AI and Venture Capital: The True Poetry

On Marc Andreessen's latest visionary musing

I just saw an amusing clip of Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley billionaire and venture capitalist, remarking that there is one particular art form that likely won’t be replaced by AI. All other arts, of course, will vanish (according to Andreessen). Poetry, painting, musical composition, playing the banjo on your back porch with a jug band, claymation, live musical theatre… All gone with the wind. Ashes, totally reduced to computation. Computers will have finally cracked the code to literary, artistic, and musical greatness. The only art left, according to Andreessen, will be—venture capital. Andreessen must feel lucky that he happened to pick the one profession that won’t be utterly annihilated.

You see, as Andreessen explains, venture capital is “more of an art than a science.” Apparently, venture capital is more of an art than actual art, which will vanish into 1s and 0s. To all the neophytes, to the rosy-cheeked innocent tech virgins out there, this might seem confusing, even stupid. You’d think that analyzing the value of companies would require a certain amount of quantification—that it would actually prove a bit more computational than, say, doing what Van Gogh or Mozart or Shakespeare did. After all, the definition of the “Good” is, so far, not susceptible to rendering as computer code. It is still, to the profound dissatisfaction of so many logically minded denizens of Silicon Valley, something of a philosophical quandary, constituting territory disputed by various parties.

But according to revered technological seer, Marc Andreessen, that’s not true. The true poetry is and always has been business. Perhaps he’s familiar with Emerson’s aperçu, “Money, which represents the prose of life, and is hardly spoken of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses”? It’s admittedly difficult to dislodge a tech titan from his throne of immense certainties in order to entertain the observations of a humble essayist and poet. But he would probably like that one.

Perhaps Andreessen’s comment seems a little comically self-serving to you. Understandable! Considering you’re not an early investor in tech. But a minute lapse in self-awareness among tech billionaires shouldn’t surprise you, even if it (sometimes) still does. Doing so much difficult brain work must be taxing—they can’t help the occasional slip. They’re spending every minute of the day thinking not of themselves but of others. (Admittedly, by “others,” I mean a computer super-mind that will kill and replace everyone else. But that’s still “others.” Kind of.)

You might think this makes Andreessen’s prediction less unnerving, since you find it easy to believe he’s wrong—that he’s living in an insular nerd world, far abstracted from baseline reality. You might be moved to take comfort: you might think that nothing has made you feel better about the prospects of human creativity enduring the onslaught of AI than that silly Marc Andreessen interview clip. But are you willing to gamble on the evidence of your own perceptions against the might of a man who belongs to the Worldwide Web Hall of Fame?

You’ll continue thinking that right up until the moment when the brilliant point of Marc Andreessen’s powerful cranium shatters your sternum. You’ll continue thinking that right up until his head plunges directly through your body, severing your spine and emerging out your back, splattering your flesh and blood, your “wetware,” around the lowly, bereft “meatspace” you inhabit. You can’t win.