- Peter Thiel discussed artificial intelligence on Wednesday's episode of “Conversations with Tyler.”
- The billionaire said the expansion of AI would be “worse for math people than word people.”
- Thiel said Silicon Valley has a “bias” in mathematics and is slow to “rebalance society.”
Peter Thiel thinks the expansion of artificial intelligence will be “even worse” for math enthusiasts, not language experts.
The billionaire explained why on the latest episode of “Conversations with Tyler.”
Mr. Thiel, 56, got his start in the technology industry when he co-founded PayPal in 1998, but has since shifted to other ventures, including those related to artificial intelligence. Palantir, the company he co-founded in 2003, provides artificial intelligence models to militaries around the world, including in Ukraine and Israel.
During the interview, host Tyler Cowen said that large language models like ChatGPT are growing and are expected to become even more sophisticated over time. When asked if writers should be worried, Thiel said math enthusiasts should be on high alert.
“My intuition is that it would be exactly the opposite, which is to say that the word math person seems much worse than the word human,” Thiel said. “People have told me that within three to five years, AI models will be able to solve all the Math Olympiad problems in the United States, and that will change things quite a bit. ”
Thiel then touched on how different societies throughout history have prioritized math and writing, prompting a discussion about Silicon Valley.
“For example, if you fast forward to Silicon Valley in the early 21st century, there's too much of a bias towards math people,” Thiel said.
Thiel said mathematics tends to be used as a benchmark for ability, but that may have its drawbacks. Thiel cited his lifelong love of chess as an example.
“In the late '80s, early '90s, I had a bias against chess because I was a pretty good chess player. So my bias against chess was that I had to test everyone's chess ability. That should be a selection factor,” Thiel said. “Why even math? Why not just chess? That was undermined by his 1997 computer.”
He added: “Isn't that what's going to happen to mathematics? And isn't that the long-overdue rebalancing of society?”
Business Insider outlined 10 roles most likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence in March 2024 as the field grows. Some of those roles included accountants, financial positions, and fields in the technology industry.
Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told BI that technologies like ChatPGT can generate code faster than humans, potentially requiring fewer staff.
“Only some of them may have required a team of software developers,” Muro told BI.
