Naval Ravikant's Latest Podcast on AI

Naval Ravikant dropped another hour-long podcast episode on Feb 20 on his latest reflections on AI. Here’s my notes:

Vide coding

• Not satisfied as being just an investor and philosopher, Naval is working on a project, getting his hands dirty as a founder again¹.
• Vibe coding is the new product management.

Impact to existing SaaS industry

• Industry leaders (super apps) will become even bigger to serve more use cases
• Long tail effect will produce more niche players
• Those in the middle will be blown away. There is no point in being No. 2 or 3. People want the best in everything.

Impact to individuals

• Software engineers still have two massive advantages:
  • They think in code. They understand what’s going on underneath.
  • Many things are still beyond the reach of AIs
• You have to be the best at something
• The set of things you can be best at is now almost infinite
• Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

How to use AI

• Concur with Andrej Karpathy that English is the hottest programming language
• No need to learn special tips or tricks of how to use AI tools. Just talk to AI and figure things out. It is adapting to me faster than I can adapt to it. Most of these tool tips are very ephemeral. Would not bother how to learn to use AI. Let AI learn how to be useful to you. Prompt engineering is overrated.
• He doesn’t worry about unaligned AI. He worries about unaligned humans who use AI.

Programmer’s golden age

• Programmers are becoming even more leveraged now with AI’s help.
• There are programmers now who can come up with ideas that can replace entire industries.
• Every other job is going to be eaten up by programmers one way or another.
• That said, anyone who is a logical, structured thinker, who thinks like a programmer and speaks a language that AI understands, will now be on the playing field.
• Now is a golden age for programming.

The limit of AI

• The thing that the AI is missing is its own creative agency and desire
• The key thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs from everybody else is that they have extreme agency.
• The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. AI would fail this test instantly. It doesn’t have a life and doesn’t have its own agency to know what it wants.

Use AI to learn

• To invest in the future, you want to live in the future.
• Most people do not have a positive relationship with complex technology.
• If you’re an early adopter of these AI tools, you’ll have a huge edge over others.
• He always runs his queries through 4 AIs and always fact-checks them against each other. A lot of copy-and-paste between them.
• AI is a great tool for self-directed learning. The means to learn are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.
• AI can meet you at your level now. This is a major advantage to traditional textbooks and the way of teaching.
• He always uses the most advanced models available to him. He pays for all of them. In this age, you pay for intelligence.
• AIs are incredibly good at certain things, but there are other places where they just fall flat. (Wheels are great on vehicles and outperform human feet by a long mile, but bad at climbing)
• Everyone should not only use the new technology, but also try to understand how it works under the hood.
• That action of learning and the pursuit of curiosity will help get rid of the anxiety and fear of AI.

Footnotes