Marc Andreessen says AI will 'make the world warmer and nicer,' because even though it isn't sentient, it's more empathetic than humans

• AI "will make the world warmer and nicer," according to A16z's Marc Andreessen.
• The investor wrote a 7,000-word blog post lauding the technology's potential.
• Andreessen also warned against "full-blown moral panic" from cultish "AI risk doomers."

Marc Andreessen says that artificial intelligence is more empathetic than humans and "will make the world warmer and nicer."

In a 7,000-word blog post published on both Andreessen Horowitz's website and Substack on Tuesday, the investor lauded the technology's potential and warned against "full-blown moral panic about AI."

Both big AI companies and startups should be allowed to build AI "as fast and aggressively as they can" and there should be no regulatory barriers to open source AI, he wrote.

Though AI has existed for years, its popularity has boomed since November's launch of generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, which creates text in response to prompts based on information it is fed. Other forms of generative AI can create images, videos, and audio files.

Generative AI can help users in their personal, professional, and academic lives by saving time with routine tasks, gathering research, and conveying information concisely, such as generating recipes, writing letters, and designing marketing campaigns.

"AI is quite possibly the most important – and best – thing our civilization has ever created, certainly on par with electricity and microchips, and probably beyond those," Andreessen wrote. He said that AI would lead to a "golden age" for creative arts, bring about breakthroughs in technology and medicine, act as an "infinitely knowledgeable" coach and therapist, and tutor children, "helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love."

Andreessen said that productivity would also "accelerate dramatically," leading to new jobs, new industries, and wage growth, and ultimately create a "new era of heightened material prosperity across the planet."

But beyond the practical and economic benefits of the technology, Andreessen said that AI could have huge personal and social effects.

"Perhaps the most underestimated quality of AI is how humanizing it can be," such as helping people create art and acting as a friend, Andreessen wrote.

"AI medical chatbots are already more empathetic than their human counterparts," he continued, citing research which found that medical experts preferred ChatGPT's responses to patient questions.

"Rather than making the world harsher and more mechanistic, infinitely patient and sympathetic AI will make the world warmer and nicer."

But despite this, and other human-like attributes Andreessen described AI as having, people need to remember that the technology isn't alive, he cautioned.

"AI doesn't want, it doesn't have goals, it doesn't want to kill you, because it's not alive," Andreessen wrote. "And AI is a machine — is not going to come alive any more than your toaster will."  

Concerns have mounted over the ethics of generative AI, including the spread of deepfake images, the way that AI can sometimes hallucinate, or develop bias, and the risk of its being used for malicious purposes.

Some scientists and CEOs have argued for stricter regulation and even a pause on advanced AI development so that researchers can assess the potential risks of the technology.

Andreessen said that there was "full-blown moral panic about AI," in part fueled by "AI risk doomers" whom he described as a "cult."

"The development and proliferation of AI – far from a risk that we should fear – is a moral obligation that we have to ourselves, to our children, and to our future," Andreessen wrote.