The case against the case against Marc Andreessen’s ‘Why AI Will Save the World’ essay

If Marc Andreessen’s viral essay “Why AI Will Save the World,” accomplishes nothing else, it provides an encouraging reminder of what technological progress can potentially accomplish for 21st-century humanity. The venture capitalist begins the piece with a great list of what recent advances can make possible by functioning as a supertool in all sorts of areas of human endeavor.

But the bulk of the piece addresses some common criticisms of generative AI, especially large language models like ChatGPT and Bard. Andreessen frames the AI skeptic/pessimist/worrier/doomer issue — one he sees as becoming a full-fledged moral panic — as an example of the famous “Baptists and bootleggers” phenomenon that often emerges from reform movements. There are both those (“Baptists”) who advocate for regulations to address perceived risks and those who are self-interested opportunists (“Bootleggers”) seeking financial gain through those regulations.

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