This Week in Startups · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
In a discussion on the implications of Bill Gates' AI essay, venture capitalists offered their perspectives. Dave McClure agreed that some jobs will be lost and that bad actors could gain superpowers, but questioned the timing of Gates' commentary. Shael Monnat broadly agreed on job losses but was unsure of the scale, also questioning the timing and suggesting that AI could be treated like 'the new oil' with sovereign wealth funds.
“I think the three main points, I kind of agree with. Some jobs are probably going to get permanently go away. Bad actors get superpowers, that's probably true.”
“I think everything he says is broadly true. There will be a lot of job losses. I still in my head don't have an idea of is this like, is this actually going to change everything or is it some subset of the population that, you know, gets job gets their job displaced?”
“I still wonder whether like, you know, whether there's job displacement or not, shouldn't we really like thinking about AI kind of like the new oil? Like shouldn't we be creating sovereign wealth funds with our surplus coming from AI and sharing that broadly?”