Vinod Khosla has been thinking about artificial intelligence longer than most, and betting on it longer than almost anyone. The legendary venture capitalist who scored a 2,500x return with Juniper Networks and became the first institutional investor in OpenAI—wiring in $50 million at a $1 billion valuation—has a message for anyone fretting about AI taking their job: That’s probably going to happen, but it ultimately can be a good thing.
In a new episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, Khosla sat down with Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell to expand on his vision of an AI-transformed economy—for better and worse. The picture he painted was both exhilarating and deeply unsettling, a world of radical abundance built on the rubble of the labor market as we know it. And unlike recent doomsday essays that have shaken markets, Khosla’s is a vision of equality and prosperity, not collapse. He stressed, however, that policymakers have to get things right.
The 80% number
Khosla did not hedge. “Starting in about 2030,” he predicted, “80% of all jobs, so two-thirds of all jobs, will be capable of being done by an AI.” Physicians, radiologists, accountants, chip designers, and salespeople—all those roles, he said, could be done better by AI than humans.
