Uncapped #15 | Vinod Khosla from Khosla Ventures

**Vinod Khosla** (0:00)
We're going to be in an era of abundance that's so large. It's very hard for people to imagine. The simplest way to say it is the need to work will go away. People will work on things because they want to work on things, not because they need to work on things to pay their mortgage.

**Jack Altman** (0:19)
All right. I am super excited to be here with Vinod. Thank you so much for doing this with me today. I really am looking forward to this conversation.

**Vinod Khosla** (0:25)
Look forward to it.

**Jack Altman** (0:26)
When you first walked in here, before we got started, you were saying, well, the world is crazy, and you've invested through many periods of time. Obviously, there have been a lot of ups and downs, but you said the world is particularly crazy now. Can you share why you said that or why you're feeling that way?

**Vinod Khosla** (0:45)
I've been doing venture capital for 40 years, so I've gone through every large innovation cycle. I've never seen a cycle like this.
In the last 40 years, maybe in the 1960s, to see the delta in change. And so we're going to see this large change in sort of such a short time. It's almost hard to imagine how society adjusts. And if I go even further, almost certainly within the next five years, any economically valuable job humans can do, AI will be able to do 80% of it, with a few exceptions like heart surgery or brain surgery. But by and large, 80% of all jobs can be done by an AI. And if that's happening in the next five years, the world is going to be a very different place. So I see this sort of like invention happening at a frenetic pace that is so large compared to even the dot-com phase when the internet first came and there was Netscape and TCPIP and all that. It's almost hard to imagine. No matter where you look, everything's being reinvented in some fundamental way, using often the innovations from AI and the capability from AI, but also a few other vectors like stuff happening in biology, stuff happening in fusion and other areas. Everything's up for grabs.

**Jack Altman** (3:06)
I guess that's then leading to a frenzied pace of investment, companies being created, new ideas getting tried all at once. Is your overall read based on, on one hand, it's crazy and frenetic, on the other hand, everything you just said about, yeah, but like maybe a billion jobs are going to be done by an AI in the next couple of years or several years or something like that. Do you net out to being very optimistic about this moment in time for tech, or do you think there's going to be a lot of carnage or how do you think?

**Vinod Khosla** (3:38)
So my view, the next five years to 2030, will look like productivity improvements. The way economists would say productivity is going up, GDP is going up, or accelerating on GDP, things like that. Then if I look to the 15 years hence, 2040 and beyond, we're going to be in an era of abundance that's so large, it's very hard for people to imagine. The simplest way to say it is the need to work will go away.
People will work on things because they want to work on things, not because they need to work on things to pay their mortgage.

**Jack Altman** (4:22)
Is that going to require us to change anything about the social contracts to get there?

**Vinod Khosla** (4:27)
Yes, I'll come back to that. What I want to say is, somewhere starting in 2030, the changes are going to be so disruptive, that it's hard to imagine how it sorts out, and sort out differently by country, by region. Different governments will play different roles in allowing it to happen or not allowing it to happen. We'll see this very, very disruptive, almost dystopic type of AI is taking all the jobs kind of thing. But we will have enough productivity, enough goods and services produced to share broadly.

**Jack Altman** (5:10)
Is what you're saying that basically the changes that are already happening will compound to a point where it'll now just be this big disruption? Or are you saying the tech by the year 2030 is then going to be so disruptive that it's going to create all these changes? In other words, are we already on that trajectory or you're just saying the tech's going to get there in a way that will be that disruptive?

**Vinod Khosla** (5:31)
What I'm saying is tech is disruptive in some areas.