'Thousand Times More Intense': Marc Andreessen Reveals The Most Important Fight For Next 30 Years

Marc Andreessen, the billionaire investor who runs the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, warned Impact Theory podcast host Tom Bilyeu that the "AI censorship wars" will likely be the biggest political battle over the next three decades.

TOM BILYEU: What's your take on censorship? Where are we culturally, and what's AI's role going to be in either breaking us free from censorship or using that to really tighten down?

MARC ANDREESSEN: I am classic Gen X. I am 100% pro-free speech. By the way, the First Amendment guarantees that the government, at least in theory, is not supposed to censor us, although that's been happening a bit lately. But the government also has case law around the First Amendment that defines illegal speech, and there are a bunch of forms of illegal speech, like child porn and incitement to violence—it's terrorist recruitment, right? So there are carve-outs for that stuff. My philosophy is that U.S. law is actually very good on this, and it isn't just U.S. law; this has been litigated culturally in the US as well as legally for 250 years, going back to the Bill of Rights. We and our predecessors in the US went through a long process to get to where the First Amendment is. Therefore, I think it represents more than just a law; it's also a statement of culture and values.

I've always been an advocate that the code for internet freedom of speech should basically be the First Amendment with only limited carve-outs for things that are truly dangerous or truly destructive. I don’t want terrorist recruitment any more than anybody else, but should people be able to talk about their politics online without getting censored? 100%—full range of expression, of course. It's the American way. So I’m 100% on that.

You probably know as much as I do about the last decade, which I’ve seen up close, where things generally went very bad. The internet companies ran into a variety of externally and self-inflicted situations where they ended up being a pervasive censorship machine for a long time. The most dramatic change of that is Twitter before and after Elon bought it. By the way, we’re a proud member of the syndicate that bought it with Elon, and so I’m completely thrilled.

TOM BILYEU: Thank you for your service, by the way. To me, it's just so much better. I cannot believe that was controversial.

MARC ANDREESSEN: We’re also, by the way, the main outside investor in Substack, which I think has done a spectacular job navigating through this. They’re a small company, so when pressure is brought to bear on a small company, it can really have an impact. But the team there has done a fantastic job navigating to a real freedom of speech position, and as a consequence, Substack now has the full range of views on all kinds of topics in a really good way. So the good news is we have two case studies where this has gone really well. The other ones are more difficult.

Here’s what I would say: I think the internet social media censorship wars were the preamble to the AI censorship wars. I think the AI censorship wars are going to be a thousand times more intense and a thousand times more important. The reason for that is that internet social media is important because it's what we all say to each other, but AI is going to be, I think, the software layer that controls everything. It's going to be the software layer that basically tells us everything; it's going to be the software layer that teaches our kids; it's going to be the software layer that we talk to every day. And, you know, as I think you know, there’s already AI censorship.

The AI censorship conflict is already underway. The war—the information war around AI—is already underway. By the way, the same people who were pushing so hard for social media censorship have now shifted their focus to AI censorship. A lot of the actual censors themselves, who used to work at companies like Twitter, now work for the AI companies. So there's been a direct transfer of lessons learned, and now it’s being applied at a larger scale. I think this is going to be a giant fight; I think it’s just starting. I believe it's possibly the most important political fight in the next 30 years.