Palantir Cofounder Joe Lonsdale Refutes Paul Tudor Jones' AI Warning, Says There's More To Figure Out Before It 'Changes The Whole World'
Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) co-founder Joe Lonsdale believes that fears that AI will wipe out humanity are overblown, insisting the reality "is probably somewhere in the middle" after hedge-fund titan Paul Tudor Jones warned the technology could erase half the human race.
What Happened: "It's very funny … some investors say AI isn't big enough to move margins, and others say it's so good it's going to kill everyone," Lonsdale said, speaking to CNBC. "I think it will have a big impact. I'm not as worried about that."
He pushed back on exponential-growth alarmism: "I don't think these things are exponential. There's a lot of other things we have to figure out before it changes the whole world."
Lonsdale added that AI's near-term upside may be in biotech, where "we're figuring out a lot … about aging."
During his AI warning earlier this week, hedge-fund titan Paul Tudor Jones admitted he’s "not a tech expert," but noted the Magnificent Seven poured roughly $250 billion into AI development in 2024, while security spending was under $1 billion, according to four modelers at a tech conference he attended.
"I'm really concerned about these open-source models and how they are commoditizing and making what were previously indecipherable pockets of knowledge easily accessible," he said.
Why It Matters: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, testifying to the Senate recently, struck a chord of guarded optimism similar to Joe Lonsdale. "I am incredibly excited about the rate of progress, but I also am cautious … I feel small next to it," he told lawmakers, calling AI "among the biggest technological revolutions humanity will have ever produced."
Altman urged policymakers to approach the coming era "with humility and some caution … These are going to be tools capable of things we can't quite wrap our heads around."
Altman’s uncertainty highlights a broader debate over super-intelligence which was also recently flagged by ex-Google chief Eric Schmidt, who predicted AI could put a “smartest human in every pocket” by 2031.
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