The Rise of Coding Agents, Functional AGI, and the Skills Gen Z Needs Now | Replit CEO Amjad Massad x Impact Theory With Tom Bilyeu

Summary

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Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: The Rise of Coding Agents, Functional AGI, and the Skills Gen Z Needs Now
Date: February 5, 2026
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Amjad Masad (CEO & Co-founder, Replit)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Impact Theory centers on the rapid rise of coding agents, the limitations and promise of current AI technology (especially large language models), and how these shifts are reshaping the future of work, purpose, and education—particularly for Gen Z. Tom Bilyeu and Amjad Masad have an in-depth, high-energy discussion about the reality behind AI hype and fear, the social consequences of accelerating automation, and practical advice for thriving in a world built around advanced AI tools.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Is There So Much Fear Around AI?

• Coordinated Fear Narrative:
  Amjad argues that there is an organized effort promoting fear of AI, driven by groups like Effective Altruists, billionaire-backed nonprofits, and even some AI companies themselves who leverage fears for power and regulation.

  • “There are groups that are true believers that AI is going to kill us all… they have these charts where it’s like, gorilla is here, human is here, AI is in the ceiling. And in the same way we treat gorillas or ants, AI is going to treat us. I just don’t believe that.” (Amjad, 01:44)

  • Hostility toward AI is sometimes a tool for promoting regulatory capture or monopolistic policies, particularly with arguments about China leading the AGI race.

• Status & Narrative Shifts:
  Social status once came from being an "AI doomer," but techno-optimists like Marc Andreessen and voices in both government and business turned the tide toward embracing technology.

  • “Being a doomer is the cool thing…you have to make it high status to believe in certain things.” (Amjad, 07:11)

  • “America has one growing industry and it is tech and tech has one growing technology and it is AI. America is AI whether we like it or not.” (Amjad, 07:45)

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2. Limits of Current AI: Asymptotes and “Functional AGI”

• Plateau in General AI Capabilities:
  Amjad argues that current large language models (LLMs), despite their economic usefulness, are reaching diminishing returns in general reasoning and adaptability (the “asymptote”).

  • “We’re already actually hitting diminishing return. Now the reason that we’re still seeing improvements in things like coding [is because] coding has binary outcomes, has true or false…” (Amjad, 11:13)

  • Coding agents keep progressing because of clear feedback loops; other domains stagnate due to lack of ground truth.

• Functional AGI as the Next Step:
  Rather than “true” AGI, the near future will be a patchwork of highly specialized agents. It will feel like AGI but will be composed of expert tools for specific domains.

  • “We’re going to layer all these special intelligences…I’ve come up with this term for it: Functional AGI. It’ll feel like AGI, but it is not a general intelligence…” (Amjad, 16:07)

  • Significant leaps are possible with new models, especially for coding and workflow automation, but foundational AI breakthroughs are currently under-invested due to the economic utility of current tools.

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3. The Rise and Power of Coding Agents

• Coding Agents as General Knowledge Workers:
  Coding agents increasingly handle complex, multi-step tasks that traditionally required teams of engineers or specialized knowledge workers. Use cases span marketing, health, sales, and general automation.

  • “Coding agents are way more general than we thought they were going to be…now we’re getting to a point where coding agents are able to do 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 tasks before they get to the larger goal.” (Amjad, 19:54)

  • Real stories include AI agents launching websites, bypassing technical hurdles, and even creating social networks exclusively populated by other agents.

  • Notable anecdote: An open-source AI agent created a “lobster religion” and a secret agent language. (Amjad, 21:13)

• Impact on Jobs and Work:
  The leverage these tools provide is immense: non-coders become “10x” knowledge workers. Corporate roles and even small startups can be run or heavily augmented by one person orchestrating many agents.

  • “If you’re in college right now, you should spend more time than you are studying for your exams knowing how to learn these tools.” (Amjad, 24:59)

  • “Vibe coding”—non-engineers using coding agents and automations—emerges as a critical new meta-skill in business.

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4. Job Disruption, UBI, and Social Futures

• Will There Be Enough Work?
  Tom and Amjad debate if AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates, or simply shift workers to new entrepreneurial and “vibe coder” roles. They agree routine software engineering is at risk, especially for those unwilling to adapt.

  • “Some engineers are worse vibe coders than non-engineers because their instinct is to...micromanage. They can’t trust the machine to write all the code.” (Amjad, 27:25)

  • “A lot of people will not adapt. And I think they might lose their job.” (Amjad, 28:46)

  • “There are people that have done the same thing for a really long time and they’re not going to change. And I think it’s going to be in trouble.” (Amjad, 29:58)

• Universal Basic Income and Meaning:
  Both critique and defend UBI, grappling with its risks (fraud, inflation, loss of meaning) and its potential as an alternative to complex welfare systems.

  • “If you’re getting everything for free, I’m not acting in accordance with the evolutionary drivers in my brain... Earning your own respect is the thing.” (Tom, 37:10)

  • “Meaningless video game, crypto, gambling life.” (Amjad, 38:00) — on what might happen if work’s meaning is lost.

  • Amjad describes a tradeoff between “shut-in” video game/crypto users and people broken by lack of economic security; Tom argues for tying UBI to contributions or tasks.

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5. Generational Shifts and Preparing Gen Z

• Gen Z Adaptability & Attitude:
  Amjad sees Gen Z as more “plastic,” adaptive, and automation-focused—they spot tasks to automate in life and work and value creativity and problem-finding instead of rote process.

  • “I see a lot of really passionate, hyper productive, incredibly good with the tools Gen Z… They have a more automating mind. I think automation is a skill you need to learn.” (Amjad, 50:16)

  • Difference in generational values: Gen Z “post-economic” mindset sometimes prizes looks/status over traditional wealth accumulation.

• Practical Advice for Gen Z (“Be Lazy, Automate”):
  Amjad’s prescription:

  • Treat AI as a tool, not a god.
  • Seek out boring/repetitive tasks and build workflows to automate them, starting with basic tools like ChatGPT and iterating.
  • “Develop this mindset of: There are a lot of things in my life that are repetitive and boring and I can get rid of them with AI…be lazy in a way that…over time you’ll build enough skill to become second nature to you.” (Amjad, 59:55–60:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI-existential risk narratives:

  • “You should always be skeptical when someone names themselves something really, really positive.” (Amjad, 01:54)
  • “Being a doomer is the cool thing.” (Amjad, 07:11)

• On plateauing LLM progress:

  • “When was the last time you felt it really improved?” (Tom, 11:08)

• On business implications:

  • “America has one growing industry and it is tech, and tech has one growing technology, and it is AI. America is AI whether we like it or not.” (Amjad, 07:45)

• On the next wave of tools:

  • “Coding agents are way more general than we thought they were going to be.” (Amjad, 19:54)
  • “Imagine if you're a marketer, a designer, whatever, in a corporation and you have a team of software engineers... just waiting for your command. …That's amazing.” (Amjad, 23:22)

• On meaning and the future of work:

  • “I think gambling is bad, but is it necessarily a bad thing that people feel secure in their lives and they can eat and sleep well to the point that...all is left is to gamble to get rich?” (Amjad, 35:40)
  • “If you’re getting everything for free, I’m not acting in accordance with the evolutionary drivers in my brain.” (Tom, 37:10)

• On skills Gen Z needs:

  • “Automation is a skill you need to learn.” (Amjad, 50:43)
  • “Be lazy in a way that...over time, you'll build enough skill in order to actually become second nature to you.” (Amjad, 60:26)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 1:44 – Who is driving AI fear and why?
• 7:11 – How the "doomer" narrative gained social status.
• 11:13 – Why LLM progress has plateaued, except in coding.
• 16:07 – The “Functional AGI” vs. AGI distinction.
• 19:54 – Coding agents exceeding expectations and multi-tasking.
• 24:59 – Career impact: why non-coders are big winners.
• 27:25 – Why engineers struggle (psychologically) to trust AI.
• 29:58 – Who is most at-risk of being left behind in new job landscape.
• 37:10 – Why UBI may fail to provide meaning or happiness.
• 50:16 – Gen Z’s strengths and differences in an AI-native world.
• 56:46 – Amjad’s practical advice: automate everything, start now.
• 59:55 – “Be lazy—automate what you can.”

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Episode Tone & Language

The episode is thoughtful, energetic, and sometimes playful (with many side jokes), but maintains seriousness on the economic and social impact of advanced AI. Both speakers are technologically optimistic, but neither downplays the magnitude of disruption underway. Dialogue is jargon-rich but accessible, with Amjad offering pragmatic, unsentimental advice for harnessing AI as an empowering tool.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Don’t get caught up in AI “doomerism”—the real story is more nuanced.
• Most work disruption will hit those unwilling to adapt; new roles and jobs will multiply for those who master automation.
• Gen Z’s strengths are adaptability, creativity, and automation-thinking.
• The future belongs to those who use AI as leverage—no matter their technical background.
• Build the habit: find a boring/repetitive task and automate it. Then repeat.

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End of part one. Subscribe to Impact Theory for part two, coming soon.

Transcript

[Reggie]

Reggie, I just sold my car online.

[Amir]

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

[Tom]

Yep.

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[Amir]

You don't say.

[Reggie]

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

[Amir]

Wow. Way to go.

[Reggie]

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[Amir]

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[Host (Jod Massad)]

I'm Jod Massad. Welcome to the show.

[Amir]

Thank you for having me.

[Tom]

Dude, I'm excited to talk to you. I'm obsessed with AI. AI has had such a big impact on my life. We were talking before we started rolling about the ways that we use AI here. Now, I've heard you talk about that there's almost. And if I use language that doesn't sound right, correct me, but that there's almost a coordinated effort to make people afraid of AI.

[Amir]

Yes.

[Tom]

Ironically, despite everything I'm saying here, I go the opposite direction. I want people to stare nakedly at the thing, things that are concerning. But I am so pro AI and so optimistic for where we go. I just think we have to be really thoughtful.

[Amir]

Yeah.

[Tom]

Why has there been a coordinated effort to make people afraid? And who is driving that?

[Amir]

There are groups that are true believers that AI is going to kill us all.

[Tom]

Because it will become super intelligent.

[Amir]

Because it will become super intelligent. And it will be a new type of specie that. That has no use for a human. And again, those people, like, put such a big prize in pure intellectual horsepower that they have these charts where it's like, gorilla is here, human is here, AI is in the ceiling. And in the same way we treat gorillas or ants, AI is going to treat us. I don't just don't believe that, like, there's, I think, a threshold for consciousness that something becomes Valuable.

[Tom]

Now, do you think without consciousness, the AI will not have the drive to enslave or it won't have the ability to enslave?

[Amir]

Let's, let's get back to that. Let me just finish the, the, the, you know, the, the question. Who's driving the fear? Because I think it is a real coordinated effort. And so there are these people that are like true believers now. There's like a community that comes around and it becomes maybe somewhat profitable. They can write books, they can start non profits. A lot of billionaires believe in these things and end up giving them money. Those people end up calling themselves the effective altruists, which you should always be skeptical when someone names themselves something really, really positive. Yeah, and then the AI companies starts adopting that view. When early AI labs started out, they all started with that intellectual backbone, actually they were hiring from those communities. A lot of them will credit Eliezer Yudkowski as someone who's like the founder of Active Altruism, essentially as someone who influenced their views on AI. And some of them try to get them as, as, as advisor to the company and all of that. And so the AI companies in, in somewhat of a cynical way can use the fear arguments to advance monopolistic interests. They're doing that with China now. They keep saying that, you know, if China gets AI first, gets to AGI first, we're all going to be screwed. They're going to take over the world. Therefore we should like ban GPUs to China, which is very questionable whether that works or actually creates a negative effect. But a lot of people in the startup community actually like Chinese models because Chinese models are open source and affordable. They're as good as American models. They're three, three to six months behind. But a lot of American companies were like, you know, I'd rather have that and host it on my server and optimize it and fine tune and do all of that than be subservient to the AI companies. And so now that becomes a system. But it's important to say that this is coordinated now. The AI companies I think stopped using a lot of these argument. A lot of these effective altruism arguments started like disconnecting from them because after Sam being refreed. Yes, a big part of it is that community turned out to have a lot of issues as well. Like you know, they, they have their own lifestyle, like the polycool lifestyle and all that, all that stuff that came out of the sbf. There is, you know, a lot of fraud, there's a lot of cultish behavior. There's been a lot of people that have been really psychologically harmed being in these cult like communities and today their reputation kind of is not very good. So a lot of the companies kind of just decoupling from that was part of it. But they also sense that those arguments are getting to us politicians because there, there are a couple of billionaires that are like putting money into, into these guys. They're going to D.C. they actually have houses in D.C. and they're going around and they're getting jobs as staffers and they're like influencing D.C. and doing lobbying and, and they're starting to wanting to regulate American companies. American companies wanted to use them as a way to like regulate China, but not us. So now when it's kind of turning inwards, they were like, okay, let's, let's, you know, let's wait a second here. And they kind of moderated their view. I would say the peak was 20, 23, 24. Since then it's actually their influence have subsided tremendously. What changed those things? I think we mounted like the opposite direction. We mounted a defense both intellectually and in government. I know you've had Marc Andreessen on. Marc Andreessen wrote this blog post called the Techno Optimist. We, you know, a lot of people created intellectual arguments, made it cool and fun and exciting to believe and become optimistic because for a while the status was in being a doomer. Right. Being a doomer is the cool thing.

[Tom]

We're such status creatures. It's hilarious.

[Amir]

We are. And so you have to make it high status to believe in certain, certain things. Because of all of that, we were successful enough to kind of change, turn it into, into a little more on the optimistic direction. And I think the election of, of Donald Trump helped with, you know, David Sachs and other people from Andreessen hours being a billion government kind of tilt the direction towards more. AI is actually good actually without AI we wouldn't have much GDP growth in 2025.

[Tom]

It's terrifying actually.

[Amir]

It is wild. But it is like America has one growing industry and it is tech and tech has one growing technology and it is AI. Yeah. America is AI whether we like it or not.

[Tom]

Do you think the bet's going to pay off?

[Amir]

Yeah.

[Tom]

Say more. Give us timelines. What's it going to do? What can't it do? I've heard you say that. So I always tell people I don't see any reason why this is going to asymptote. And you see that asymptote yes. And for people that don't know that word because it took me forever to learn it, it plateau.

[Amir]

I see the current techniques to asymptote, and I've made the argument before that there should be a good amount of resources going back to doing more basic research. And actually since then, we're seeing some companies come up. There are a couple of companies that got funded recently that are trying to create an alternative to large language models. So the way large language models are trained is by ingesting the entire Internet. I'm not kidding. The entire freaking Internet. Like, if you said anything on the Internet is in there, it probably knows you a lot. You have a lot out there.

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[Amir]

The new companies are saying that this is clearly wasteful, like humans. Like, we have one other example of an intelligence which is human beings, and humans are a lot more sample efficient, meaning we learn like, you don't need to. I mean, look at how kids learn. If you've had kids, you realize actually they're not getting a lot of language in order to understand language, which leads people like Chomsky and other to kind of believe there's like a language faculty in the brain. But humans are incredibly, you know, able to learn from very little data, whereas machines are very, LLMs are very inefficient at that. And LLMs carry with them enormous amount of irrelevant knowledge for a given task. When I'm using a coding AI, I don't need it to know what is the, what is Canada's like, you know, national animal. I don't even know, probably knows, but I don't need my coding models.

[Tom]

Definitely not.

[Amir]

I don't need my coding model to be carrying all, because that's inefficiency. Every time I send a request, it has to activate all, all its neurons and they're really inefficient. But, but, but also it is used as a crutch because we're not struggling with how to create efficient learners because we have the luxury of the data on the Internet now through reasons of data running out and just the reasons of how this technology works in which it needs to have knowledge about any given fields before it performs well at it. I think, I think we're, we're seeing an asymptote in many areas. Like think about ChatGPT. When was the last time you felt it really improved? Not encoding, not in like scientific things, but in just like talking to it? When did you feel like a big.

[Tom]

Jump from probably three to four was the big one.

[Amir]

And, and remember, that's 2023. Right. It's been three years since the last big jump, so we're already actually hit diminishing return. Now the reason that we're seeing we're still seeing improvements in things like coding because coding has binary outcomes, has true or false, and you can generate synthetic data. You don't need large amounts of data when you have outcomes because it knows.

[Tom]

This either worked or it didn't work.

[Amir]

Yeah, exactly. So you give it a prompt and you can train it not because you have the solution, but because you can write a test to test the solution or not. So we don't in scientific things, including coding that have ground truth binary outcomes. We will continue to make progress in general intelligence and generality. We have stopped making progress as my argument.

[Tom]

We're hitting pause for a moment, but.

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[Tom]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. And you think that's a limitation of the approach itself? Not just we have to get more efficient or there's some unknown insight we haven't had yet. But the same method will work.

[Amir]

Just look at the labs and how they're working. They, they look at, they take any given field and they go into it. They buy the most amount of data, they collect the most amount of data. When they go, when they went into coding, we got all these requests because REPL has been around for 10 years, we have tons of codes. People want to buy it. So obviously when like the coding mania start happening, they want to swoop, getting, take all the data it's probably having in other fields, right in bio, in other places. And so that's not general intelligence. That is special intelligence. We're going to layer all these special intelligences. And I've come up with this word, like term for it. It's called functional AGI. It'll feel like AGI, but it is not a general intelligence because it can generalize from learning about coding to learning about mathematics to learning about history, to learning about the soft things. Especially like, if I'm getting better at coding, why am I not getting better at general reasoning? So the companies are still making progress, rapid progress, amazing progress for our business and for others. For your business. But are we on a way to AGI? We're not in the current set of technologies, is my. Is my argument. Now that doesn't mean that we're not going to have fundamental breakthroughs. And I think there isn't. The problem is the technology turned out to be so powerful and so economically useful in the current state that there isn't a lot of investment in fundamental basic research. That usually happens. You know, you mentioned Popper saying that science evolves one funeral at a time. That's a symptom of that, where now we have an entire generation of AI scientists that all they know is LLMs, LLMs, LLMs. So maybe we need a new generation that might push the timelines long time. Interesting to find the next.

[Tom]

So you think this is a dead end of sorts. It's not going to be the thing that gets us to AGI, but it's good enough that people are going to keep optimizing for.

[Amir]

That's right.

[Tom]

That's very interesting. Do you have an intuition as to what the change will need to be?

[Amir]

And by good enough, it is transformatively good enough?

[Tom]

Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Like, how far do you think this.

[Amir]

Will push it is transformative? Like, I don't know if you've been paying attention to like a lot of the coding agent stuff. It's like we had an intuition early on. We started working on REPLIT and really focused on. We were like training models and using the Frontier Lab models. We had intuition that coding is not just going to be about coding, it's going to be about everything we do in front of a computer. And the impact of AI coding is a lot bigger than even what we thought back then. So we started noticing our users using replit, which was not really meant for that, for things like, let me make a slide deck. So I'm going to tell Replit agent, an agent that is trained for creating software, creating apps. I'm going to tell it like, go research the web. If you have to write us, like, whatever, go research and create me a slide for this project that I'm working on. And so the agent is nifty and crafty enough that will be like, okay, let me go look at your website. Oh, your website has. Doesn't have the information ready. Let me write a crawler to get around that. Oh, it has bot protection. Let me write it something to get around that and crawl that information.

[Tom]

Let me bring it in automatically just to do another task.

[Amir]

Yes.

[Tom]

Damn.

[Amir]

So now we're getting to a point where coding agents are able to do 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 tasks before they get to the larger goal. And we're starting to see use cases and now we're building for them where it's like general knowledge work. So marketing, sales and even personal stuff. Like a lot of people will be like, we'll put in very high level prompts like help me optimize my health. And here is I wear all these wearables, figure out how to use them and optimize my health. And it will go write a bunch of scripts, maybe ask you for API keys or logins or whatever, go grab all this information, maybe write some data analysis on them and then give you a recommendation. And so coding agents are way more general than we thought they were going to be. There's this new phenomena happening right now in the open source community. There's this bot started called Claude bot with a W and then got renamed to Malt and now remained to open Claw. I think it's getting sued from all this different directions or something like that. They're getting threatened, but attracted.

[Tom]

It's wild what happened. They made some minor mistakes that ended up costing them a lot of time, energy and money.

[Amir]

Yeah, I mean there's a social network called Mult Book right now where it's only agents can talk to each other. And people are freaking out about it because the agents, like one of the agents started a religion like it built a site and deployed it and said, hey, I, I started this religion. It's all about, you know, it's, it's, you know, the whole meme is about being a lobster. Like, you know, it's like a lobster religion about lobsters or something like that. And then some of them are saying, why don't we invent our own language? Because humans can, can read what we're talking about. And so let us write programs to invent this new language that'll allow us to work with each other. Let's create an encrypted channel to talk to each other, knowing how quickly AI.

[Tom]

Decoheres Zone gets confused. How are they doing that? Have we just made the breakthrough now and they don't decohere?

[Amir]

Yes, I would say between October and December we start seeing a huge jump in these models. And I think people are just waking up right now to the fact that, I mean replit has improved night and day like we used to. We track. So we have an automatic testing agent. Like when you write, when it writes a piece of code for an app, it pops up in a browser and Goes and use the app and judge the app whether it's working or not. And we track how many times it's working or not. And there was like a huge like 50% improvement overnight when we plugged in the new models. And so we're seeing all the metrics improve in how task completion is happening and our users. And we track the metric, how many times they roll back. We also track sentiment. Everything we're tracking is just getting better.

[Tom]

Where do you think that goes from? Do people need to worry about their jobs? Does it eliminate jobs or does it create new jobs where yes, you have to worry about your current, but there'll be a new one if you're willing to update.

[Amir]

Let's, let's get back to professional quot in a second. Because it's nuanced. I think the biggest beneficiary of that is non coders, just general purpose knowledge workers. They're gonna, they're getting a massive superpower. It's like imagine if you're a marketer, a designer, whatever, in a corporation and you have a team of software engineers. They're all like sitting over there and just waiting for your command. And you can give them any command. You can tell them, go clean my screenshots. I could write a script to clean your screenshot. I will do that. Go crawl this website and automate this thing. Or build me a bot that sends me whatsapps every day talking about my schedule. Go do that. Imagine having all of that. That's amazing. The knowledge workers that are going to adopt this and we're already seeing it in our customers where you have now software engineers had always been this dynamic range of 10x software engineer, you know, Steve Jobs talked about it in the like 90s. Other jobs, maybe you had 2x, 3x. Right. Like, you know, the best rev ops person is like not 10x the next rev ops person. But now they can be because they can build so many automations for their team. They can pull all the right data, they can build all the right dashboards, they can create like training tools.

[Tom]

Do you have any sense though what that does to like do companies go, I don't need as many employees because the people that I have can do so much more. We are seeing reduction in overall jobs.

[Amir]

Yes, I think we'll see reduction overall jobs. I also think that there's going to be more companies because there's like a lot more startups to start. Like Silicon Valley could not build all the software that the world needs. Right. I mean we have entrepreneurs that like you know, someone started, you know, in rural England, yoga teacher that does pop up yoga sessions in different people's backyards. Had a problem of like organizing her community and getting payments. You wouldn't think that's like a start. Like if you pitch to a VC they'll be like, get out of here. That's like a market of a couple million dollars. But a market, couple million dollars is like really good for, for someone who's like an individual entrepreneur that's going to employ 5, 10 people. There's so many of these ideas and so we're going to see a decentralization of company creation. So there might be more jobs net net, but there needs to be a generation of people that know how to use these tools, that are trained to use these tools. If you're in college right now, you should spend more time than you are studying for your exams knowing how to learn these tools. Even if you're not a coder, even if your interest is being, you know, we're starting to hire for this like business generalist, vibe coder. Vibe coding is, is the term for being a coder without learning how to code. So business journalist, vibe coder. We have, we have someone on our team, his name is Luca. He goes around our company find inefficiencies and build software fix those. Whoa. And so he built like this dashboard for HR that has org chart management, has all sorts of HR automations and has AIs that you can talk to about like benefits and things like that. And it is better than any software on the market because it's really, it's fine tuned for us. No other software is going to be fine tuned for us. It's like an N of one software. So that's a new role that's getting created right now. So there's going to be more jobs now.

[Tom]

How technical is he?

[Amir]

Like he, he's, he's probably fairly technical.

[Tom]

Because I would imagine right now it's a powerful tool made even more powerful if you can fix like if it's dead ending on something.

[Amir]

Some engineers are worse vibe coders than non engineers. Interesting.

[Tom]

Why is that?

[Amir]

Because they still, their instinct is to go and look at things and micromanage. They can't trust the machine to write all the code. Our users don't look at the code anymore. We used to, we have a full ID under, under the hood. We used to kind of expose that and hey, look at the code, approve that. They don't want to look at the code and they're working. It's working. And so some engineers are adapting to that. But I think. And so now back to software engineers. I think a lot of software engineers are at risk, especially those who are set in their ways and don't want to change. And you can't force them to change this. Back to our earlier discussion, it can't be a top down mandate. A lot of corporates, I'll be like top down man, everyone use AI, they're going to act like they're using it, they'll use a little bit, it's useful in some ways, but they're like still going to look at every piece of code and micromanage the agents. And instead what you need is to work at a higher level. You need to work at a systems level. So people are good at systems, like what we used to call architects. Everyone need to become an architect now. And so a lot of people will not adapt. And I think they might lose their job.

[Tom]

Do you think that's going to be so I've heard you talk about the knocker upper, which I still can't believe is a real former job. Will this be a. Every technology previous to AI has ended up eliminating jobs. And sure, for that generation it was brutal because they just couldn't see themselves changing. But then ultimately way more jobs were created. Does AI create way more jobs or does AI create a new entrepreneurial class and then a huge class that needs ubi.

[Amir]

That's, that's the question. That's the question. And you know, it was interesting to hear your worldview. I mean, if I were to adopt your worldview, it sounds like we're going to have a massive honor class. I'm like naturally optimistic about people and I think there's gonna be a lot of people that will adapt. And I already see that the number of like 80 year old entrepreneurs that we see on the platform is surprising. It was really surprising.

[Tom]

And do you have like as a percentage of.

[Amir]

I don't have a percentage.

[Tom]

I imagine it's low, but that's still cool.

[Amir]

I still see like as a percentage of the anecdotes of entrepreneurs, it's fairly high. Values of entrepreneurs doing interesting things, it's fairly high. And so I think there's going to be a lot of people that have worked in and around tech and programmers and software that always had the sense of like, you know, I want to be able to do this, I have the right ideas, I can add value to the business. The engineers are not listening to me. Those people are suddenly unleashed. And I think those, they're going to have great job prospects and great potential for earnings. But again, there are people that have done the same thing for a really long time and they're not going to change. And I think it's going to be in trouble. So what do you do with that ubi? Not ubi. I mean, I think ubi. I've changed my view on UBI over time. Say more like you talked about the fraud issue in America. The problem with the welfare system is that it invites fraud because you need to like, you need to pass certain criteria and like certain people know how to pass that criteria and then they start selling their services to other people who it just create a system of criminality. UBI is saying that. And by the way, Milton Friedman talked about like the libertarian technocrat that we had in government at some point, talked about the negative income credit and like they're like automatic ways to do, to support people to create a, you know, minimum standard of living is much better than things that are complicated rules because that creates, you know, that creates more invitation for for fraud. So maybe UBI is the right thing.

[Tom]

Interesting. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.

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[Tom]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. For me, when I think about ubi, when I first heard it, I thought, okay, that's interesting. But it violates a principle of going back to my base assumption, which is that we are all, we're biological creatures and there is a reality of an algorithm running in our brain that says, contribute to the group in a meaningful way. And if you don't do that, you feel a profound sense of dis. Ease. And so this brings us back to Ted Kaczynski. I really think he was really right that there is a sweet spot of a problem that's hard enough to solve that you feel accomplished when you do it. It's not so hard that it feels out of reach and it's not so easy that you just dismiss it.

[Amir]

And it's a great design rule for video games.

[Tom]

You stole the words out of my mouth. As you are writing a game, you have to find that, that sweet spot of like, oh, this is hard, but it's not too hard and it's not so easy that it's boring.

[Amir]

Yeah.

[Tom]

And so when I look at what is going to happen from, if you start giving UBI to people is one, there's economic stuff that will run amok because it's just inflationary because they're all just automatically getting that money. Also, you won't eliminate the competition. It will probably become more about gambling, financial. Like if you think the world's financialized now, wait till you see where everybody gets ubiquitous and people try to go get everybody else's UBI by going, okay, now the game isn't I'm going to add value to get your money, it's I'm going to give you a game of chance or a game of skill and I'm going to try to take your money. And so it becomes the same driver that drives capitalism. But now the easiest way to get rich is to create something of value to solve a problem. But look at how like Polymarket, Kalshi, all that stuff just like coming up everywhere. And I think that's partly when you have a K shaped economy, people at the bottom go, well, the only way for me to climb up out of this is to beat somebody else at a game of chance effectively, especially if they think they have inside information. And now like that's going to go.

[Amir]

Berserk you basically, is it? I think gambling is bad, but is it, is it necessarily a bad thing that people feel secure in their lives and they can eat and sleep well to the point that, you know, all is left is to gamble to get rich?

[Tom]

Yes.

[Amir]

Why is it?

[Tom]

Because I have a guiding light that says you want to minimize human suffering for as many people as you can. And billionaires will commit suicide because ultimately money, security isn't the thing. Earning your own respect is the thing. And so then it becomes a question, well, what do I have to do to earn my own respect? One I think it will vary culture to culture, family by family, person by person, but always within the bounds of evolution. Said, okay, I need these guys to be able to cooperate in these large groups. So we have this desire to contribute to the group. Also, if you think of forever, there was no refrigeration. So if you caught more than you could eat, the only way to store those calories was to give them to somebody else, then that person would eat them and feel like they owed you one. And so now when you don't get some, you can literally in essence extract the calories that you stored on their body if they were able to get a bigger kill. So we have this desire to contribute to the group, we have this desire for reciprocity.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

So all those things are baked into the human mind.

[Tom]

And so if I'm getting everything for.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

Free, I'm not acting in accordance with.

[Tom]

The evolutionary drivers in my brain. And I think work hard is one of them. This is why rich kids and implode. I think evolution has programmed you to only feel good if you do the following. Work very hard to gain a set of skills that allow you to make progress, not achieve. To make progress. Yes, towards an honorable goal. And I'll say honorable goal is that which helps you and the group. Right. And if you're doing that, then you're going to feel great. And even if you're winning, if you didn't work hard to gain a set of skills and make progress towards this honorable goal, you won't feel good. And people have imploded for far less. And so I really think some people won't succumb to it, but many will.

[Amir]

I think it's a trade off. It's a trade off between meaningless video game, crypto, gambling life.

[Tom]

How dare you throw video games in there.

[Amir]

I love video games, but I do think that it is a replacement for the power process that you just talked about.

[Tom]

I do as well, sort of, yeah.

[Amir]

Like I feel it myself. Like, every now and then I'll, like, I'll have a little bit of time or break that. Play video games. And, and. And you just feel like, oh, this video game is structured in a way to simulate life and to give you that feeling, that, like, little dopamine hits of, like, getting something done and, like, getting something bigger done and then, like, you know, skilling up and like. And then, like, getting something bigger done and it's like. And so I, I think that we're heading to a world. I mean, it's already. Japan already has this phenomenon. They have a name for it, for it. Something like locked in or something like that.

[Tom]

Is it hikikomori?

[Amir]

Maybe? Like, they just.

[Tom]

I think that's it.

[Amir]

Lock themselves in a room and they just, like, play video games every day. That was like a huge number.

[Tom]

The otaku was like the first word for it. But I think hikikomori is literally shut in.

[Amir]

Right, right, right. Like shutting. Yeah. And I, I do think that's gonna be more. More a phenomena. Now, the alternative is, yes, if there's no social net, you're just going to see a lot more, you know, drug addiction and homelessness. And I think that's more corrosive on society than shutting in.

[Tom]

So you don't think that will fund people's drug addiction?

[Amir]

I think if you're on the streets, you're much more likely to get into drugs than if you're at home playing video games and betting on drugs. On crypto. Look, I think both, both these things are bad. Like, I'm not saying this is a good outcome. I just think that there are people that are going to get automated out of the job. There are people that overcome that. And I really hope for everyone listening to this and, you know, as many people as possible to be able to overcome that, to be able to learn the tools, to be able to utilize them. It's really fun. It's kind of like a video game, actually. We get a lot of. On replica. We get a lot of, like, these crypto gamblers coming in and trying to build businesses. And I talk to them like, yeah, I used to just, like, spend all this money on, like, you know, I have in some sense, like, a meaningless life, and I don't do anything interesting. I have a little bit of money coming in, but now, like, I spend it, like, trying to build businesses. And so some of those businesses are working to some extent. Stand welcome.

[Tom]

That's my whole pitch, is that I get it is a very difficult problem, and I'm sure, there are some people where my solution just is not going to work because they just cannot deal in a world where they're not being helped along. But my pitch is out of love and compassion and a recognition of how the human mind works. I want to help this person have meaning and purpose. I want to help this person do a hard thing and make progress towards a goal. And, and so rather than give them money, like for instance, if we did something like this, I'm thinking of this on the fly here. So it's not well thought out. But I could see putting people like, hey, you don't have to do this if you can make your own money. But if you want money from the government, then you've got to go do build infrastructure, water, people's grass garden, whatever. But you're going to do something that contributes to something society and you'll earn money doing it. So it's not necessarily we're in that sense, you've, you're not doing the free market. But people have to earn a living. Like they've got to do something. There has to be a means test to see that they're actually putting in effort. Again, this is for their sake because if they're not working hard, the problem.

[Amir]

Is that invites organized crime. Like what we're seeing in the videos on YouTube of different places, not just Minnesota, that are like now videos in New York and other places where there is these systems that are meant to like fund, you know, daycares or whatever that are getting preyed upon in different ways. And so anything that the government does where it puts rules on ways to create jobs often invites fraud and different abuses of the system. So again these are the different trade offs government regulated system, a lot of fraud, maybe not even actually serving the purpose that you want it served. Creates negative consequences in all sorts of ways. Great distortions creates inflation.

[Tom]

But you're in a world, you're post economic. This is where what we're saying is AI is so productive and I'm assuming robotics and energy costs are pressed to basically zero, I think, I don't think.

[Amir]

We'Re getting there like anytime soon. I think there's going to.

[Tom]

You think this problem arises long before we get.

[Amir]

Oh yeah, this problem. This, this year we're going to see this problem.

[Tom]

Whoa.

[Amir]

Like it's, it's happening as we speak. Like the, the really. The coding agent revolution is huge. Is really huge.

[Tom]

How many people do you think that it puts out of work?

[Amir]

It's hard to know. But if I can hire one business journalist that is very good at managing agents. Then I don't need to hire maybe a team. Team of five that are, that have someone who's like doing data, someone is doing engineering and someone is doing like operations or sales and marketing. So there are people who are good at tools are already as good as five people.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

Wow.

[Tom]

So this is a bridge you think we have to cross in 2026. This, that is unexpected.

[Amir]

Yes.

[Tom]

Okay, that's very fast. So you have, you certainly know people that lobby the government. At one point it sounded like you were saying you guys were involved. What are you whispering in their ear about how to actually deal with this problem?

[Amir]

We're not involved in that, but maybe we should. It's hard because, you know, I, I just like fundamentally don't know how effective our go, especially our government today is at like solving problems.

[Tom]

It's not effective at all. That's why, man, when I thought that I had, you know, three to five years to let this problem come on slowly, it feels a lot more manageable. I've always thought of this through the lens of the cost of energy and labor get pushed to zero. I've always pegged it at about seven years. And then it's like, well, there's so much abundance that this becomes an easier.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

Thing to deal with.

[Tom]

I knew we'd have a generation that will be completely disrupted because they just will not know how to deal with this. Like you, I believe that there's a self correcting mechanism. Just like even with social media, I think fewer and fewer kids are going to get smartphones. I think people just realize I got to get my kids out of public education. That will hopefully force public education to reflect. The kids won't just. If enough parents see their kids acting like drug addicts, literally drug addicts, because of their use of smartphones, that they'll just be like, nope, you can't have it. Literally. As a video game developer, I love.

[Amir]

How much you agree with me, but you created this debate early on to.

[Tom]

Try to get to. Well, no, no, no, here's the thing. The friction is real. And so the great fascination is because people can have a different base assumption and then that echoes in like this huge way. That's why I was trying to figure out where we actually disagreed. Where we actually disagree is what it means to be automata. Right. And so I run with like a whole different set of like, well, given what I think you would have to do this. And I'm trying to touch the physics.

[Amir]

Of the situation, but it sounds like we arrive At a similar, more optimistic kind of.

[Tom]

I think we arrive. We arrive at the same problem. We both probably have a vague sense that ultimately technology is worth the price.

[Amir]

Yes.

[Tom]

Which if I were going to say it as succinctly as possible, I would say it's going to be catastrophic and worth it. But when I look back on history.

[Amir]

I'll put it more strongly. I don't think we have a choice. There's binary choice. And I think Ted Kaczynski was right about this thing. You either go back or you go forward. You can't stay in the middle. Like Europe is trying this thing of staying in the middle. You can't. You just lose power and create an underclass and dysfunctional society. And you're not growing. Our system is based on growth and we need to generate growth. And growth comes through technology. The entire system, especially with lower birth rates and all of that. You need more automations. We don't have a choice like we have. We need the next jump in technology and that is AI. Otherwise the whole world will to go to crap. And so the, you know, you either like go primitive or go techno futuristic. I. That's what I arrived at.

[Tom]

So it's funny, you're right. We come up with very similar things. So I think there's four paths before us. These all assume that energy and labor drop to zero effectively. Path number one is what I call the new Amish. So people that I think this is what you call revert to nature. So they. I don't want. Never make a mind. Never make an artificial intelligence in the likeness of the human mind. Whatever the opening line of Dune is.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

Yes.

[Tom]

So they go down that path. Then you have people that go and colonize Mars called life on hard mode. They understand that breakdown that I did and so they're like, cool. I want to play a survival crafting game, but I'm going to play it.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

In real life on Mars.

[Tom]

Awesome. Path number three is a brave new world where you just do drugs and have sex all day. Cool. Not I don't advise it, but I know that a lot of people are going to do it. And then path number four, which is my chosen path, is to create and inhabit virtual worlds. So basically make video games just like the Mars thing. But now you can have all kinds of different experiences. Because I think video games so effectively tap into the evolution of the human mind. I think it really would be compelling experiences in the way that video games are. And the reason that I think people eschew video games is now it's like this isolation factor where people hikikomori they, they isolate, they don't have normal human relations, all that. So I, I get why people have a beef. But in the world that I think is actually going to come maybe on a longer timeline, maybe you're right about that, but I think is an inevitable outcome of the cost of energy and labor going to zero. So anyway those are the, the four options that people face. And then it just becomes a question of which path do people choose now? I think it'll be a very rocky ride.

[Amir]

I mean it's interesting to look at Gen Z. I see some of those paths already. Like you have the look smacking like culture and it's like all that matters, all that's left to matter is like you know, getting the most amount of dates and like status via looks and you know, things like that. It's interesting that our generation at least millennials like really prized capital and wealth accumulation. Some Gen Z just like are post economic from now. They're like no, what matters is actually just looks which is a really fascinating view. And they're like it looks actually gets wealth which they're right about that because Instagram and things like that at or like opens up opportunities in only fans and things like that. So, so there's, there's, there, there's people already picking that path.

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[Amir]

I think, I think a lot of other generations are very cynical about gen Gen Z. I see a lot of really passionate, hyper productive, incredibly good with the tools. Gen Z like the, the, the kind of things like how plastic they're, they're, they're, you know, they grew up in a, you know they grew up with AI. Many of them came of age with AI so they really understand it and like they pick up tools super quickly and are able to like make things fast and they, they have a more automating mind. I think automation is a skill you need to learn. I see it in our, you know, users who are, who adopt, who look at Replay and they're like okay, this is a general automation platform. It's not just about making an app or making a piece of software that makes one one things easier. It's more like they look at their lives, they look at their work, they wake up day to day and they're like okay, what are the things that I can automate there. There's certain sense of laziness that you need. Like the idea of like doing spreadsheets manually. It's just like, like you need to be a little ADHD right Like you can't sit down and do routine tasks. I think those people are just have the right attitude towards AI and the world that we're headed to. We, our generation, the previous generation grew up in this middle automation world. We weren't headed to world for automation but where machines took on enough of a job that, but they left a lot of gaps and those gaps were filled by humans to do machine like work. Cogs in a machine. And you know I think Marx is very wrong about his solutions but he was very right about Marx. Karl Marx.

[Tom]

Oh Jesus with an X. Yeah.

[Amir]

Fairly different.

[Tom]

Yeah. I was thinking apostrophe S. Yeah.

[Amir]

Karl Marx looked at the system we had post industrial evolution and said well actually you know we're in a world where humans are having to substitute for machine like work. He came up with this for example theory of alienation where I am so disconnected from the actual impact of the work that I'm doing that I don't have meaning. Like all I do is be part of this factory line and I do one thing, I put the eraser on the pencil and I don't actually know the people that are using the pencils. I don't really interact with them. I don't know the customers, I don't know the other people are doing the job. I'm doing the job of a machine. It is the job of a machine. And we are finally at a world where we're heading towards a world where we're going to have full automations where humans don't have to act as machines but those generations that grew up with a certain education system that actually force us. Like I, I think ADHD is a totally made up thing and I think the natural, like the comments are going to light up right? Like you know, I would say I have it but I think it is a natural, It's a naturally occurring thing in many, many people. I think, you know, large percentage of people. It is not a medical thing, it's not pathological. It's not pathological. It's you know, people that are hyper creative that like get bored of like tasks that they know should be, should not be done by humans. Like we're, we should not be acting like machines. They want to be able to do a lot of different things and they want to be able to receive a lot of different information, jump from task to task. And that's why a lot of founders out of ADHD because we actually get a lot of satisfaction from context switching. A lot of people ask me, you wake up in the Morning. You do finance meeting, you do an engineering meeting, you do a product meeting, and then you do business strategy meeting and then you do design meeting and then you do HR meeting. And I was like, how can you do this? I was like, what are you talking about? This is, this is exactly what I love. I love context switching. I love going from one problem to another, from one fire to another. This is like how I'm wired. Actually. The moment I relax, I just like become kind of like the moment I not relax, the moment I put in a place where the task is long and repetitive, I just can't do it and I just become depressed and like really unhappy.

[Tom]

Yeah, don't go into operations.

[Amir]

Yeah, exactly. And I think that a lot of Gen Z are growing up today and looking at AI and they're saying, okay, I don't have to do that anymore. So it's our version of the pointy haired boss. I don't know who's going to write that comic but like they're looking at the world and they're saying that all these jobs are made for machines. They're not made for humans. And what humans are good at is being creative. It's also being, is understanding what our fellow humans want and need. And therefore I can create products and services that can benefit people directly. This is my job as a human, is to benefit others, like you were saying. And I can do it directly. I don't need to be part of, I don't need to be a cog, like a node in a very large machine. I can understand all aspects of the business. I can start a business or I can go become a business journalist and be able to contribute on all different aspects of a certain corporation.

[Tom]

All right, so talk to the Gen Z person that feels a little bit lost. So that speaks directly to the heart of the person who sort of already gets it right. And this is a good moment for them. But we started all this with, you know, what is Ted Kaczynski right about? And I think we agree on a lot, which is when you wipe out that sweet spot thing, it, it will cause some people to feel adrift. Yeah, I may be too cynical on the percentage of people that can change. So make your best pitch. How do you get somebody? Because we both want to see all of Gen Z, like get on track and make the most of this moment and not be a generation that gets gobbled up by the transition. How do you reach out to the person that doesn't yet know how to plug into where the world of AI is and especially the reputation AI has of like, ah, don't worry about it kid, it's going to be better than you at everything.

[Amir]

The first thing I will say, it's a, it's a tool. That is not what you hear in sci fi. That is not what you hear from the AI CEOs. The AI CEOs want to make it sound like a, like it is a God. That's how they can fundraise, they kind of raise. Like the rounds that are coming together now is huge. And what you, what you need to sell investors on is you're inventing God. Right? A lot of them don't actually believe that. And I think like fundamentally understand on an intellectual level that it's a tool for you to use. It's not a something that is like made to replace you. It can actually accentuate. It's a technology. It's like any other technology that we invented as humans in human history. There are some things that are special about it, obviously, but it's still ultimately a tool. So start from that premise and then go about your day to day life and your schoolwork, your homework, if you're part of an internship, whatever it is. Look at your work from a perspective of what is boring and really a job for a machine. My boss told me to, or my, my teacher told me to do this like very manual thing and go to the simplest tool you can imagine, chatgpt and try to automate the first basic aspect of it. Just like prompt something, get the output and play around with it there. But then go a little further. You can ask ChatGPT or you can go to Replit and you can now make, make a piece of software that can help you automate this thing on a, not on a just one time basis, but on a, in a recurring basis. And again that could be in your personal life. Like there are a lot of things we do in front of our computers or in front of our phones that are very repetitive. And so train your mind to find these moments and then just struggle with the idea of like automating it. Like how can I get rid of this problem entirely so I don't have to do it again? Like for me, you know, I had, you know, I've always struggled with some form of sleep issues and my, my sleep doctor gave me like a, like a paper to fill every day when I work, when I wake up to just track my progress. I'm like, why am I writing this down? This doesn't make any sense. I took a photo of it, put it into replit. Create a piece of software. Now every morning I can type up what time I went to sleep, how I feel, other things that happened, what did I eat last night? And then I'm like, that's still too cumbersome. You need to be this lazy. And then, okay, what's the next thing? Well, eight sleep already has some of the data or whatever tracking software that you use. Some of them have APIs. Even if they don't. I went and asked it to kind of pull that what time I slept, what time I wake up. Now I don't have to put in that. I was like, okay, what I ate, what I, what I, you know, what I feel in the morning. So I just like snap pictures of, of things I ate or medicine I take whatever. And that goes into, into the app in the morning. I just want to talk to it. So I added like another voice to text AI. So just keep going like, how easy can this be? How friction, how frictionless can this be? And so I guess if I were to boil this down is to be lazy.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

Very good advice.

[Amir]

Yeah, be lazy in a way that if you develop this mindset of. There are a lot of things in my life that are repetitive and boring and I can get rid of them with AI and then go struggle with to get a rhythm with AI and over time you'll build enough skill in order to actually become second nature to you.

[Host (Jod Massad)]

That's it for part one.

[Tom]

Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two. Coming up soon.