Brad Feld

Tag: human


I’ll start with my bias – I’m very optimistic about the superintelligence.

Yesterday I gave two talks in Minneapolis. One was to an internal group of Target employees around innovation. In the other, I was interviewed by my partner Seth (for the first time), which was fun since he’s known me for 16 years and could ask unique questions given our shared experiences.

I can’t remember in which talk the superintelligence came up, but I rambled on an analogy to try to simply describe the superintelligence which I’ve come up with recently that I first saw in The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or ExtinctionI woke up this morning thinking about it along with one of the questions Seth asked me where my answer left me unsatisfied.

I’ve been reading most of what I could get my hands on about current thoughts and opinions about the superintelligence and the evolution of what a lot of people simply refer to as AI. I’ve also read, and am rereading, some classical texts on this such as Minsky’s Society of the Mind. It’s a challenging subject as it functions at the intersection of computer science and philosophy combined with humans efforts to define and describe the unknown.

My ants and the superintelligence rant is a way for me to simply explain how humans will related to the superintelligence, and how the superintelligence will relate to humans.

If I’m a human, I am curious about and study ants. They have many interesting attributes that are similar to other species, but many that are unique. If you want to learn more in an efficient way, read anything written about them by E. O. Wilson. While I may think I know a lot about ants, I fundamentally can’t identify with them, nor can I integrate them into my society. But I can observe and interact with them, in good and bad ways, both deliberately as well as accidentally. Ponder an ant farm or going for a bike ride and driving over an ant hill. Or being annoyed with them when they are making a food line across your kitchen and calling the exterminator. Or peacefully co-existing with them on your 40 acres.

If I’m an ant, there are giant exogenous forces in my world. I can’t really visualize them. I can’t communicate with them. I spent a lot of time doing things in their shadow but never interacting with them, until there is a periodic overlap that often is tragic, chaotic, or energizing. I get benefit from the existence of them, until they accidentally, or deliberately, do something to modify my world.

In my metaphor, the superintelligence == humans and humans == ants.

Ponder it. For now, it’s working for me. But tell me why it does work so I can learn and modify my thinking.


On my run this morning (yay – I’m running again) I listened to a wonderful podcast between Jerry Colonna and Bijan Sabet called Investors are Human Too – with Bijan Sabet.

If you follow me, you know that I’m incredibly close friends with Jerry (he’s one of the people on this planet that I comfortably say that I love). I’m also a huge fan of his company Reboot.io. If you want a taste of what they do, listen to a bunch of the Reboot podcasts (I’ve listened to them all and the least interesting one is still excellent.)

I’m also a big fan of Bijan. We’ve had a number of great conversations over the years. While we haven’t sat on a board together, I have deep respect for how he functions as a VC – and as a human.

At Foundry Group, we’ve done a number of investments with Bijan’s firm Spark Capital, including AdMeld (sold – very successful investment), Trigget (sold, but not a successful investment), and most recently Sourcepoint. We’ve also got another one in the works together that should close by the end of August.

Unlike so many podcasts with VCs where you get lots of personal history followed by advice, prognostications, bloviating, and predications, this one was all about being human. Bijan and Jerry explored things in the context of the relationship between a founder and a VC. They covered things generally, had some great examples (including Jerry and Mainspring, which was a blast from the past for me), and then Bijan went deep on his own journey to figure this out over the past ten years.

My favorite line came near then end when Bijan talked about encountering VCs who hide behind the phrase “fiduciary responsibility” to justify their actions, when in fact they should just say:

“I have a fiduciary responsibility to treat you like shit.”

Even though I was huffing and puffing on my run, I laughed out loud.

If you are a podcast listener, spend 45 minutes of your life on this. It’s worth it. Bijan and Jerry – thanks for the conversation and for brightening up my run.