Marc Andreessen: AI Plus Woke Equals Dystopia

Marc Andreessen talked about some of these topics before on the Joe Rogan show. David wrote about that last month. Today, the Free Press published an interview with Andreessen in which he goes into detail about social media, government censorship and the dawn of the AI age. What struck me as I listened was his suggestion that it would be relatively easy for AI and woke culture to combine and, if they did, the result would ultimately be the kind of science fiction dystopia we’ve all been warned about. 

“I think AI is going to be the control layer for everything in the future,” Andreessen said. He continued, “In the future when you deal with the health care system or with the education system or with the government, you’re going to be dealing with AI. If that AI is—call it what you want—woke, bias, censored, you know politically controlled you are in a hyper-Orwellian, China-style social credit system nightmare.

“And this goes directly to Elon’s argument which is at the core of this you have to train the AI to lie. If you wanted to create the ultimate dystopian world you’d have a world that’s controlled by an AI that’s been programmed to lie. It’s hard to imagine anything worse than that.”

Andreessen’s experience is that “most of the people” building these AI systems are already products of the current university culture. They have already been infected with the aspects of woke culture which would be dangerous if given power. And we all know how woke works. Argument is dependent on identity above reason. Everyone is expected to pledge their fealty to the woke cause or be at risk of losing their livelihoods. Those with wrong opinions are attacked and, if possible, silenced, shamed and deplatformed. The bad people have no right to speak only to listen and learn from their woke betters. This is the ideology that already runs large portions of our universities. We’ve all seen it in action.

Andreessen offered an example, saying he had a discussion with a professor at one of the AI companies and he mentioned that it bothered him that AI chat bots would give people “patronizing moral lectures” in response to questions. The professor replied, “Well, my undergrads actually really like that. That’s how they expect technology to work.” 

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says AI was a “censorship machine” from the beginning—and explains why that is “a thousand times more dangerous” than what we’ve already seen on social media:

“AI is going to be the control layer for everything in the future… healthcare, education,… pic.twitter.com/hwjMGxUkNc

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

Once the woke AI is built all that’s required is for the government to decide it is too powerful to be left in the hands of individuals. Andreessen said he was in meetings with Biden officials who suggested the government had already decided AI would need to be strictly limited to a few companies and then closely controlled.

“They said, look, AI is a technology basically that the government is going to completely control…They actually said flat out to us, don’t do AI startups…they’re not going to be allowed to exist,” he said. The key message from the government was “We’re going to control them and we’re going to dictate what they do.”

Andreessen asked how that was possible given that the basic math for creating AI is already out there. The government response was that, if necessary, they would classify the information and make it impossible for even universities to work on it.

He said the meetings were “absolutely horrifying” and added that “we came out basically deciding we had to endorse Trump.”

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says he attended “absolutely horrifying” meetings where Biden’s government vowed to take “complete control” over AI technology:

“They basically said AI is going to be a game of 2 or 3 big companies working closely with the government… We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/REjkfgJkyV

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

So if you’re wondering what it would look like if AI went bad, we’ve already seen the first hints of artificial woke intelligence.

Google shut down its Gemini AI graphic service because it exposed the woke programming code that showed up when people asked for images representing the Founding Fathers and Popes. Few knew we had female Popes and Asian, Black and Native Americans in the Continental Congress. pic.twitter.com/gQ6yBEyACG

— Lance Wallnau (@lancewallnau) March 1, 2024