Latest news with #Andreessen
Toronto Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- Toronto Sun
SHAPIRO: What will artificial intelligence do for our happiness?
The Grok logo on a smartphone arranged in New York, on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Photo by Gabby Jones / Bloomberg The West faces a series of serious economic challenges: A demographic collapse that undermines growth, a welfare state that sucks money from the future and dispenses it in the present, and a regulatory structure that focuses more on redistributionism and top-down control than on innovation. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account We are told there is one enormous hope for the future of the global economy in artificial intelligence (AI). AI will skyrocket economic productivity, provide us both information and innovation, solve insoluble problems and shrink timeframes to the infinitesimal. Marc Andreessen, investor extraordinaire, sums up the vision: 'We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights. We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher's Stone — we are literally making sand think.' By the available evidence, Andreessen is right that AI will be extraordinary. Already, AI can write better than most writers, think better than most professors and innovate better than most businesspeople. The question is: What comes next? For Andreessen, the answer is simple: Whatever we want. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Material abundance from markets and technology,' he says, 'opens the space for religion, for politics and for choices of how to live, socially and individually.' This is indeed an inspiring vision. And yet an antagonistic strain has emerged amid this generalized optimism. That strain takes two forms — one economic, the other spiritual. The economic strain suggests that AI will rob us of our jobs, reducing us to dependence on the welfare state. Historically speaking, this is unlikely: There will always be things that humans can do that AI can't. The computer revolution didn't destroy American jobs and neither did the automotive revolution. And if AI becomes all-encompassing in its capacity, as Andreessen explains, that will imply such an unprecedented level of prosperity that scarcity itself would become a thing of the past. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The spiritual strain of the anti-AI argument is different. It suggests that better technology will not solve our spiritual problems. If AI is better than we are at everything — if we suddenly find ourselves with hours more of free time and nothing to occupy it; if our skills are so diminished next to those of AI that any effort seems enervating; if AI makes it so easy to answer our questions that we never have to expend effort at all — then what do we do with our lives? The reality is that this line of argumentation isn't wrong, so far as it goes. It just doesn't go very far. AI, like any other technological development, shouldn't bring us happiness; it should reduce misery. These aren't the same thing. It's far more difficult to be happy when we're experiencing misery — if you have cancer, that's a serious challenge to happiness — but alleviation of misery doesn't guarantee happiness. In other words, the spiritual criticism of AI is misguided. AI is designed to alleviate pain and suffering, not to maximize our happiness. And asking it to maximize our happiness is like trying to dry one's hair with a hammer. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. None of which is to say that AI won't increase misery in the short term for many people. AI certainly raises challenges in every field, from parenting to business to art. But our true societal challenges aren't with AI. They're with us. And they're the same problems that have always been with us: The problem of individualism and community; the problem of purpose and meaning. And those problems are solvable. In an increasingly atomized age, it's easy to blame the machines for our spiritual failures. But we are responsible for our own fulfilment and happiness. We could start by encouraging more people to fill their lives with the non-material things that matter, such as church and family, predominantly. The alternative — stopping technological progress in its tracks — risks increasing misery without increasing happiness. Ben Shapiro is host of The Ben Shapiro Show and co-founder of Daily Wire+ Columnists Toronto & GTA Hockey Sports Toronto Blue Jays
The Star
17-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Investor Andreessen to take stand to defend his role in Facebook privacy case
FILE PHOTO: Marc Andreessen, of a16z, speaks during 2016 TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, California, U.S. September 13, 2016. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -Famed investor Marc Andreessen is scheduled to take the stand on Thursday to defend his role on the Facebook board of directors when it was hit with a $5 billion fine in 2019 for alleged violations of an agreement with a U.S. regulator to protect user privacy. Shareholders of Meta Platforms hope to hold the co-founder of the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, along with Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others, liable for more than $8 billion in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years to resolve claims that it had violated a 2012 agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 for failing to comply with that agreement, which is central to the case. Zuckerberg is expected to take the stand on Monday. The shareholders want the 11 defendants to use their personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants have denied the allegations, which they have called "extreme claims." Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. The company is not a defendant and declined to comment. The non-jury trial before Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick that began on Wednesday is scheduled to run through the end of next week in Delaware's Court of Chancery. A ruling in the case, which will mostly focus on decade-old events and board meetings, will likely take months after the trial. Andreessen's appearance comes after his firm last week said it was changing its state of incorporation to Nevada from Delaware, where the majority of U.S. publicly traded companies are based. His firm cited the lack of certainty in Delaware courts, pointing to two rulings, including one by McCormick last year to rescind Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package from Tesla. Most publicly traded U.S. companies are incorporated in Delaware, whose state budget relies on fees from chartering businesses. After his pay package was rescinded, Musk led his companies to incorporate in Texas from Delaware and encouraged others to follow, though only a handful have done so. Delaware's lawmakers this year overhauled the state's corporate law in a bid to prevent companies from leaving. Joel Fleming, an attorney who represents Meta shareholders, questioned if Andreessen's firm was trying to pressure the court, which he said would fail. "It's a ham-fisted attempt to do what Elon Musk did -- to huff and puff and send a message to the Court of Chancery," said Fleming. A spokesperson for the Andreessen Horowitz firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case will also feature testimony from former Facebook board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies co-founder, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. Meta investors allege in the lawsuit that former and current board members completely failed to oversee the company's compliance with the 2012 FTC agreement and claim that Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg knowingly ran Facebook as an illegal data harvesting operation. The case followed revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump's successful U.S. presidential campaign in 2016. Those revelations led to the FTC fine, which was a record at the time. On Wednesday, an expert witness for the plaintiffs testified about what he called "gaps and weaknesses" in Facebook's privacy policies but would not say if the company violated the 2012 agreement that Facebook reached with the FTC. Jeffrey Zients, a former board member, testified on Wednesday that the company did not agree to the FTC fine to spare Zuckerberg legal liability, as shareholders allege. On its website, the company has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware;Editing by Noeleen Walder and David Gregorio)
New York Post
14-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Billionaire Trump ally Marc Andreessen warns elite universities will ‘pay the price' for DEI
Billionaire Trump ally Marc Andreessen warned that elite universities like MIT and Stanford will have to 'pay the price' for DEI as he called for a 'counterattack' on educational institutions in a group chat with tech leaders and White House officials. 'I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation at this point,' the co-founder of the Andreessen-Horowitz venture capital firm wrote, according to screenshots of messages sent May 3 and obtained by the Washington Post. 'The universities are at Ground Zero of the counterattack.' 5 Marc Andreessen warned that elite universities will have to 'pay the price' for DEI. REUTERS Andreessen, whose firm has $42 billion in assets under management, has donated millions of dollars to Stanford over the years. He blasted Stanford and other top universities for favoring DEI initiatives that bring in foreign students over US citizens — a sentiment shared by President Trump and Tesla founder Elon Musk. 'The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal. When these two forms of discrimination combine, as they have for the last 60 years and on hyperdrive for the last decade, they systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America,' Andreesseen wrote, according to the report. 'They declared war on 70% of the country and now they're going to pay the price.' The rapid-fire blast of texts were sent to a WhatsApp group used by Trump officials to discuss AI policy with tech leaders and academics, according to the Washington Post. A White House official told the Washington Post that members of the Trump administration participated in the chat in a personal capacity, that no official policy was discussed and that Andreessen was not an official adviser to the president. The White House did not immediately respond to The New York Post's request for comment. 5 The venture capitalist took aim at Stanford University, where he had long been a donor. JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Andreessen deleted many of the messages after sending them, according to screenshots and two members of the text chat who spoke to the newspaper. In the group chat, Andreessen allegedly called for the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency that funds research, to receive 'the bureaucratic death penalty.' 'Raze it to the ground and start over,' He reportedly wrote. Andreessen claimed the agency had backed projects that censored American citizens online – taking a staunch free speech stance similar to Musk, who has loosened content restrictions on X and inspired similar moves from other tech leaders like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. He also alleged Stanford had ousted his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, from her role as chair of the university's philanthropy center. 5 President Trump has targeted universities, DEI, affirmative action and student visas. REUTERS '[T]hey forced my wife out of Stanford without a second thought, a decision that will cost them something like $5 billion in future donations,' Andreessen wrote, according to the screenshots. Representatives for Andreessen Horowitz, Arrillaga-Andreessen and Stanford did not immediately respond to The Post's requests for comment. 'MIT is merit-based and affordable, driven by innovation and entrepreneurship, and committed to excellence,' a university spokesperson told The Post, adding that MIT admits applicants prior to learning their financial circumstances. Some members of the chat found Andreessen's comments out of character for the group – which was often used to argue that a crackdown on immigration and attacks on universities could make it more difficult to attract and train top tech talent, the sources said. Andreessen argued that his 'cohort of citizens' had once been willing to accept diversity policies as the cost of past bigotry in the US, 'even though the discrimination was now aimed at us,' according to the text screenshots. 'The insanity of the last 8 years and in particular the summer of 2020, totally shredded that complacency…And so now my people are furious and not going to take it anymore.' 5 Marc Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in April 2024. Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Andreessen stopped using the group chat soon after his messages in May, according to the report. The group chat is moderated by Sriram Krishnan, a White House senior policy adviser on AI. He created the group before Trump's second term, while he was working as a partner at Andreessen's firm, according to the report. Some of the experts in the chat include Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and NYU professor who supported Kamala Harris' presidential campaign; and Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford professor and robotics entrepreneur who worked with the Biden administration on government funding for AI projects. The group has recently debated the Trump administration's budget cuts to the NSF and whether export curbs should be placed on Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, two members of the chat told the news outlet. The tech industry has typically lobbied for research funding and high-skilled immigration policies, like permitting student visas. Andreessen has seemingly sided with Trump's approach – targeting universities, criticizing DEI and affirmative action, slashing research funds and moving to cancel student visas. 5 Students walk in front of a building on Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus. Getty Images Andreessen has supported Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as Republicans, like Mitt Romney in 2012. His firm endorsed Trump last July after the assassination attempt during a Butler, Pa. rally, arguing the Republican could help reverse harsh Biden-era policies that stifled tech advancements. Andreessen's firm also financially backed Musk's takeover of Twitter in 2022, saying it would encourage free speech.
Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Stanford University forced my wife out without ..., said Silicon Valley's most-prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in a group chat with US government officials
Prominent venture capitalists are making headlines for their sharp criticisms of established institutions and, in one case, for incendiary comments regarding a political candidate, underscoring a growing ideological divide within the tech industry. Prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen , co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has reportedly launched a scathing attack on leading universities, including Stanford and MIT, and the National Science Foundation. According to screenshots viewed by the Washington Post, Andreessen, in a private group chat with AI scientists and officials of the Donald Trump administration, characterized MIT and Stanford as "mainly political operations fighting American innovation." He reportedly further said that Stanford "forced my wife out [as chair of its Center on Philanthropy and Civil society] without a second thought, a decision that will cost them something like $5 billion in future donations." Stanford and MIT have "declared war on 70% of the country" In a separate message, Andreessen reportedly declared that universities "declared war on 70% of the country and now they're going to pay the price," specifically targeting "DEI and immigration" as "two forms of discrimination" that are "politically lethal." These remarks align with Andreessen's previously stated support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, alongside a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz. Allies of Andreessen have since taken roles within the Trump administration. TechCrunch has reached out to a16z for comment. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like This Could Be the Best Time to Trade Gold in 5 Years IC Markets Learn More Undo Meanwhile, venture giant Sequoia Capital is grappling with the fallout from controversial comments made by partner Shaun Maguire concerning Zohran Mamdani , the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. In a July 4th tweet on Twitter, which has garnered over 5 million views, Maguire labeled Mamdani an "Islamist" who "comes from a culture that lies about everything." In his tweets, Maguire stated: "Mamdani comes from a culture that lies about everything. It's literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way." He further elaborated, "People have lost the plot Islamist != to Muslim Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, The Taliban, The Ayatollahs in Iran, etc are Islamists Mamdani — a man who started an SJP chapter and defended Anwar al-Alawki — is an Islamist He's doing his best to hide this but it's clear." Sequoia Capital has maintained a "hands-off approach" to the controversy, a strategy now being tested as the company finds itself in the eye of a public storm. The incidents once again shows increasing political polarization within the tech sector and raise questions about the role and responsibilities of influential figures in shaping public discourse. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Time of India
04-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Apple founder Steve Jobs' quality that made him ‘best manager to work with'
Apple founder Steve Jobs was 'one of the most disagreeable people in the history of humankind' said venture capitalist Marc Andreessen . Speaking on the "A16z" podcast produced by his investment firm, Andreessen Horowitz , Andreessen said that being disagreeable was part of Jobs' genius. He said that the Apple founder would 'disagree with you over the shape of a glass on the table in front of you, he was going to argue about everything.' 'It was where a lot of the genius came from,' Andreessen added. Revealing further about Steve Jobs, Andreessen said 'He was just not going to take the status quo for granted under any circumstances.' Marc Andreessen on Steve Jobs: 'Best manager to work with' During the podcast, the tech investor shared his views on Jobs, saying his reality personality was more balanced than often portrayed in books and stories. Andreessen stated that most accounts of Jobs fall into two extremes- either calling him a 'saint' or a 'screaming lunatic' who would yell at and fire employees at meetings. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Bo Derek's Probably The Most Gorgeous 68-Year-Old. Paperela Undo "I think the reality was in the middle," Andreessen said. "If you brought him first-class work, and if you were topping your field and super diligent, and on top of everything, and had all the details figured out, and knew what you were doing, and really good, he was like the best manager you were ever going to work with, and the best CEO you were ever going to work with," he added. Andreessen further revealed that most people who worked with Jobs believe they did their best work under him. "His approach to performance management was 'everybody is going to be doing top-end work, if not, they're not going to be here. As a consequence, the best people in the world are going to love being here because they're surrounded by the best people in the world,'" he stated. OnePlus Nord 5 and OnePlus Nord CE 5: Unboxing and first look AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
