Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire, is simply one of the biggest names in finance. His Citadel hedge fund had a record-breaking $16 billion return last year, when many were wrong-footed by a brutal bear market. Now A.I. has the market soaring, but Griffin is again twisting where others are turning. “I do think the A.I. community is making a terrible mistake by being full of hype on the near-term implications of generative A.I.,” he said at an internship kickoff event in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday. “I think they’re actually doing everybody a huge disservice with the level of hype they are creating.”
The hype is clear to see. Marc Andreessen, a billionaire just as prominent as Griffin but in the venture capital space, wrote a 7,000-word manifesto the same day as Griffin’s comments, about how A.I. will “save the world.” In fact, he said it could be greater than sliced bread. “A.I. is quite possibly the most important—and best—thing our civilization has ever created, certainly on par with electricity and microchips, and probably beyond those.”
