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The a16z Show

Amjad Masad & Adam D’Angelo: How Far Are We From AGI?

The a16z Show

a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adam D’Angelo (Quora/Poe) thinks we're 5 years from automating remote work. Amjad Masad (Replit) thinks we're brute-forcing intelligence without understanding it. In this conversation, two technical founders who are building the AI future disagree on almost everything: whether LLMs are hitting limits, if we're anywhere close to AGI, and what happens when entry-level jobs disappear but experts remain irreplaceable. They dig into the uncomfortable reality that AI might create a "missing middle" in the job market, why everyone in SF is suddenly too focused on getting rich to do weird experiments, and whether consciousness research has been abandoned for prompt engineering. Plus: Why coding agents can now run for 20+ hours straight, the return of the "sovereign individual" thesis, and the surprising sophistication of everyday users juggling multiple AIs.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Nothing seems fundamentally so hard that it couldn't be solved by the smartest people in the world working incredibly hard for the next five years.

0:08.9

Humanity went through the agriculture revolution and industrial revolution.

0:12.7

We're going through another revolution.

0:15.0

We will not be able to call it something.

0:16.6

It's the future people who will call it something.

0:18.7

But we are going through something.

0:20.1

The number of solo entrepreneurs that this technology is going to enable is vastly

0:26.5

increased what a single person can do.

0:28.9

For the first time, opportunity is massively available for everyone.

0:33.1

Just the ability for more people to be able to become entrepreneurs. Yeah, it's massive.

0:38.7

The age of solo entrepreneurship powered by AI is here, but the pact of full automation

0:43.8

is messier than the hype suggests.

0:46.1

Today, you'll hear from Adam DeAngelo, founder of Quora and CEO of Poe, and Androd Mossad,

0:51.6

founder and CEO of Replit, on why we're in a brute force era of AI rather than true intelligence,

0:57.3

and what that means for the future of work.

0:59.6

We discussed the expert data paradox, how automating entry-level jobs creates a crisis in training the next generation of experts,

1:06.6

while managing tens of agents in parallel will define the next wave of productivity,

1:16.4

and how the sovereign individual framework might be the best lens for understanding AI's economic and political impact.

1:20.8

Plus, Adam Amjad makes the case for why Vide coding is radically underrated,

1:26.5

and Amjad explains what Claude 4.5's strange new self-awareness might signal about the path ahead.

1:28.1

Let's get into it.

1:35.0

Adam, I'm John. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having us. So a lot of people have been throwing cold water over LLMs lately. It's been some general bearishness. People talking about the

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