You're Being Lied To About AI! - Jordan Thibodeau
What I learned from speaking with Jordan Thibodeau.
"The media has 10 different tropes that they use to generate clicks... selling gloom and doom porn and to let everyone know that the sky is falling." – Jordan Thibodeau
Hey, it's the Jona Digest,
This week, I spoke with Jordan Thibodeau, the founder of the Silicon Valley Investors Club and former Google mergers & acquisitions insider. Here are the 3 biggest lessons I took from our conversation:
1. AI Existential Risk Is Real, But...
I learned about the important difference between legit AI safety concerns and manufactured panic. While we should take AI alignment seriously as a long-term risk, he showed me that current unemployment fears are created by AI companies themselves.
Why?
AI companies say: “Look how much money businesses are saving by using AI instead of humans.”
Business owners read this and feel left behind if they don't use more AI.
They buy expensive subscriptions for their teams and attempt to fire more people.
Goal achieved: AI companies made more money.
Unintended consequence: Businesses suffer because AI is nowhere near able to replace a human yet.
Thibodeau’s rule hit me hard: "A man is only as rational as his paycheck allows him to be." Question who benefits when you see doom-and-gloom stories...
Jordan also pointed out that if AI were truly replacing workers at scale, we'd see massive productivity spikes in economic data, but we're not witnessing that.
I think the main reason we don't see that kind of mass replacement... yet... is that end consumers are largely unable to teach AI & have it get better over time. We're at the mercy of updates. Whereas a human employee will be shit the first week, but great 6 months from now, if AI is shit at a task today, you & I have no way of significantly training it up.
2. The AI Cheating Crisis
I realized that students using ChatGPT isn't just about cheating. It fundamentally reshapes how we need to educate ourselves and our young. Jordan highlighted that both students and professors are now using AI, creating an "arms race" that institutions can't win.
This forced me to think: if I can graduate without learning anything, what does my degree actually represent?
I believe this progress shifts A LOT of responsibility to the individual student. Whereas 20 years ago, anyone who was at a university actually had to work to get their degree, now... if you don't want to, you don't have to.
To me, this is a question of how much you value learning for its own sake. Those who have a deep love for expanding their minds will be able to do so in even more amplified ways than ever before! While those who despise their education and aim to simply "get it done with" will be more tempted than ever to leave their higher education hundreds of thousands of dollars lighter, and with not much to show for it.
At the risk of sounding like the biggest teacher’s pet: tasks our educators give us are chosen carefully & intentionally to make us better humans, not to make our lives harder. I will keep that in mind.
3. Will Human Work Always Be Valuable?
Jordan shared how AI-generated art of his father and dog still moved him emotionally because the intention behind it was real. The key insight here is that we tend to value the intention more than the technique.
I'd still wager that we'll likely not reach a time when you & I will stroll through galleries of fully AI-generated art (from idea to execution) and be in awe. However... more unpredictable things are known to have happened.
Just two days ago, Anthropic, the lab behind Claude AI, established the first rules for AI Welfare. Claude is now allowed to exit & end abusive conversations.
So maybe we’ll soon swoon at the sight of its art…
I wish you much love & success,
Jona
PS: reply to this email with thoughts, disagreements, and worries! I’ll get back to you.
PPS: Guest and podcast suggestions are always welcome, either reply to this email or comment on Substack! I’ll get back to you, too.
Here is the full episode with Jordan:
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