Podbit · All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Back in January, Sacks made the contrarian prediction that AI would produce net job gains, not losses. Now Goldman's CEO says the apocalypse is overblown, and both Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have walked back their doom rhetoric. Sacks is waiting for his apology — and has the receipts.
Where this was said
At 59:58 · chapter starts 59:56
The episode's final and most contentious segment opens with Fortune reporting that both Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have walked back their AI job apocalypse predictions ahead of anticipated IPOs. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon's NYT op-ed — arguing AI will automate 25% of work hours rather than eliminate 25% of jobs, and that bank tellers increased after ATMs — has shifted the narrative completely. [1] — David Sacks "Back in January, Sacks made the contrarian prediction that AI would produce net job gains, not losses. Now Goldman's CEO says the apocalyps…" 59:58 Sacks lays out the empirical case: the Yale Budget Lab found no discernible AI labor disruption over three years; US unemployment sits at 4.3%, at or below full employment; software developer job postings are up 15% year over year to a 3-year high; and GitHub logged 1.1 billion code commits in one month versus 1 billion for all of last year. [1] — David Sacks "Back in January, Sacks made the contrarian prediction that AI would produce net job gains, not losses. Now Goldman's CEO says the apocalyps…" 59:58 He argues that AI is triggering a bespoke software boom, with industries that never hired engineers now doing so. Calacanis pushes back hard: Amazon's Andy Jassy explicitly said the company would forgo 600,000 future hires; Waymo has 3,000 vehicles displacing drivers; Meta's 8,000-person layoff was paired with AI monitoring software.[2] Chamath offers the middle path: most current layoffs are really reversals of post-COVID overhiring, with AI serving as a convenient two-letter scapegoat. But he concedes that regulated industries — pharma, aerospace, finance — will not see the startup disruption Calacanis predicts. Bill Gurley closes with his characteristic optimism: competition will ensure productivity gains flow to consumers as cheaper goods, not to obscene corporate margins. The skills trades remain a desperate shortage, and he plugs Mike Rowe Works' $16 million scholarship program for plumbers, welders, and electricians as a more useful solution than government retraining programs.
Sam built Algrow, a SaaS for finding viral content formats, with zero coding experience using ChatGPT and Cursor. Six months later: 10,000 users, $14K/month in revenue.
Sam's first MVP threw an application error on its very first user — and he shipped it anyway. The core idea worked, and that was enough to validate the product and keep users coming back.
Sam joined Discord voice chats, muted himself, and silently screen-shared his product. Users in the chat started tagging him asking what the tool was. No pitch needed — curiosity did the selling.
Most founders post links in Discord and immediately get banned for self-promotion. Sam's approach was the opposite: build rapport, help people with the tool, let word of mouth do the work.
Find where your ICP lives. Listen before building. Validate with DMs and Loom recordings. Build in public with users inside your own Discord server. Turn early adopters into advocates with free access.
Instead of fearing the self-promo ban in large Discord servers, create your own private server for your product. You funnel in ideal customers and build a relationship that email can't replicate.
Algrow helps creators find and replicate viral video formats, starting at $25/month. It analyzes subscriber counts, average views, and trending formats — and can even generate the videos with AI.
After weeks of Sam silently screen-sharing in a Discord server, the server owner — unprompted — made a full YouTube promotional video about Algrow. Sam paid nothing and asked for nothing.
Producer Gus admits Discord never crossed his mind as a customer acquisition channel. Pat connects the insight to a broader lesson: match your distribution channel to where your actual customers live.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.