The Double-Edged Sword of AI: Progress, Control, and Human Agency Explored | Replit CEO Amjad Massad X Impact Theory W/ Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: "The Double-Edged Sword of AI: Progress, Control, and Human Agency Explored"

Guest: Amjad Masad (Replit CEO)
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Release Date: February 6, 2026

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Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down with Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit, to dissect the complex and often paradoxical nature of AI’s impact on society. Drawing from historical, philosophical, and personal anecdotes, they explore whether technology—especially AI—is pushing us toward unprecedented opportunity or unprecedented control, and what that means for human agency, entrepreneurship, and social structure.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Lessons from the Unabomber Manifesto & The Power Process

[00:47-05:39]

• Masad references Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber)’s manifesto, noting its insights about technology’s disruptive impact on the "power process"—the intrinsic human need for challenge, struggle, and purpose.
  • Quote (Amjad Masad, 02:16): “Technology increasingly is making our lives so easy that... society becomes pathological in many ways.”
• Kaczynski argues that without genuine challenges, people seek surrogate struggles, often leading to societal malaise and pathological behaviors.
• Both Tom and Amjad reject the idea that technology is inevitably harmful, recognizing the dual nature of technological progress.

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2. The Double-Edged Sword of AI – Control vs. Empowerment

[05:39-12:00]

• Tom’s Thesis: AI will create both “tremendous solutions and tremendous problems,” revolutionizing personal productivity but risking mass surveillance and societal ennui.
  • Quote (Tom Bilyeu, 06:27): “We have this thing that will be the ultimate tool of the elites to control people... [and] requires a lot of self-regulation.”
• Amjad’s Perspective: The societal response, including cultural and community “antibodies” (like with junk food or smoking), is essential to balancing technology’s impact.
  • Quote (Amjad Masad, 05:58): “Any powerful tool... can have negative consequences and positive consequences. Society needs to adapt to that…”
• Debate about whether AI will prompt meaningful, organic regulation versus top-down government intervention.

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3. Regulation, Societal Norms, and Human Adaptability

[08:05-11:41]

• Smoking as an example: cultural, legal, and social shifts made a harmful activity less pervasive—can similar societal “antibodies” form around AI?
• Tom notes how in gaming, the anti-AI backlash is emotional and intense, possibly more about anxiety and fear of obsolescence than reasoned debate.
• Amjad: Overall, despite short-term harms, humans are highly adaptable and optimistic, able to react and develop societal norms.

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4. Narrative Control, the “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” and AI’s Surveillance Potential

[13:00-18:00+]

• Tom introduces James Burnham and the “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” suggesting a persistent small elite always controls the system.
  • Quote (Tom Bilyeu, 16:17): “There will always be a small group of people that run the world, quite literally.”
• Burnham and Kaczynski both predict that technological systems will intensify behavioral control to maintain stability.
  • AI as the “ultimate Panopticon”—mass surveillance and narrative management tool.
• Masad brings in other thinkers (Nick Land, Tim Wu), discussing the pendulum between centralization and decentralization in technology.

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5. AI: Decentralizing vs. Centralizing Forces

[18:00-24:11]

• Masad: AI can empower individuals; e.g., entrepreneurship is booming due to AI tools removing capital and location barriers.
  • Quote (Masad, 21:34): “There’s a lot of people that are able to build games right now that couldn’t before.”
• At the same time, AI could be leveraged for mass control and surveillance, depending on who holds the power.
• Imagines future AIs that help people cross-examine truth by exposing them to a diversity of viewpoints and probabilistic arguments.

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6. Can AI Defend Individual Agency Against Systemic Control?

[24:11-27:53]

• Tom remains skeptical: systemic incentives continually reinforce elite control, and AI may “close lanes down” for individual freedom.
  • Quote (Tom Bilyeu, 26:14): “The system has every incentive to survive. Now we’re giving it... access to most power, most money.”
• Amjad references "The Sovereign Individual," noting how modern welfare states perpetuate dependency and elite power.
• Amjad retains hope that America’s ideals (free speech, distributed power, competition among states) will spark corrective reactions.

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7. Human Nature, Intelligence, Agency & Social Change

[32:24-53:00]

• Tom argues: Intelligence and awareness are unevenly distributed, giving the elite permanent leverage.
  • Most people, in his experience, don’t meaningfully change after adolescence.
  • Quote (Tom Bilyeu, 38:56): “Only 2% of adults will ever change.”
• Amjad pushes back: Intelligence is overrated—agency, intuition, and a sense of injustice drive change just as much (if not more).
  • Quote (Masad, 33:30): “I think intelligence is overrated.”
• Explores if humans are automata (programmed by genes/environment) or capable of free will and real change.
• Tom challenges the relevance of the “hard problem of consciousness” for practical concerns, while Amjad emphasizes downstream implications (e.g., justice system philosophy).

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8. Complexity, Economic Systems, and Mass Manipulation

[49:41-53:41]

• Economics and policy can be made intentionally complex, keeping the public disengaged or manipulated.
  • Quote (Masad, 51:26): “Economics was intentionally made complicated... to be impenetrable so that we can't [understand it].”
• Both agree that even highly intelligent or educated people can be deceived by complex systems or elite narrative control.
• Revolution as a response to perceived injustice can be co-opted by new elites or lead to worse outcomes (e.g., Bolshevik, Maoist revolutions).

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9. AI’s Future: Tool for Manipulation or Mass Empowerment?

[55:12-59:14]

• Amjad: AI can amplify both positive and negative societal forces. Personal AIs could make society more discerning, but demagogues may also be supercharged.
  • Calls for entrepreneurial and cultural responsibility: “We should have standards for entrepreneurs... it would be great to live in a world in which there’s a social cost to [certain tech].”
• He sees hope in America’s tradition of public accountability and innovation driving toward beneficial uses of AI.
  • Quote (Masad, 59:14): “It’s incumbent on people... to try to nudge the world in a better direction.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On technology’s impact:
  “It’s not inevitably true that technology makes us worse and unhappy... without that regulatory force, we could end up in a place where technology is actually really harmful.”
  (Amjad Masad, 03:51)

• On AI’s dual nature:
  “The more powerful something is, the more it has potential to do both [harm and good].”
  (Amjad Masad, 05:48)

• On narrative control:
  “I mistook consensus around projected narrative for actual represented truth. And Covid made me realize... it was always just narrative control.”
  (Tom Bilyeu, 14:18)

• On human adaptiveness:
  “Healthy societies tend to develop antibodies over time.”
  (Amjad Masad, 09:34)

• On entrepreneurship:
  “There’s a lot of people that are able to build games right now that couldn’t before.”
  (Masad, 21:34)

• On elite control and oligarchy:
  “The system has every incentive to survive. And now... people at the top are going to have the access to most power, most money.”
  (Tom Bilyeu, 26:14)

• On intelligence and agency:
  “I think intelligence is overrated.”
  (Amjad Masad, 33:30)

• On revolution and unintended consequences:
  “The revolutionaries often make things infinitely worse.”
  (Tom Bilyeu, 52:54)

• On AI’s societal role:
  “It’s a complicated dynamic system. Ultimately I do have a fundamental belief in goodness of people and in society’s ability... to nudge the system in a better direction.”
  (Amjad Masad, 59:14)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Unabomber Manifesto & Power Process: 00:47–05:39
• AI as Salvation/Threat, Regulatory Forces: 05:39–12:00
• Societal Antibodies, Gaming & AI Backlash: 08:05–11:41
• Oligarchy, Panopticon, and AI’s Centralizing Power: 13:00–18:00
• Oscillation Between Centralization and Decentralization: 18:12–24:11
• AI vs. Systemic Control, “Sovereign Individual”: 24:11–27:53
• Human Nature, Intelligence, and Agency: 32:24–53:00
• Economics, Complexity, and Mass Manipulation: 49:41–53:41
• AI’s Societal Responsibilities: 55:12–59:14
• Amjad’s Closing Advice and Entrepreneurship Journey: 59:33–61:34

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Conclusion

Tom and Amjad’s energetic exchange is a deep dive into the mosaic of human and social factors shaping AI’s future. They balance between optimism and realism, each offering distinct but intersecting perspectives on agency, power, and the nature of progress.

The episode ends with a rallying call: for creators, entrepreneurs, and the public to deliberately steer technology toward empowerment and societal good—always aware of its double-edged possibilities.

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Further engagement:

• Amjad Masad on X: @amassad
• Replit: replit.com
• Blog: amassad.me

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For the full experience, listen to the episode for nuance, tone, and deeper context.

Transcript

[A]

Reggie, I just sold my car online.

[B]

Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did?

[A]

Yep. On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[B]

You don't say.

[A]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast.

[B]

Wow. Way to go. So, about that picture frame.

[A]

Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. What do you think the Unabomber got right in his manifesto that teaches us something about how we should engage with.

[B]

AI So maybe some background. Unabomber manifesto was. Was written by. By this guy who's actually a mathematic mathematician. His name is Ted Kaczynski. And for all intents and purposes, he's obviously did really bad stuff. We should say that did terrorism. But he wrote this manifesto that I think is worth reading, and it is a reflection and introspection on technology and its role in human society. It's called the Industrial Revolution and its consequences. And it starts with the Industrial Revolution, and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. It's one of the strongest opening sentences you can find in any book, book or. Or piece of writing. He talks about how technology can rob us from this natural thing to us that he calls the power process. So he says humans are.

[A]

Are.

[B]

Are made, are built, evolved, whatever you. You think of to. To have certain life phases and certain challenges and to be able to overcome them. So you start as a child, you learn how to walk. You know, you crawl around, you learn how to walk, and you learn how to eat and do all the basic stuff. And then, you know, as a hunter gatherer, say, ancestral humans, they would learn how to hunt, and they'll do well in hunting. They'll have enough resources to be able to go get married and get a hut or whatever they used to live in. Get a hut. The cost of huts these days, down payment on a hut. Got my, you know, slab of meat for down payments. But. And then you have children, and then they have children. You age out, and you become the wise grandfather. And then you pass away. And he says that's so essential to us, is his view. And technology increasingly is making our lives so easy that we. We, you know, society becomes pathological in many ways. And he. He calls that depression. He calls actually social activism. You might call it walk Woke today as. Like. He actually has a. Like an entire section on social activism being like a symptom of people just not having to struggle and having to.

[A]

Because they, they are looking for a surrogate for meaning and purpose.

[B]

They're looking for a surrogate meaning and purpose or they're taking out some kind of rage against society that, because of that lack of meaning, of purpose. And, and his view is that, you know, these technologies have become a replacement for the power process and that that's causing humanity overall to be just net unhappy, worse off because of technology. Now, you know, I don't obviously don't agree with, with the conclusion of that, but it's important to.

[A]

So you don't agree with the conclusion. You don't agree that it's actually depressing us.

[B]

I don't agree that it's inevitably true that technology makes us worse unhappy. I think there are forms of technology that makes us worse unhappy and all of that. But it's like any, any tool, any powerful tool, it can have negative consequences and positive consequences. And society needs to adapt to that and come up with either like regulations, religions to regulate these things or, or just like social antibodies. You know, for example, I'm a big fan of Quest the snacks you made. There was a time when it was, you know, kind of acceptable to be eating junk all the time, to be eating Twinkies and all of that. But at some point, especially in the U.S. i think start in the U.S. where the. There was a feeling that no, we're getting unhealthy, we're getting unhappy, we're not looking attractive and there's a movement around let's find replacements, let's eat whole foods, let's eat. And society developed ways in which to get the best of both worlds, to have really tasty good food, but at the same time not feeling like crap and unhappy all the time. And so I think without that regulatory force, and I don't mean that strictly in a government sense because I can. Government regulation can come with all sorts of negative consequences, but it could come from kind of society overall. Then you can overcome these things. But I think free markets and capitalism sort of running amok without any social reaction and regulation of that, we could end up in a place where technology is actually really harmful.

[A]

Okay, so we know that some technology creates a problem. Do you put AI in the camp of technology that creates that problem?

[B]

I think AI could create tremendous problem, could create tremendous solutions. I think the more powerful something is, the more has potential to do both.

[A]

Okay, so I'll put my thesis forward, which is. That is maybe one word different than what you said, which is AI is going to create tremendous solutions and tremendous problems. And so for me, I look at this and it's been such a huge boon in my own life. There are things that I'm able to do with our video game development that just wouldn't be possible if we didn't have AI just becomes too expensive too fast. So huge win. I use it in my own life constantly. Its ability to help me educate myself is unparalleled ever. It's just absolutely incredible. When I look at the societal impacts though, I immediately am like, oh like this is really going to be a problem and I'll sort of rank order. I think the you've got at the very top, you've got the ultimate Panopticon where AI is just going to watch, see and do everything. And it becomes a tool for elites to gain control over the masses. I know you know about James Burnham, so definitely want to get into that, but just as a marker for now. So worry about that then certainly worry about an interim period where humans will like if I look at Gen Z for sure, probably even younger millennials, they just don't try because the K shaped economy has brutalized them their whole life. And then we've told them, hey, don't worry, in five to ten years AI is going to be better than you at everything. And there's just a why bother mentality. And then obviously you can go into all the different layers, sex bots, all that kind of crazy stuff. But it's like, okay, well I know humans are bad at the self regulating that you're talking about and I know governments are bad at the top down regulation. So now I'm like, oh, we have this thing that will be the ultimate tool of the elites to control people and then the other stuff that it can do requires a lot of self regulation. And so how do you think through or if you don't agree with that problem, definitely let me know. But if you do agree, like how do you deal with it?

[B]

Yeah, I agree and I will say yes, government is not always successful at regulation. But there are some things that I think were positive kind of partnership between society, culture, you know, and, and government, in some cases religion, like smoking. I think it's been really successful in the US like when I came first here, like not only was, not only was hard to smoke because like everywhere it's kind of banned indoors, it was socially, at least in my social circles, socially looked down upon to be a smoker and I was smoking at the time When I first came from Jordan and I felt kind of like a social outcast a little bit, I felt kind of weird, like, why am I smoking? Like, are they better than me? And that's the kind of feeling you want to, want to create for something that's like truly, truly harmful, but do.

[A]

So this is where it gets complicated with AI. So in the video game industry where I'm at, video gamers absolutely despise AI and they have that energy of like, what are you doing? Why are you using that? I'm not even going to play your game. If you used AI even for like the tiniest background object, like, nope, you're dead to me.

[B]

But what are they reacting to? Like are they reacting to actual social harm or are they reacting to sense of anxiety or job reflection?

[A]

I'm trying to get to this as a category question. So what I hear you saying is we need to make things that are dangerous feel like we did cigarettes.

[B]

The other way I'm saying it is. I generally, I'm optimistic about humans to. Although some things could be very harmful in the short term. Just generally people and I think healthy societies and, and you could argue whether we have health societies or not given all the social unrest in the world. But healthy societies tend to develop antibodies over time. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't worry about that, but there's just a general kind of flag that I'm planning to say. I'm generally optimistic about humans.

[A]

Figure it out.

[B]

Humans figuring it out. That being said, we can discuss all the details and that. So yeah, definitely there are reactions to AI that are totally irrational and that happens too. Like the idea that you can't use AI to make video games is just when you talk to anyone. And I've tried to have conversations there. There's no real argument there. Like, you know, at best you can get to the argument of like artists, like this is actually plagiarizing artists work and whatever. You can have a discussion around that, but for the most part it's just a total emotional reaction. But, but I think some of the things that we need to truly worry about right now is like just the general information landscape is absolutely horrific right now. Like you can't tell what's real and what's not real. Like any major news event, there's all these AI videos that are happening around it and it, and it, it just leads people to this nihilistic view of like, I just can't. Everything is propaganda. And, and our, our kind of media establishment in the US hasn't really helped a whole lot, especially during the COVID years and after that and just the trust in media has went down a lot. So even that as an institution that you could probably maybe rely on at some point is no longer the case. Social media replace it and now social media is just like full and sort of full of these fake videos and you can't make heads from tales.

[A]

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If you're ready to turn crypto chaos into confidence, click the link in the show notes and use code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at sum. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. Okay, so this is a good point to go back to James Burnham. So Covid happens completely reorganizes my sense of what the world is and how it works. Like my life really can be just a line drawn. It's like my frame of reference before COVID my frame of reference after. Yes, reading James Burnham gave me the language with which to explain what I had been through. And I suddenly realized, oh my God, my whole life the narrative has been controlled. I just didn't realize it. So I mistook consensus around projected narrative for actual represented truth. And Covid made me realize, oh, no, no, no. It was never simply representing the truth. It was always just narrative control. Now social media made it impossible for them to have uniformity of narrative. And I was like, whoa, that was such a terrifying paradigm shift. And Burnham has this idea that you'll well know called the iron Law of oligarchy. So there will always be a small group of people that run the world, like quite literally. And it doesn't matter how you fragment it, whether it's in a company, there's going to be a small group of executives that run the company, whether it's a state government small group that run that, whether it's a household, there's going to be. Even when you got the parents and the kids, it's like, well, the parents are going to run things. I suppose you could have something really wacky and the kids are running the show, but there's always going to be a small group that actually leads. Now, one of Ted Kaczynski's ideas that I thought was really interesting is that what he said was the system itself, as technology advances, will have to crack down on the people's behavior More and more to stay in control. And so with AI, you're creating the ultimate tool because it can see everything, synthesize, everything can be everywhere all at once. I mean, you know, you look at what is. What's the Peter Thiel Company. Oh, God. Palantir. Thank you. So you look at some of the stuff they're able to do from a surveillance perspective, and now you've got AI itself creates the very tool when it gets in the hands of the elites who know they must control the narrative, control behavior in order to control, in order to keep the system alive. And so now it's like, oh, the thing that Kaczynski, he wouldn't have predicted AI in the form that it's in now, but he understood the coming problem.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of these early literature were kind of circling around the same thing. There's this another thinker called Nick Land.

[A]

Which is also Nick Land.

[B]

Nick Land. Pretty. Never heard of this wild, very impenetrable type of thinking, but in writing. But one idea that he talks about is capitalism is the boots desk for AI. So it was always going to head to AI.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

And he goes a little wackier than that and says, it's almost like you could think of AI as reaching back into the past and building itself through free markets and capitalism. It's almost like this thing has always somehow existing in some form and it's getting built and the ultimate conclusion as AI. But I digress. There's. But, you know, the point is it was always headed in this direction. This like systems that we're building. That being said, in the same way that technology has good uses and bad uses, technology can be centralizing and decentralizing. There's an author, his name is Tim Wu, and he wrote the book the Master Switch. And he talks about this oscillation between centralization and decentralization of technology. He brings up, for example, radio, one of the early technologies. He talks about Ham radio. It was such a decentralizing technology because people used to like, you know, have these radios at home. They would talk to each other, they would like. They can broadcast anything. Obviously at some point the government stepped in, kind of regulated the radio radio bands. And he says, like early Internet was also a very decentralizing technology. There wasn't really this Facebooks of the world. It was like social networks that was peer to peer and everyone's computer was treated the same. There wasn't client server. Everything is a client and a server. But at some point we had it in A way that is centralizing. But his argument is it'll keep oscillating. We'll invent something that's more decentralizing. And then later on it's centralized, it will invent another thing that's decentralizing. You can think of crypto as like a decentralizing of the, potentially of the Internet. Now, AI, I will make the point that it's both centralizing and decentralizing at the same time. So of course AI can be used to do mass surveillance, to do, to have these like big, you know, machines that kind of can ingest all the data about us and use facial recognition. And you can think of it as the ultimate like, you know, dream of the Chinese Communist Party, right? Is to see everything and know everything about, about everyone, to control everything. But there's something also decentralizing about AI. Now think about entrepreneurship. Like, I think we're going through a boom in entrepreneurship. Like there's like none in history. Like what you said about, you know, your game studio. There's a lot of people that are able to build games right now that couldn't before. In our business, we see, we built a platform that allows people to build software. And so we see individuals that are making millions of dollars that otherwise would have required to have raised a lot of capital and be in Silicon Valley and employ a lot of people. So we see a lot of these micro entrepreneurship now coming on the scene. A lot of people are leaving their jobs, jobs they hate, jobs they're miserable in and starting businesses that they're really passionate about and areas they really care about. So I think there's a sense in which there's going to be a lot more companies. And I think that's a really good thing. That's a decentralizing thing that decentralizes power. I also think that, you know, we talked about the information landscape. Now think. I think Grok on AX has been for the most part positive tool for, for people to like, judge whether something is real or not. Like you see as like ad grock. Is this real or not? And most of the time the answers are really good and it's giving them different perspectives and it's helping people judge the different things. I actually don't think that the ultimate personal information assistance has been built yet. Like, what I want to see someone build is me going into some kind of AI system and putting some kind of statement like Covid was lap leaked. And then I want to see agents from every model, every company, from every country in the world argue about it. And I want to see it spread and argued in every different perspective with different prompting and things like that. And then like find a summary of like all the different views and maybe even at some point putting in probability probabilities about like, here's what we think the probability of that happened or this happened or this, that. So I think AI can actually create a potential information landscape that gives power to people to judge things and not have to rely on cnn. I do agree with you. New York Times, cnn, whatever. There always been tools of the oligarchy to control opinion. I think it's more brazen right now. I think there's like, there's a sense of journalistic integrity at some point. But, but, but, but, but I think ultimately AI can be an empowering tool for the, for the masses to deal with this. Even on the issue of centralized sort of government, 1984 esque AI, you can imagine a world in which people are helped by their personal AIs to overcome the AI surveillance.

[A]

I don't know that I can.

[B]

Why not?

[A]

Okay, so the thing that I think we have to contend directly with is if it is true that for the system to survive, the system must control your behavior, that AI gives them myriad ways now to nudge your behavior in certain directions, that even if you have your own individual AI, the system is going to find ways to continue to close lanes down, close lanes down, close lanes down. So even think about right now, this is my prognostication. I think in the next two years you're going to find out that the fraud that we're seeing in Minnesota is pervasive. It's everywhere. And show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome. And so we have a welfare state, and therefore welfare is going to be taken advantage of. You have an open border. People are like, oh, wow, okay, cool, come in and get that especially. And I know this is now going deep into conspiracy land, but if also there are ways for them to vote. It's like you get the incentive structure where it's like, hey, the tit for tat is you come in, you get some free stuff and then I can basically count on your vote because I'm the person that makes the free stuff available. So now we're going to see like fraud just ever present. So what does the government do to crack down? The government's like, oh, I have a deficit, so now I'm going to go tax the wealthy people. The problem is the wealthy people can leave, but that doesn't stop them from ever tightening the grip and now you can imagine if you take tax as but one example of how the system responds by increasingly getting more aggressive, what happens when you can't leave. And so if, for instance, one thing California's tried to do is even if you leave, we can still tax you years after you've left. Which is pure insanity from where I'm sitting. But it's like if the system is able to get that kind of legislation passed, and we know it's possible because countries all throughout history have done that where the walls are to keep people in. So the system has historically done it very successfully. The system has every incentive to survive. And now we're giving it like the people at the top are going to have the access to most power, most money, because they can tax technology, they can legislate their own control, all of that. And then they can, if they see that the individual is doing something they don't want them to do, as we saw with censorship, they'll just shut it down. So they'll come up with a reason, it will be cloaked as safety as to why you can't have the AI yourself or you can't have one that's that powerful or whatever. And again, they'll pitch it as safety, but they'll still follow the same playbook of more control. More control.

[B]

More control, yeah. Like a comment in agreement with that. There's like another book that's Burnham esque, it's called the Sovereign Individual. I don't know if you've read that. It's a fantastic book. It predicted bitcoin. It depicted, I read like the first.

[A]

Chapter or something, so I know of it.

[B]

It's really great. It talks about that we have that modern welfare states are, you can think of them as companies for the employee. They're not in service of the customer, they're in service of the employee. The employee being the politicians, the like deep, deep state employees. And ultimately everything that they do is to empower themselves. And they actually prefer an underclass. They prefer an underclass and they prefer the like rich elite and they prefer to create this chasm between them because the underclass, they can rely on their vote because they're voting money for themselves. And then there's like a source of capital and wealth from these productive individuals that they can always funnel through.

[A]

That is terrifying.

[B]

It is terrifying. Now sort of the flip side to that, you know, I do think, I do believe just like a fundamental belief in the self correcting nature of humanity. And also America, like I think America has a few innovations on how we organize society that are quite novel and quite powerful. Free speech is, is one of them. Could argue the second amendment is also another one of them. But you know, the country was founded on the basis of revolt against taxation. So I, it's hard for me to imagine that we're going to live in the world of this, you know, top down, you know, taxation, suffocation, sort of control without, without there be a sort of a reaction to that. And by the way, the elite is also made of the wealthy. Like if you go to D.C. right now, I mean D.C. is you know, run by billionaires. I don't mean this as a bad thing. Like I think it was really great that a bunch of like tech, tech guys like went to DC and like are able to contribute and hold position, positions of power. So it's not entirely clear to me that, that you know that it's headed that way in a locked in fashion. There's still, there's still some democracy. I mean the thing that is strange about California and the thing that I think the early founders of America didn't want is this idea of like majority majoritarian rule. The idea like you get 51 vote, you can vote your the money out of the 49. They intuited and that's why America is a Republican, not a direct democracy. They intuited that that's, that's a, that's a way to, to take any minority and be able to target them. And so maybe there's something about how California is structured that is kind of hopeless. But America has different states like Texas and Florida. They're trying to bring the tech guys there. They're actively promoting and soliciting and saying come here. Well I'm not going to. So there's also competition, there's also competition internationally with China. Like once people see that China is rising, by the way, China's free market system is more robust than America's at this point. Talking about welfare, there's no welfare there. There's not a welfare state. The way they do communism is by controlling the capitalist economy. The way they distribute wealth is by making sure that company, there's so many companies, there's so much competitions, margins are near zero. So you have like if they think that electric vehicles are important, they're going to say okay, we're going to just seed every company that's going to make electric vehicles. And there's like a lot of zombie EV companies in, in China. There's probably a lot of fraud and all that. But also there's there's tons of, like, really competitive Chinese electric vehicles. I don't know if you've ever seen one, but they caught up to Tesla and some cases better.

[A]

Yeah. From a sales perspective, they're crushing Tesla internationally.

[B]

They are. And so, and so when, when, when the American public, you know, is educated on the fact that if we're going to treat our most productive element of society that way and they're going to flee and we're not going to be productive because we don't have a true free market, we're going to be losing China, we're going to get poorer. And so I think the public will understand that there's going to be a reaction.

[A]

Interesting. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

[C]

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[A]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. Okay, so I'm starting to map where we align and where we disagree. So you have a fundamental belief that there's a self correcting mechanism to humans in general, that we see a bad thing and over time we fix it. And that America is even better than that, better at that than sort of the average. Okay, fair enough. I have a different base assumption that my beliefs are built on top of. And they are that because intelligence is unevenly distributed and interest is wildly unevenly distributed, that you have a double force that pushes people into either being aware of how they're being manipulated and controlled and can do something about it, or they don't have the time or the intellectual capacity to do it. And that bifurcation will always give the elites the ability to have a massive amount of control. And because you just go after the people that don't have the time or the cognitive bandwidth to deal with it.

[B]

I think intelligence is overrated.

[A]

Okay, now. Now we're in violent disagreement. Okay, make me a believer.

[B]

I think that and you know, as someone who, who grew up and everyone around me was like, oh, this is smartest kid. You know, they, you know, I could skip classes, I could hack into school, I could do everything. Like being smart is a core to my identity and that's why I'm here. And so it's not like I don't believe in intelligence or, or I'm anti intellectual. But over time I've come to realize that being smart, there's a, like, there's wild diminishing return to it. Do you know the midwit meme, right? I mean society. So the elites that Burnham talks about, what Mark Andrew Singh calls the laptop class, right, they're kind of the midwits. They're not the 150 IQ, they're the 110 IQ. Those are the people running society. And so you know, if the idea that intelligence is the most important thing, we'd be run by the Einsteins of the world. But we were never run by the Einstein's of the world. The period in America that we had a little more technocratic government around World War II and there were like really intelligent people that rose to the top. And Richard Feynman von Neumann. This era is really exciting, but that's like a fluke in human history. I think most of the time it is not pure intelligence that is that, that, that rise to the top and ends up sort of controlling things. Think of, think of Dilbert's cartoons. You know, Scott Adams just, just, just passed away. I, you know, I grew up reading these cartoons and, and I'm like man, I just don't want a pointy hair boss. And I think it really had an impact on me as like an entrepreneur. As like part of the entrepreneurial drive is like. And I did go to the job market and I, my first, first few jobs I had pointy haired bosses and they were not very smart. I was way smarter than them. But they were very good at the social game. They were, they had different skills. I think humans are a lot more diverse than we, we think about. It is not just like IQ is like a single value, it is more like a, you know, if, if you really want to measure human performance, you need to measure a lot of other things. Charisma, social skills, spiritual understanding, being, being, having senses about the world to understand where the world is headed. Like that's something I pride myself on. And I don't think, you know, I'm like, you know, like I, I grew up with a lot of kids that were a lot more book smart. Than me. Like they would, and I'm sure you did too. Like they, they would get better grades and, and all of that. But one thing I always had like a, a good talent for is knowing where the world is headed technology wise. So I could like sit down. Like I kind of think and try to predict where things are headed. And I don't think that's like a pure intelligence thing. Maybe it's. I don't know what it is and I would not go to. But over time I've kind of. My, my view of human talents have sort of evolved beyond, beyond just, just intelligence. And so I think there's a lot of regular everyday people that have a sense for how they're getting oppressed, how they're getting screwed. I mean the whole MAGA thing, the whole Trump revolution is because everyday people that you might not think of as the ultimate intelligence just realize they're getting screwed. They should like figured out that there's a sense in which there's like a deep injustice in America and how certain people are getting treated, how we're outsourcing all the manufacturing. Some people are getting rich and others, and they may not have. Not all of them. Obviously a lot of people in that camp are very smart, but a lot of people might not have that, you know, vocabulary or like exact way to kind of articulate in an intellectual way. But people are smart and I think they tend to sense where things are at and, and when they're getting screwed by certain people.

[A]

Okay, whatever word you would call that agency, I shorthand it to intelligence. But whatever that is, that makes people able to navigate the world. Well, do we agree that it's unevenly distributed?

[B]

Broadly? Yes.

[A]

It's interesting. There's something here that I think people spike.

[B]

I think people spike on different things. I think people who spike really high on intelligence. Yeah, they tend to lack certain awareness of the world in different ways.

[A]

I'll completely let go of the word intelligence. I. Intelligence is me groping things for something. I'll give you an example. So I used to hire people regardless of felony convictions. And it was an incredible journey. This was back at Quest. So this is a lot of like laborers, manufacturers. And so we had people literally line up around the building just to be interviewed.

[B]

Fantastic.

[A]

Because it was. I'm getting a shot here. No one's ever given me. And I'll get all this praise like, oh my God, I can't believe you did that. Like, just incredible, incredible people came out of that period. But also out of that period came my belief that only 2% of adults will ever change. And so wherever the vast majority of humans are, when you meet them, they will be a year later, two years later, five years later, 10 years later. And that means 98%. This is obviously rough, but 90% of people, they're baked once the. Once they're, I don't know, 17, 18, somewhere in there, they. They are forever that person. And if something broke or wasn't there to begin with, it will be that way forever for the rest of their lives. And I put an ungodly amount of time and attention into trying to help those people, like free themselves. Long before there were cameras or anything. I was just doing it because my natural bent is that I change so much. Let me help other people change. Because it was. Had such a radical impact on my life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I just found. No, it, it just isn't. So whatever that thing is, don't you.

[B]

Think that change needs to be personal, needs to be self driven? Like maybe your, your experience trying to change people is the problem?

[A]

Do you think we're automata or is free will real?

[B]

I think free will is real.

[A]

Okay, so now we have found where we disagree. Do you believe that there is a spirit that is not attached to the body?

[B]

Yeah, I go back and forth on this a lot. I just don't think that. I just don't think that you can explain consciousness in entirely physical ways.

[A]

Like, you don't think intelligence really matters? I don't think that question really matters. I can't understand people's obsession with that. And I perfectly accept. Maybe I'm just too dumb.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like, when I hear the hard problem with consciousness, I'm just like, what?

[B]

Yeah, it is hard. Like you need to figure out what's special about humans. Consciousness is a clearly a special thing. And I mean, there's a.

[A]

Sorry, I. I'm going to challenge your, your total foundational premise.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why do you need to understand consciousness to. To what? Navigate the world? Well, help.

[B]

I just mean as. As, as. So you asked a question about free will, and if we're getting to bedrock philosophy, I just don't think you can brush away the question of unconsciousness. And the question of consciousness brings in spirit and other things.

[A]

Can I try to brush it away and then you tell me if. Yeah, if I. And trust me, I want to improve. So if you see something that I'm missing, I'm desperate to see it as well. Yeah. Let's say, just for sake of argument, that humans are an antenna for consciousness, that it does not reside in the body. And that people that believe that are 100% right. That does not change the way that I have to interface with being a receiver of consciousness. So, for instance, if you hit me in the head, it will disrupt my ability to receive that signal. If you give me traumatic brain injury, it will disrupt my ability to receive that signal. If my genetics are trash, it will disrupt my ability. If I intake toxins, it will disrupt my ability on and on and on. So knowing that I am a receiver of an exterior thing to the interior is fascinating. And I would be like, whoa, that's crazy. But it wouldn't change anything about the physics of how I live my life. It would just be a. Oh, that's interesting. It's different than I thought it was. But it does not suddenly unlock an ability simply because I know that it's coming from the outside. So my thing is like, it doesn't matter, I think experientially to whether God exists or not. It doesn't matter if rocks are conscious. Consciousness is fundamental. None of that matters. Whatever it is that drives it, it feels like this.

[B]

So there are a lot of downstream implications of thinking that humans are full automaton input, output, their function of their environment, for example. You would have a totally different justice system, right? Like, I wouldn't. Why not? Because like you, you would. You would assume that no one is doing anything out of. Like, no one has true agency in a world of automatons. And so.

[A]

So I look at it from the perspective of I'm programming a video game and I have an outcome that I'm trying to get to. And let's say that's a society that can cohere but never becomes calcified or static. So I need momentum, I need change, I need it to move forward, whether it's AI reaching into the past and configuring us to be that way, or God did it, or evolution did it. But that is what we have. So the reason that humans are the most dominant species the world has ever seen is because we can cooperate flexibly in these really large groups. People tend to calcify over time. And so evolution figured out, well, we can't let these guys be like jellyfish. So we're going to kill them off because their particular abilities are going to ride on the back of culture. But once they learn what works, they're going to harden it and they're going to become deeply efficient. And the way that I stop the world from becoming so efficient that it stops is I'll kill them off. I'll give them like, you know, whatever, 35 to 85 years, depending on when you were born. And then we get the renewal of. I think it was Max Planck that said science does not advance one insight at a time. It advances one funeral at a time because the context changes. And so the people that believe the old thing, they just die off and then the new idea just becomes self evident because the context has changed. And great. So now I'm like, okay, if, if I'm programming this and I just need to set up the variables such that it is that way. For instance, I want to see people be given a chance to change. But I also believe that people are automata. But because of the way that I'm wired, for whatever weird reason and the things that I've encountered in my life, it makes me feel a way I don't want to feel if we just write somebody off and say they're resigned to the dustbin of history.

[B]

So why not, though? Because.

[A]

Because we live in a biological reality. I cannot escape my biology. I am wired.

[B]

Well, don't you think maybe there's something true in your wiring?

[A]

What do you mean by true?

[B]

There's something true that you don't. Maybe you don't actually believe that people are automatons.

[A]

I believe it to the core of my existence. So I believe that Phineas Gage is the most. Have you read the book determined by the Stanford professor's name? I'm currently blanking on? He literally all the way down to quantum collapse and tubules and all that. He just debunks one after another. Any room for free will.

[B]

Have you read the Blank Slate by.

[A]

I'm so familiar with the concept, I can't tell you if I read the book. I don't remember.

[B]

Yeah, Steven Pinker. Pinker, yes, but I know it intimately. He talks about the. And I'm not saying that's the argument you're making. He, he makes. He talks about a lot of what happened like last century in terms of human destruction and tragedy. Is, is intellectually at heart, is about this idea of humans as, as robots, as blank slates. Like we can like program them. They grow up in a certain way. If you feed them the right inputs, they're going to be a certain way and then there's going to be like.

[A]

Do you think that's true or false?

[B]

That's false.

[A]

Yeah, agreed.

[B]

That's false. Yeah. So, but, but, but why do you think it's false? Like, if you think it's automata, like, presumably there's certain inputs that we can, we can give people to like act in a certain way. You think they're non changeable at 17, 18.

[A]

Think about it. Like to use computer language. If you don't have the ability to access that API, the API can be telling you to do something all day. If you're not designed to do it, you're not going to do it. That's why I say be attracted to a porcupine. You can't. You cannot force yourself to be attracted to a porcupine.

[B]

I'm sure someone on 4chan is.

[A]

Well, so here's the, here's the weird thing about human psychology is all for boys anyway. All sexual fetishes are developed around the age of 14. Super weird. And so guys have developed fetishes for like they have to have bugs crawling on their legs because the first time they masturbated they had a bug in the whatever. Like. And so okay, that, that was a weird way for whatever programmed us to be. Like, okay, well whatever that thing you're into, I guess that's the thing the culture's into. So cool. You're now into that thing you're into women with big boobs. Nope, this time now it's girls with big asses. Whatever. But like, so there is an amount of like adaptability that we have, but.

[B]

There'S a fixed range.

[A]

Correct. And so it's like you're not going to be able to find yourself like stepping outside of that because we only have so much latitude now. I'm going to guess some people have more latitude than others and it comes down to just genetics and all that. So people need to understand. What I'm trying to say anyway is that we're incredibly complicated automata. But I would put forth, without spending the entire episode on this, I would put forth that we are programmed by God, evolution, nature, whatever. But we're programmed so we're within these finite bounds. And because we're within these finite bounds and everybody is different. That that is why there is the iron law of oligarchy is that I think about this a lot when I think about money. So I originally got into politics, world affairs and all that during COVID because of my employees back at Quest. And I was like, a lot of these guys don't know how to manage their finances. I didn't understand money printing. So I didn't realize they were about to get bailed out. So I was like, oh, we're all about to get hit by a meteorite. They're all going to Lose their jobs, they're toast. Let me do content about saving money and, you know, budgeting well so they can get through what I thought was going to be maybe six months. And then I would help them get on the other side. You get into it, you start asking, what is money? And it unravels everything. You end up at James Burnham, the elites and all that. And I was like, whoa. So I realized, okay, the world's not what I thought, but economics, a very complicated system. Very complicated, but you can sort of get it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so when I try to explain to people inflation, for instance.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Only to then watch them vote for things that are inflationary, which hurt them, I'm just like, what's happening right now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what do I do with that? And the reality is we've had this.

[B]

Can you vote against inflation? I feel like, I feel like, I mean, Trump and Biden are as inflationary as, as the other. That's correct. Do we have a non. Inflammation inflation? It is inflammation.

[A]

I was going to say it is inflammation. Very good for them.

[B]

Anyways.

[A]

We don't have choices for president. But yes, in 1913 we passed a law that made it possible to have a central bank. When we founded the country, they fought tooth and nail not to have a central bank. They said we need the debt to get the country kicked off, but we're going to give it like a 19 year old time horizon. And at the end of the 19 years, they closed it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So we made a decision in 1913 to allow ourselves to be pillaged.

[B]

Yes. I don't know if people made a decision. The oligarchs definitely did.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Therein lies my problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if people understood it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They either would have voted differently or they would own assets because they would actually understand what's happening. You can escape inflation by owning assets, but you can't vote for inflationary things and not own assets. You are voting for your own poverty. And so it's wild. So now I'm like, how do I deal with that if people aren't. Either they don't have time or they don't have the. I round it to intelligence. But I get that it is a very complex thing. What is it? How is it that people allow themselves to be abused?

[B]

I'm not in disagreement that there are certain things that, that people are unaware of because of the. Because maybe they're too complicated or they're made complicated. Like economics was made, was intentionally made complicated, like Kinsey. And economics is the ultimate lie. Like the, you know, they just complicated economics a lot. Like, if you read Austrian economics and if you understand, like things like the gold standard or things like potential Bitcoin standard, it's a very simple system. But to understand Keynesian, you know, inflationary economics is impenetrable. And it's, I think, by design made to be impenetrable so that we can't. So I wouldn't fault people for, for not understanding it because, I mean, it took you, your, Your, like, What, in your 30s, when you understood it? I wish. Yeah, my 40s. 40s.

[A]

And I'm still. I feel like I'm just beginning to understand it. But that, that's my point, is that you can make it so complicated that a certain number of people will understand it and then other people won't. And again, I always throw in that maybe they just don't have time, they don't have the interest.

[B]

At some point they'll intuit it. And this is, this is, I think back to this idea of where I think it's not just intelligence. They'll intuit that they're getting screwed. They'll know it, they'll feel it, that they're getting screwed. And that causes revolution.

[A]

Yes, but they fight for the wrong thing. The revolutionaries often make things infinitely worse.

[B]

Not always.

[A]

Not always.

[B]

Yeah, but some revolutions are good.

[A]

Lenin continued it.

[B]

All of these are.

[A]

Yeah, but they were revolutions. They were people who were like, fuck these kids. We're going to do this the right way. And then Mao went and starved 45 million of his own people to death.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then put them through the Cultural Revolution where he killed millions more.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Lenin and Stalin collectively. Jesus. If you include what they did in Stalingrad In World War II, it is terrifying. But even just the people they starved to death or threw in the Gulag, I mean, it's just tens of millions of people.

[B]

So that, yeah, that was started by a small group of intellectuals, the Bolsheviks. Yes, that's the entire thing.

[A]

Their whole message was, you're being abused by the rich and the powerful. Take your power back. But that's not what happens.

[B]

You could certainly play on people's passions and you can create popular movements that end up even enriching and empowering a small, a smaller group of people. So I overall, just to synthesize all of this, I don't think we're in that big of a disagreement. I agree that people don't always have the time, talents, you know, just capacity to understand the more complex things, because the system has been built up to be somewhat impenetrable and to be this like, mountain of lies. I would argue it's not all intelligence because the, the most intelligent people that graduate Harvard and go to work in consulting firms and newspapers and all of that, they're very intelligent, but they're lied to as much as, as the average individual. Like, I do believe in the, I do believe in the Bell curve. Like, I think it's, it's a meme, yes. But I actually kind of believe it. Like there are, there are real intuitions that, that, that everyday people have that, that are true. They arrive at them not in a purely intellectual manner. And you can call that intuition, you can call that spirit, you could call that whatever it is. There's something about the world where people kind of figure out that there's something wrong now that could be going in the right direction. Like, you can definitely, a demagogue can rise up and can give a speech and can play on that intuition and then can take them into a direction that is.

[A]

And do you think AI makes that easier or harder? Both.

[B]

I mean, it's hard to tell which way tilts because if we have these personal assistants that are able to synthesize a lot of information for us and try to talk to us at our level, like when you give chatgpt to your kid, it talks to them differently than it talks to you. I think there is a world in which there's an ability to understand things a little more and be a little more skeptical about things. On the other hand, the demagogue can be supercharged by AI by like, writing great speed speeches and manipulating the information landscape. And on social media, on the other hand, social media companies can use AI to combat some of that. It's a very powerful tool. It's unclear to me whether it tilts positive or negative. And ultimately it's on society broadly, it's on the entrepreneurs. Like, I think there should be a social cost for people in Silicon Valley that are building sex bots. Like, if you're building a, if you're, if your friend is building a sex bot, you should be affirmed, right? Like, we should have standards for entrepreneurs. Like, not everything should be about maximizing profits and money. Like, it would be great to live in a world in which there's, there's, there's a social cost to. And I think there already is. Like, Only Fans was not started in Silicon Valley. Right. It's one of the most profitable companies in the world. I don't know where it is. It's like, neither do I. UK or something like that and, and for its, all its flaws, Silicon Valley. There's always. Things are always. Sometimes it's manipulative, but people really try to pitch their company in a human interest way. And I think that's generally led to better outcomes than negative. And so it's important, it's incumbent on people, people that are building this technology to try to nudge the world in a, in a, in a better direction. And it's important for engineers, designers to want to work on, on positive things. There are, yes, AI as a, as a, is a general purpose platform tool can be used in a lot of different ways. But there are things you can work on that are really positive. Like I think our business, if I may so say myself, I'm probably a little biased, is unquestionably good for the world. We make it so that anyone can make software to improve their business, to improve their lives for artistic expression. Now obviously you can make malicious software. We take those down. But there are a lot of other use cases of AI that are creating more lonely people that are creating. And I think the American public overall has been like somewhat of a good check on companies. Like when I worked at Facebook we would feel intense pressure from the public. When they started hating Facebook for good reasons, people would change their behavior a little bit. So it's a complicated dynamic system. Ultimately I do have a fundamental belief in goodness of people and in society's ability given things like free speech and the freedoms that we have in America to nudge the system in a better direction.

[A]

I love it man. I hope they take your advice. Having another generation of builders would be absolutely incredible. I love the vision of this being an era of entrepreneurship at a scale that we've never seen before. Really incredible. Where can people follow you? Where can they engage with replit?

[B]

I'm on X at Amassad A M A S A D. That's where you know people. I engage with people. Reply and just try, try to help replit our website reply.com we have like a basic free plan so you can go there and put a prompt. Don't overthink it, just try something. Try to make a website, try to make something for your girlfriend or boyfriend. Just start somewhere. I have a little blog that I every now and then write something on. I wrote a blog post recently that people found useful called how to keep winning. Good title. Amassad me and in it I just like talk about the history of Replit is I think interesting to some entrepreneurs where we've basically didn't achieve economic financial success. Until 2024. I started the business in 2016. I started the project, the initial idea, in 2009.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So I've been at it for a long time, and our revenue just, you know, shot up when the world headed in our direction. So we're right about the prediction. And now it's like a multi billion dollar company. And so I try to write.

[A]

Congratulations, man. Thank you. Incredible.

[B]

Thank you. So I try to write, like, the advice and like, the main thing, the main advice. I just tell people, like, not to quit. I mean, there are caveats to that, but ultimately, you know, the person who's showing up every day and trying things and struggling with things and trying all the different tools and figuring out where the future might be headed and situating themselves in a way to, like, actually benefit from them from that, that's a superpower, because most people just quit.

[A]

Ain't that the truth? I love it. Awesome, dude. Thank you for coming on. This was really cool. I've enjoyed researching you and getting to sit across from you.

[B]

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[A]

Of course. All right, boys and girls, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.