Why Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is bullish on AI

Oh boy. Look, I think everyone is realizing this technology is here to stay. It is real. Now, I spend my days at the earliest possible stages of investing. I don't spend a lot of time dabbling in the public markets, so I can't speak to those valuations, but the bigger trend is very real. The innovation, the efficiencies that we're seeing, a simple example like writing code, something that I had to teach myself when I was in high school. The act of writing code has gotten so enhanced thanks to this technology that it's changing the way apps are being created. If you just look at that one very specific use case that obviously has a lot of value in the world, we can't live without software. We can see the implications for this. I can't speak to those public market valuations. I'm still long-term very bullish on the overall technology trends. I think one area where we've seen growth in the private portfolio has been around infrastructure related investment. Companies that are building on the hardware side, in the world of atoms, but atoms that are in support of the bigger needs we're going to have around energy and compute. I'm just excited to see that. I think a lot of this technology can help us live much better lives and that's the kind of thing we want to get behind.

I can speak to vibe coding. We seeded a company literally called Vibe Code that has really focused on mobile first, iOS and Android first, app development literally from a text prompt. My dad could within a few minutes build an app to solve some problem he has. The founders really believe that software development will get incredibly commoditized and that access to creating useful software, especially on your mobile device, will look and feel fundamentally different than how I was taught as a kid or how generations of developers were taught. That feels very inevitable and actually feels like a shift we'll see in the next 5 to 10 years. On the really extreme end, my partner Caitlyn just backed a company called StarCloud, which is aspiring to build data centers in space. They actually recently just put the first one up there on a recent SpaceX launch just last year.

To have basically unfettered access to light, solar power that's coming through. You still have to solve a lot of problems with heat dissipation, which again I'm not the physics expert here, but the founders are. What's exciting is, if you want to build, and I think Elon recently and maybe even Jeff Bezos were recently talking about the inevitability of data centers in space as a means to achieve these extra levels of a civilization where we get to become a spacefaring civilization and we actually have these needs for compute, whether it's in the habitat of Mars, the moon, or any of the other things that are going on. In the short term, we're having enough growth here building data centers on Earth, terrestrial ones. But at the far ends of ambition, you have founders looking to build these data centers in space to help create opportunities for using that compute out there in the constellation of satellites. There's plenty of defense reasons and plenty of just human advancement reasons why this actually could be helpful if the science works. We want to be the first check in a range of companies from software, which I feel quite familiar with, all the way to data centers in space. This is the kind of ambition we look for at 776. It's exciting because founders today are very aware of the power of technology in a way that wasn't the case when I started Reddit 20 years ago. So many of the very best feel an imperative to build not just great businesses, but great businesses that are going to help push humanity forward. It's inspiring. I'm on the other side of the table now. I'm just wiring the money. I'm not building the businesses like I used to. It feels really satisfying to be close to and inspired by founders who are doing such great work.

I know, dude. Geriatric millennial is when it really hit home. I'm 42. I have two young kids that keep me on my toes. But it's probably the best part of this job, you're constantly seeing a new generation of founders who have new ideas. The 21-year-old founder of Vibe Code is teaching me about the world and his generation today, knowing he basically grew up on the site I created, Reddit, and has a totally different worldview because technology has been a core part of his entire life. The internet, social media has been a core part of how he learned, how he connected. It's wild just to see now the ripple effect. I leave most of the conversations I have with founders, pitch meetings, feeling motivated and inspired. It's an amazing time to be alive. And I definitely feel old.

I think what's very interesting, and I know a lot has been said, every generation seems like they hate on the next generation coming up as being too entitled, too lazy, all these things. I remember when it was assailed against millennials when we were the 20-year-olds. I see it happening. I'm not falling into that trap. I do think the ones who are the builders of this generation, who are really high agency, who are really motivated, are head and shoulders above certainly me and our generation we're building. The fluency, the fact that they are truly digital native, the fluency they have with technology, but also the fact that they've seen a tremendous amount of change. The iPhone showed up in what, 2009, 2010. Those are all technologies that they basically take for granted, that's just the default standard state. You and I remember dialup modems. It's great. Everyone's hand, we take it for granted. But what'll really bake your noodle is the fact that this generation of founders is thinking about AI in a similar way. If you're 18 years old, the ChatGPT moment was a few years ago. You were really coming of age and you were about to go to college and now you have a totally different worldview on knowledge because we've democratized access to infinite human knowledge. The tools on which we're building are only the worst they're ever going to be. They're only going to get better. The gift of that is the founders who are leaned in right now, they know it has never been a better time to be building a company, to be starting a company. It's never been a better time to be an 18-year-old, a 20-year-old, someone who has minimal experience but has really high agency, really high drive, and is very curious. It is an amazing time to be a founder, far better than it was 20 years ago at any point in the last two decades that I've been either building companies or investing in them. I know it feels like there is a big gap. At the same time, we have members of that same generation that are opting out of work or railing against a lot of that. I really hope that the builders win. I really hope that more and more people, especially young people, feel compelled to see problems and then do something about them, not just talk about them, not just complain about them, but actually take action. The power of entrepreneurship to improve quality of life, build great businesses that hire lots of people, but improve the quality of life for civilization. I want to see more of that. I do feel that gap with this generation. But for the folks who are leaned in, it's inspiring as hell.

On the latter point, I don't know. I want to believe I'm a tech optimist and I do think more new jobs will be created than removed from the system. An easy example, we were fortunate to be early investors in a guy Mr. Beast 5 years ago. The idea of being a content creator, let alone a billionaire because of it, was unthinkable 15, 20 years ago. Now it's probably one of the most common professions that a young kid at least in America wants to be when they grow up. There is precedent for social media. That revolution was a significant one, not nowhere near as big as AI, but it created entirely new career paths, sectors, industries that didn't exist before. With every technological revolution, there's always new careers, new things that come up that you or I can't necessarily think of. The builders are going to build and do. I'm hopeful there are going to be more new ones created. We actually just in DC with one of our companies, Area 2 Farms, where they're franchising vertical farming. When they talk about what is needed to manage a vertical farm especially in a dense urban area where you don't have a lot of space, you're going to have a whole new trades of people who are working on the robotics that help manage those farms and make sure the lettuce grows on time. We're already seeing AI and robotics, two sides of the same coin, creating new jobs, new opportunity, new innovation, better quality of life. Everyone deserves access to high-quality, well-grown produce, whether you live in a rural community or a city. I feel like it'll be a net positive. That doesn't mean it won't be a bumpy road. How do I prepare my 8-year-old and 2-year-old for this? I've already been paying attention. I've been tweeting about things like Alpha School, which I think are taking a really smart first principles approach to education. I do think the future of education for K through 12 looks a lot more like having guides instead of teachers. That's verbiage from folks like Alpha School and Prenda where your personalized AI tutor is doing a lot of the instruction. I'm a big Duolingo user. That is probably the great expression of that. There's no reason why a kid regardless of their background, regardless of their home life, shouldn't be able to get personalized education. If they need extra help with a certain part of math or a certain part of English, you're going to have AI solve those problems for them, giving them that infinite access and infinite patience to support and customized learning. Then hopefully those kids get to spend the rest of their school day actually interacting and building up their emotional intelligence and solving problems. The school of the future should really optimize the time with the AI to help learn but also maximize the time off a screen so that kids are getting the things that will continue to be valuable when they grow up: emotional intelligence, communicating, empathy, creativity. Those are the things that in my opinion are what really make us human. Those are the most delightful parts of being a human being. We have these amazing calculators now that have democratized access to a lot of the pure horsepower of intelligence, which should allow this next generation to focus on the more human sides of it. It's a thing we think about a lot. There's no one solution. I serve on the board of Tiger Woods's Foundation TGR. They're doing a ton of great work with their learning labs and that's an afterschool curriculum. We're talking all the time about how we can bring AI into those learning labs so that these kids, even when they come out of school, maybe their school systems aren't adopting this new tech fast enough, they can come to these learning labs, spend an hour, and get a huge ROI of customized personalized learning. I'm excited. I can see firsthand the way these technologies are improving the quality of life for the people I care about. If I'm on a road trip or in the car for a minute with our oldest daughter, I can use AI to come up with 50 trivia questions that are suitable for an 8-year-old. Although sometimes I put like 10-year-old because I want to push her a little. Now I have a quick little trivia game that I can engage with my child on. I want her to understand that this is a tool that will help her stay curious, that will help her solve problems. I want that growth mindset baked in. I can't help but be a tech optimist in this regard because I can see just how much power she's going to have at her fingertips that we could have only dreamed of when I was her age.