Elon In 2017 “What would you work on if you were 22?” Retrospective
I think that the tech industry doesn’t try to bookmark old predictions from futurists/VCs/tech visionaries of the day and compare them to what empirically happened. I’ve started doing this in past posts and want to do more. So this is from 2017, with Elon Musk telling Sam Altman what he thought the three things which would be most important to the future of humanity going well would be: AI first, then genetics, then a high bandwidth interface to the brain.
AI
This was a really good one. If you were 22 and had started either in a PhD program or went to work at, the time, DeepMind, Brain, or maybe OpenAI, you would’ve been in the places where the OpenAI vibe shift, Anthropic, xAI, Perplexity, etc. sort of things were happening. Perhaps one could have gone to Anduril as well, since that was AI-adjacent and “hot.”
I wasn’t privy to these discussions in tech then (or even living in the Bay Area; I was a middle schooler in Ohio!) but there was also a perception that “AGI labs” were things that got acquired by Big Tech versus being stand-alone businesses.
The argument then that maybe could’ve convinced folks would have been “Google/others are too slow to ship products and a lab could beat them to a breakthrough product” which ended up being the story of why OpenAI really took off.
Genetics
If you were 22 and interested in genetics then, you likely went to get your doctorate in biology from some top university. Since 2017, the things which really seemed to happen from a “what ended up working and providing value” perspective for talented young people was the creation of the Arc Institute, the formation of Colossal Biosciences (which may end up being the most impactful and valuable biotechnology company of the 2020s, excluding the COVID blip) and the rise of the well-funded longevity startups.
High Bandwidth Interface To The Brain
In 2017 it was essentially Neuralink that was the primary beacon of talent here thanks to the Elon Musk halo, and while the slower than expected timelines/some management changes/other things surrounding the company occurred, you would’ve done fine. Neuralink is (still) surprisingly small, so talented people like Jeremy Barenholtz got promoted very quickly, and you could move over to other top engineering Elon companies, the AI labs, or Science Corp/Nudge/other interesting new neurotech companies.
Conclusions
AI had the most “flexibility to find really great career paths” out of these, particularly so if you were “AGI-pilled” early on and in the right circles. I believe that’s still somewhat true today.
The genetics one was a mixed bag in that I don’t think COVID significantly altered the company landscape much for young people (despite many important breakthroughs reaching patients now) other than Colossal and the longevity companies springing up.
Joining/investing in any of the recent Musk companies early on seems to have done well and exposed you to a wide variety of careers.