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Back to The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon, with Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz.

Who Said We Can Turn Sand Into Intelligence?

Chris Dixon says humans just figured out how to turn sand into intelligence, a framing he credits to Marc Andreessen. The way to learn it is math and computer science, and maybe economics, though he is not sure economics belongs on the list.

He feels fortunate that a lot of his career, with Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, happened during the growth of the internet, something bequeathed by people before him. The AI work now is going to be the dominant narrative of the next 20, 30 years. Being in the mix, at the cutting edge, and using the tools is the obvious thing to do, and the work does not have to be solely technical.

A lot of other fields are going to be revolutionized. Classics is being revolutionized because the Vesuvius scroll project can use AI to decipher scrolls. He is unsure whether lost books will yield entire new schools of philosophy. He just had lunch with an economics professor, and the whole field of economics is going to be transformed around AI.

Grokipedia·Chris Dixon·Marc Andreessen

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The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon ·

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  1. What Is Andreessen Horowitz Frontier?Chris Dixon says Andreessen Horowitz is expanding the crypto fund to Andreessen Horowitz Frontier for two reasons, and he leaves the second one uncertain…
  2. Why Does A16z Frontier Choose to Be Too Early?Chris Dixon says a16z Frontier chooses to be too early because every good idea the firm has seen that involved technology has eventually worked, or he…
  3. Why Will Founders Combine Software and Hardware?Marc Andreessen says AI-native startups already see what they can do with AI differently from a typical incumbent in almost any industry, and he calls the gap…
  4. Why Should Founders Ask If an Idea Is Ambitious Enough?Chris Dixon says founders should ask whether an idea is ambitious enough, not whether it is too ambitious.
  5. Will AI Agents Outnumber People on the Internet?Chris Dixon says the internet is headed for a world in which the most numerous participants are agents, not people.
  6. What Is Product Manager Brain?Marc Andreessen calls the pattern product manager brain: product managers design products for product managers.
  7. How Far Ahead Are Open Source AI Models?Marc Andreessen says open models are lapping closed models by six months to 12 months, depending on how you count, and open source is racing ahead. The U.S.
  8. What Is Happening to the Internet Business Model?Chris Dixon says the internet business model is breaking, and he puts the start of the break maybe in the last decade while calling the break especially sharp…
  9. How Does Douglas Adams Say People Receive New Technology?Chris Dixon says Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, described how people receive any new technology in three different ways, split…

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