In the land of the acceleratonists and the doomers, the techno-optimist stands tall. As Silicon Valley was roiled the weekend before Thanksgiving over the sudden firing of the face of AI, Sam Altman, the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was typically vocal on Twitter, saying the equivalent of “I told you so.” It just looked a lot more like “e/acc,” instead.
The founder of Andreessen Horowitz, who has staked his claim firmly in the “accelerationist” camp for years before AI dominated the business climate of 2023, made his stance ultra-clear in October. His 5,200-word “techno-optimist manifesto,” posted on both his own substack and Andreessen’s blog page, ripped into skeptics of big tech in 15 sections, often lyrical and poem-like. The conclusion is there right at the start: “We are being lied to,” he writes, excoriating those who claim technology “takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality … [and] degrades our society.” (Andreessen has been writing tech-boosting manifestos for years before AI exploded on the scene, such as 2011’s “Why software is eating the world” and 2020’s “It’s time to build.”)
