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Answers by Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital; Owner of the Golden State Warriors; Merchant of Progress, on Quora.
A: No and no. I think the term AI is overloaded and mostly used by fearmongering technophiles or wannabe intellectuals. AI, in its current state, is really about a probabilistic set of heuristics or rules. If A will ever become I, there needs to be a fluid transition and unknown boundary between deterministic and probabilistic decision making -- like the human mind. I don't see that around the corner. I do think we will get ever precise capabilities in strictly defined systems (autonomous driving) where most of the hairiest and ambiguous rules will be ratified or voted on, but I don't see an "intelligent" brain anywhere around the corner. I think it's mostly "smart" people trying to sound really smart.
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A: Yes. I think this is the most fundamental societal change underway. We have been conditioned to live in a strict, hierarchical definition of value where a few, very select people by implication of their birthright, gender, religion or, almost equally so, their educational lineage, have held power over the rest of us. This is becoming increasingly false. As such, the reason that people would go $100k's into debt for this exchange made sense. But if this tradeoff no longer exists and society is now willing to embrace and anoint non-traditional backgrounds into roles of societal leadership, then the fallacy of higher education will finally be exposed.
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A: This depends on the context of your question. If it relates to a hierarchical assessment of value/creativity/impact, I'd say no. If it relates to economic value, I would say that it will likely equal and possibly even exceed Silicon Valley. Chinese entrepreneurs are increasingly realizing that the real value is in a) staying in China (ie not immigrating) and b) building for Chinese consumers (ie focus on the market you know vs the many markets you don't). If you believe in the broad based growth of the Chinese consumer and, as a byproduct, GDP, this is a smart decision. All of this, however, doesn't solve the fact that years of rigid educational paradigms hasn't yet been fully undone such that the unpredictable/creative/unexpected innovations will happen. Hence my view.
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