Martin Casado

The problem is that it doesn't understand your company.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi joins a16z's Martin Casado and Sarah Wei to discuss what's actually holding back AI adoption and why the answer may have less to do with building smarter models and more to do with giving them the right context.

They also debate the push to pace frontier AI, recursive self-improvement, and where the risks are real today.

Ali argues that super intelligence remains far from what we currently see, while cybersecurity is an immediate problem as agents make attacks faster and harder for human security teams to keep up with.

Like, the, the Dario essay comes out and, uh, you know, he throws out Meter, says he's bringing in Meter, and the backlash is, like, immediate.

The New York Post is crashing out saying, like, "These are handpicked AI watchdogs." Uh, Martin Casado, uh, Martin Casado over at a16z, he's pushing for the Department of Energy.

He's like full nationalization now.

And, uh, you know, both of those have their advantages, disadvantages.

And some evidence yesterday after recording certainly supported that view.

Take, for example, the updated thoughts from a16z's Martin Casado, who had been fairly hostile to the letter initially.

Yesterday, he posted on X: "The non-cynical view here is that the labs are trying to navigate impending, unsophisticated federal regulation and a high-strung, well-financed doomer complex, and it's just a tough, tough spot to be in.

It's entirely consistent to applaud their attempts to find a governance approach to questions around safety and security, to express skepticism around the proposal, and also express concerns about the larger safetyist complex.

[upbeat music] Another strand of concern has been one that was happening all throughout last week and that I discussed on the safety show from last Thursday, which is whether the labs have any real sense of what it's going to mean to hand the keys over to government to determine the next stages for the industry.

a16z's Martin Casado reposted a follow-up interview with Dario Amodei on Anderson Cooper, adding, "Man, what are we even doing here? Dario agrees more than he disagrees that AI has a greater than 10% probability of wiping out humanity.

They will get the regulation this rhetoric is calling for, not what they're prescribing, and it may be the largest cell phone in the history of tech." In other words, the argument here is that the presumption that the government is simply going to accept the industry's proposals as the right thing to do is ludicrous, and it is far more likely that they take far more dramatic action, justified in large part by the AI industry's leader's own rhetoric about potential apocalyptic futures.

Wrote investor Steven Sinofsky, "The most naive position is thinking that your inputs to government lead to the outputs you expect.