The Case Against an AI Pause | Eddy Lazzarin

The AI debate increasingly asks us to consider the probability of doom. Eddie Lazarin thinks we should also be asking about the probability of abundance. In this episode, a16z crypto general partner, Eddie Lazarin, joins Theo Jaffee on MTS to debate AI safety, the calls to slow development, and what we risk giving up when progress is delayed. They discuss why Eddie sees many of today's AI incidents as cybersecurity and control problems rather than signs of super intelligence, and whether existing tools like liability, reputation, market incentives, and better technical controls can make increasingly capable systems safer. They also get into independent AI evaluators, effective altruism, and what happens as debates that largely developed inside Silicon Valley collide with a much broader political conversation.

All right, we're back. We are live with Eddie Lazarin, who's a general partner at a16z Crypto, and one of the internet's strongest soldiers, strongest advocates of open source, of, uh, AI accelerationism-

Yeah. [laughs] Oh my God, dude

... and of techno-optimism.

Yeah, that's true.

Eddie, welcome to MTS. In the studio.

Thanks very much. Um, it's amazing here. The energy's incredible. What a spot. Love it.

Yeah. So, man, where, where to start? Like, the last couple weeks have been such this like, uh, preference cascade flood of AI safetyism, effective altruism, and the like.

Yeah.

And there have been only a few, like, good accounts, uh, offering, like, good counterarguments. So, like-

Counterarguments on which side?

Uh, c- like, counterarguments against, like, the AI doom narrative and against-

Yeah

... like, uh, the-

Yeah, I think it's become very high status all of a sudden to be very concerned with safety, and I think that, uh, I think that, uh, we, we've gotten to a point where, you know, it's more important to sort of tastefully share your, your P doom, so to speak, than it is to actually examine the history of how these massive technological changes develop. Uh, and I think a lot of people are leaving a lot of very interesting concepts, a lot of interesting ideas on the table, you know? A lot of people messaged me, I tweeted the other day about P abundance, right? P abundance. I think we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit when we worry about safety before we worry about what we're leaving on the table and what the costs of delay are, and, and, and furthermore, you know, how we should conceive of accountability, conceive of safety, conceive of all the things around how to make these systems really useful. Safe- Being safe is critical, right? Like, we, w- Any industry needs to take responsibility for making its products safe. Uh, but it's definitely the case that the conversation isn't about safety in the typical manner, right? It's about something else. It's a blend of genuine cybersecurity concerns, uh, sort of philosophical millenarian arguments about the end times. Uh, there's a bunch of things in the mix, and they get a little bit confused, and so I think picking them apart is really useful.

Hmm. So, like, where, where do you get off the, like, AI doom argument? You know, it's, it's like a... There's a pretty standard, like,