“The other thing that's under discussed is how many problems are truly intelligence-bound. If you had a data center of PhDs working at FedEx or Domino's Pizza, are they going to be exponentially dominating supply chain and pizzas? I don't think so. We might be overestimating how many problems are intelligence-bound versus bound by other things.”
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth · Product & Design · September 2026
Acharya, a partner at a16z, was explaining to Lenny Rachitsky why he doesn't believe in a fast AI takeoff. He had just pointed out that economic diffusion is slow — he went back to his small hometown last summer and people's lives hadn't changed much. The argument cuts against the assumption that more intelligence automatically reorganises an industry.
Transcript
…the others. It's auto-catalytic effects, which just means you're using the new technology to improve your process, but it's not truly recursive. So I think everything from the most empirical to the most technical view points in the other direction. And yet we can't seem to let go of this fantasy.
…There's always this fear, okay, but tomorrow it's going to take off. What I'm hearing from you is that's probably not the case, which I think is the source of a lot of people's fears, this idea that all of a sudden it's going to become super, super intelligent and then we're in big trouble.
That's right. Like the line of reasoning for that case is always everything up until now, then something happens that no one can quite articulate and then fast take off. So I don't believe that that's going to happen. I do think that model progress is happening faster than ever before. But if you look at something like economic diffusion, you know, I grew up in a small town. I went back home last summer. Like people's lives haven't changed that much. So if nothing else, the sort of slow rate of economic diffusion will catch it. I think the other thing that's under discussed, Lenny, is, you know, how many problems are truly intelligence bound. Like if you had a, you know, a data center of PhDs working at FedEx or Domino's Pizza, are they going to be like exponentially dominating supply chain and pizzas? Like, I don't think so. So I think we might be overestimating how many problems are intelligence bound versus bound by other things.
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