incoming “Not made with AI” products and businesses so hard from here on our to just take away whatever monetary resources I can from dipshits like this.
If you wish, but you’ll likely end up paying a hefty premium to do so. This is like insisting on only eating hand-churned butter or only wearing hand-stitched clothing - you can probably find niche providers that supply that but you’ve got to be pretty rich to pull that off as a lifestyle.
I was chatting to a lawyer-person, and they were talking about AI replacing the work that junior lawyers do, much faster and at a fraction of the cost.
But its the junior lawyers that become seasoned lawyers and partners at law firms.
Seems like short term savings by not training new lawyers.
Yeah, and as a programmer-person I’ve pondered where new programmers will come from once AIs replace all the interns.
There’s a potential solution, though. Have you ever sat down with an AI and used it as a “tutor” while learning new stuff? It no doubt varies from person to person since different people learn different ways, but I’ve found it downright incredible how easy it is to learn when I’ve got an infinitely-patient AI I can ask to have walk me through new stuff. So maybe in future lawyers and programmers and whatnot can just skip the larval stage.
As a collaboration and learning tool, absolutely.
As a tool to speed up processes, potentially.
But as a “replace these jobs”, AI isnt there (yet). Anyone relying on it as such is, imo, setting themselves up to fail
Yup, and using AI as a tutor replaces tutors.
Its the problem with anything that increases productivity. Either people are expected to do more in the same time, or less people are needed to do the same work.
There is a balance to be struck.
New talent needs training and experience. If the current method of getting that is hands-on, and it gets replaced by AI, then talent and experience in the field will dry up. Or, qualifications to get into that career will take longer to train. Or, the path from entry level to senior level needs to be reassessed.
So, if a junior lawyer spends 4 years doing menial case work research before being able contribute in other ways, then that training needs to come from somewhere.
Replacing that menial work with AI (which will be able to do it faster) means there will be less entry level jobs, and higher level lawyers will be expected to do more work (“drive” the AI) and probably take on more clients.
Using AI to guide the juniors research will improve the juniors productivity, still give experience, however will likely reduce the number of entry jobs available.
Its probably the same arguments that a lot of blue-collar workers have made when automation replaced their jobs. Higher level machinists cut their teeth by doing more menial manufacturing jobs, less entry level jobs, less machinists, talent stagnation, etc
You sound like you’d be fun at business school and management networking parties ☺️
Read the second half of my response.
This is the same bullshit as I had mentioned, the myth of trickledown economics, and return to office mandates. All completely made-up bullshit that negatively impacts the workforce and only benefitting the bottom line of the corporations doing it.
On the second paragraph: Chinese shit is still really cheap. It just did pay off. As did replacing the accounting clerks of a decade earlier than that with computer spreadsheets.
The manufacturing sector goes even further to proving my point. The same rhetoric of “We’re only moving a small portion of manufacturing to China so we can invest more in our workforce here…” was a common line in the 80’s, and 100% bullshit and lies as well. The intent was always to increase profits to the detriment of the human workforce they didn’t give a single shit about.
Any person who buys into all the speeches about replacing human positions with X for the greater good of the existing workers is either naive, foolish, or in on the scam to begin with.
They haven’t even started all the plans they keep announcing. The point is, they are saying they aim to REPLACE humans with AI. Nobody should be so fucking naive to think they mean to hire humans back in support of this somehow. That’s just idiotic.
The new jobs may come whether they “mean to” or not, though.
All that money that gets saved goes somewhere. Yes, “trickle-down” is a lie, simply feeding more money to already-rich people won’t mean much to the economy. But if AI makes it cheaper to run a company it can also make it cheaper to start and grow a company. It’s not just giant companies that will be making use of these tools.
Did you read the article? It actually addresses much of what you talk about. For example:
The point is not to remove humans entirely. It’s to automate the stuff that can be automated so that the humans you do have can focus on the important stuff that can’t be automated. Human employees are expensive so you’ll want to use them wisely, not doing busy-work that a machine can handle.
If you wish, but you’ll likely end up paying a hefty premium to do so. This is like insisting on only eating hand-churned butter or only wearing hand-stitched clothing - you can probably find niche providers that supply that but you’ve got to be pretty rich to pull that off as a lifestyle.
I was chatting to a lawyer-person, and they were talking about AI replacing the work that junior lawyers do, much faster and at a fraction of the cost.
But its the junior lawyers that become seasoned lawyers and partners at law firms.
Seems like short term savings by not training new lawyers.
Robbing young Americans of future opportunities to give the incumbents larger stacks of cash is what America is all about.
Yeah, and as a programmer-person I’ve pondered where new programmers will come from once AIs replace all the interns.
There’s a potential solution, though. Have you ever sat down with an AI and used it as a “tutor” while learning new stuff? It no doubt varies from person to person since different people learn different ways, but I’ve found it downright incredible how easy it is to learn when I’ve got an infinitely-patient AI I can ask to have walk me through new stuff. So maybe in future lawyers and programmers and whatnot can just skip the larval stage.
As a collaboration and learning tool, absolutely.
As a tool to speed up processes, potentially.
But as a “replace these jobs”, AI isnt there (yet). Anyone relying on it as such is, imo, setting themselves up to fail
If it lets a person doing job X do twice as much work, that’s effectively replacing a person in job X. There’s now half as many of those jobs needed.
Yup, and using AI as a tutor replaces tutors.
Its the problem with anything that increases productivity. Either people are expected to do more in the same time, or less people are needed to do the same work.
There is a balance to be struck.
New talent needs training and experience. If the current method of getting that is hands-on, and it gets replaced by AI, then talent and experience in the field will dry up. Or, qualifications to get into that career will take longer to train. Or, the path from entry level to senior level needs to be reassessed.
So, if a junior lawyer spends 4 years doing menial case work research before being able contribute in other ways, then that training needs to come from somewhere.
Replacing that menial work with AI (which will be able to do it faster) means there will be less entry level jobs, and higher level lawyers will be expected to do more work (“drive” the AI) and probably take on more clients.
Using AI to guide the juniors research will improve the juniors productivity, still give experience, however will likely reduce the number of entry jobs available.
Its probably the same arguments that a lot of blue-collar workers have made when automation replaced their jobs. Higher level machinists cut their teeth by doing more menial manufacturing jobs, less entry level jobs, less machinists, talent stagnation, etc
You sound like you’d be fun at business school and management networking parties ☺️
Read the second half of my response.
This is the same bullshit as I had mentioned, the myth of trickledown economics, and return to office mandates. All completely made-up bullshit that negatively impacts the workforce and only benefitting the bottom line of the corporations doing it.
On the second paragraph: Chinese shit is still really cheap. It just did pay off. As did replacing the accounting clerks of a decade earlier than that with computer spreadsheets.
The manufacturing sector goes even further to proving my point. The same rhetoric of “We’re only moving a small portion of manufacturing to China so we can invest more in our workforce here…” was a common line in the 80’s, and 100% bullshit and lies as well. The intent was always to increase profits to the detriment of the human workforce they didn’t give a single shit about.
Any person who buys into all the speeches about replacing human positions with X for the greater good of the existing workers is either naive, foolish, or in on the scam to begin with.
Employment rates aren’t looking all that different, though. They’re still a few percent from perfect.
Obviously it’s bad for the specific workers replaced, but the general concept of innovation being good is backed by a lot of hard numbers.
They haven’t even started all the plans they keep announcing. The point is, they are saying they aim to REPLACE humans with AI. Nobody should be so fucking naive to think they mean to hire humans back in support of this somehow. That’s just idiotic.
The new jobs may come whether they “mean to” or not, though.
All that money that gets saved goes somewhere. Yes, “trickle-down” is a lie, simply feeding more money to already-rich people won’t mean much to the economy. But if AI makes it cheaper to run a company it can also make it cheaper to start and grow a company. It’s not just giant companies that will be making use of these tools.
You find some examples of this ever happening. You are a naive optimist or a fool if you think this has ever happened.
Here’s an October 2023 survey on the subject from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council on the subject of AI adoption. It found very extensive usage for a wide range of needs.