Mitch Kapor: AI Gap-Closing

Legendary entrepreneur and investor Mitch Kapor draws on his decades of experience to argue that while AI represents a massive wave of disruptive innovation, it also represents an opportunity to avoid mistakes made with social media and the early internet. In this episode, he contends that technologists tend toward over-optimism about technology solving human problems while underestimating downsides. Self-regulation by large AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic is likely to fail, he suggests, because incentives to aggregate power and wealth are too strong, requiring external pressure and oversight. Kapor explains that his responsible investing approach at his venture capital firm, Kapor Capital, focuses on gap-closing rather than diversity for its own sake, funding startups that address structural inequalities in access, opportunity, or outcomes, regardless of founder demographics. He discusses the Humanity AI initiative and argues that philanthropy needs to develop AI literacy and technical capacity, with some foundations hiring chief technology officers to effectively engage with these issues. He believes targeted interventions can create meaningful change without matching the massive investments of the major AI labs. Kapor expresses hope that a younger generation of leaders in tech and philanthropy can step up to make positive differences, emphasizing that his generation should empower them rather than occupying seats at the table.

Mitch Kapor is a pioneering technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist who founded Lotus Development Corporation and created Lotus 1-2-3, the breakthrough spreadsheet software that helped establish the PC software industry in the 1980s. He co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation to advocate for digital rights and civil liberties, and later established Kapor Capital with his wife Freada Kapor Klein to invest in startups that close gaps of access, opportunity, and outcome for underrepresented communities. Kapor recently completed a masters degree at the MIT Sloan School focused on gap-closing investing, returning to finish what he started 45 years earlier when he left MIT to pursue his career in Silicon Valley. He serves on the steering committee of Humanity AI, a $500 million initiative to ensure AI benefits society broadly.