When the VC Forbes once called “the most powerful woman in startups” says there's a way to make yourself AI-proof, it's worth listening.
Ann Miura-Ko spent the last two decades deciding which founders are worth betting on. She wrote the first check into TaskRabbit, got in early on Lyft, and teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford.
There are few people closer to what's actually happening in AI, and her read is a hopeful one: AI is coming for the order takers, but anyone can become an order maker.
The order takers, the people whose job is to run down a list and check the boxes, should be nervous. But everyone is opinionated about something — the thing they insist gets done a certain way. Ann's argument is that this is now the whole job: point your expertise at an infinite number of software agents and let them handle the rest.
Connor and Ann get into why you can't train AI to have soul, the difference between what AI lets you do and what you should choose *not* to do, and the "Ann brain" she's built so the technology works for her without her ever handing over the keys.
The conversation is also, fittingly, a deeply human one: her childhood theory of what it means to be rich, and what it feels like to watch your kids leave home, one by one.
CHAPTERS
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro — Training AI to have soul
00:01:29 Sneaking into negotiations class
00:04:23 Is that a world-class effort? — Lessons from a rocket scientist dad
00:06:39 The PhD moment — Realizing you're not the best
00:07:58 Designing your life around self-expression
00:09:23 Starting Floodgate — Pregnant, PhD-ing, and investing
00:10:54 From young whippersnapper to wise boomer
00:12:25 Measuring success beyond work metrics
00:18:42 The pink and blue sweater — What it means to be rich
00:21:36 Develop the muscle for giving
00:22:46 Being asked to be a co-conspirator
00:25:05 Why are you in such a hurry? — The Stanford dropout trap
00:27:16 Building a personal AI brain
00:30:43 What's mine, what's yours? — The future of AI and IP
00:32:25 The five levels of AI adoption
00:33:16 You can't train AI to have soul
00:44:18 Order makers vs order takers
00:46:45 Religion, service, and who you're accountable to
00:53:15 Freedom from constraint — Marriage, religion, and the good life
00:54:27 Turning 50 — Shedding and what comes next
