AGI, The Future of AI Agents And The Next Wave of Opportunities in AI | Richard Socher, CEO, You.com

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck

This episode is a captivating conversation with Richard Socher, serial entrepreneur, investor, and AI researcher.

Richard elaborates on why he likens the impact of AI to the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance, discusses important current issues in AI, such as scaling laws and agents, provides a behind-the-scenes tour of YOU.com and its evolving business model, and finally describes his current investment strategy in AI startups.

You.com

Website - https://you.com/business

Twitter - https://x.com/youdotcom

Richard Socher

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsocher

Twitter - https://x.com/richardsocher

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(02:00) "AI era is the Industrial Revolution, Renaissance, and the Enlightenment combined"

(07:49) Top-performers in the Age of AI

(11:15) Comeback of the Renaissance Person

(13:05) People tried to stop Richard from doing deep learning research. Why?

(14:34) Jevons paradox of intelligence

(17:08) Scaling Laws in Deep Learning

(23:23) Can Deep Learning and Rule-Based AI coexist?

(25:42) Post-transformers AI Architecture

(28:20) Achieving AGI and ASI

(36:43) AI for everyday tasks: how far is it?

(44:50) AI Agents

(55:45) Evolution of You.com

(01:02:11) Technical side of You.com

(01:06:46) Is AI getting cheaper?

(01:13:05) What is AIX Ventures?

(01:16:36) VC landscape of 2024

(01:24:31) Research vs Entrepreneurship

(01:26:12) OpenAI’s transformation and its impact on the industry