Episode · a16z Podcast · 2025-11-07
Books mentioned on Amjad Masad & Adam D’Angelo: How Far Are We From AGI?
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.
Amjad Masad discussed The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and others, The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Sovereign Individual
The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg is a provocative economic and political study exploring how the shift toward a digital information economy empowers individuals at the expense of the nation-state.
Discussed“I think the best prediction for where the world is headed and this is not a endorsement or necessarily like this is where I think the world's headed because I think part of it is uh will be slightly in uh instable unstable system but I think the sovereign individual continues to be I think a really good set of”
Where to get it
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The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton Christensen's classic management book examines how established companies can fail when confronted with disruptive technological changes.
Discussed“So the terminology of sustaining versus disruptive comes from uh uh the innovator's dilemma. Uh and uh it's it's this idea that uh whenever there's a new technology trend, it sort of there's this idea of a power curve.”
Where to get it
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The Emperor's New Mind
Roger Penrose's influential work explores the intersections of physics, consciousness, and the philosophy of mind, famously challenging the notion that human brains operate merely like computers.
Discussed“Like one of my favorite one is uh the uh Roger Penrose um Emperor's New Mind where he wrote a book about how everyone in the sort of philosophy of mind space uh and perhaps the larger scientific ecosystem start thinking about the brain in terms of a computer. And in that book he tried to show that it fundamentally”
Where to get it
