Marc Andreessen & Amjad Masad on “Good Enough” AI, AGI, and the End of Coding

Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, joins a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg to discuss the new world of AI agents, the future of programming, and how software itself is beginning to build software.

They trace the history of computing to the rise of AI agents that can now plan, reason, and code for hours without breaking, and explore how Replit is making it possible for anyone to create complex applications in natural language. Amjad explains how RL unlocked reasoning for modern models, why verification loops changed everything, whether LLMs are hitting diminishing returns, and if “good enough” AI might actually block progress toward true general intelligence.

00:00 Intro
00:37 Programming in Plain English
03:00 The Vision Behind Replit
05:15 From Machine Code to English Code
07:00 Building Apps with AI Agents
09:30 When the Agent Becomes the Programmer
11:00 Long-Horizon Reasoning and Coherence
13:45 Reinforcement Learning and Problem Solving
17:30 The Verification Loop and Multi-Agent Systems
21:15 Watching AI Work Like a Human Programmer
23:45 From Stochastic Parrots to Real Reasoning
26:00 Why Coding Is Advancing Faster Than Other Fields
30:15 Verifiable Domains: Math, Code, and Physics
33:45 The AGI Debate: Are We on Track?
37:45 Transfer Learning and the Limits of Human Intelligence
41:15 Functional AGI and Automating Labor
45:20 GPT-5, Diminishing Returns, and Lost “Humanity”
53:10 Creativity, Reasoning, and Finding Truth in AI
57:30 The Origins of Replit and Early Coding Days
01:03:00 Hacking His University and Getting Caught
01:08:00 The Redemption and Lessons Learned for the AI Age

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