Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape entrepreneurship, healthcare and the workforce, but its rapid growth is also fueling public distrust and concerns about job losses, according to speakers Wednesday at the Yale Innovation Summit.
The afternoon panel discussion, titled “Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI,” was held during the first day of the 12th annual Yale Innovation Summit in the O.C. Marsh lecture hall on the university campus.
Moderated by Yale President Maurie McInnis, the panel featured venture capitalists and entrepreneurs Anna Barber of Everywhere Ventures, Jake Saper of Emergence Capital and Kevin Ryan, founder of AlleyCorp. All are Yale graduates.
McInnis opened by saying Yale is uniquely positioned to explore both the technological potential and ethical implications of AI because of the school’s ability to bring together researchers, policymakers, business leaders and humanities scholars.
“Only a university can combine world-class research with ethical inquiry unconstrained by market considerations,” she said.
Much of the discussion focused on how AI is lowering barriers to entrepreneurship by allowing individuals and small teams to build products and businesses with fewer employees and less capital.
Barber said entrepreneurs no longer necessarily need large staffs, formal corporate structures or significant venture capital to launch companies.
“Now it’s really just you, or you and your friend and your friend Claude, working on your idea, and then showing it to some people, and then seeing if someone will pay you for it,” Barber said, referencing Anthropic’s AI assistant.
Still, she said the industry is also becoming increasingly concentrated, with computing power, capital, talent and distribution being consolidated by a relatively small number of firms.
Healthcare was repeatedly cited as one of AI’s biggest opportunities.
Ryan said artificial intelligence could eventually help reduce healthcare costs and accelerate research breakthroughs.
“We’re starting to get there in solving cancer, Alzheimer’s, issues like that,” Ryan said.
At the same time, the panelists acknowledged growing public anxiety surrounding AI.
Saper said entrepreneurs today must not only understand AI, but learn how to build with it. Instead of treating it “like Super Google,” he quipped, entrepreneurs need to have actually built an agent or application with AI.
“Everyone here needs to have done that,” he said. “There is no excuse.”
He also acknowledged that many have what he called “AI anxiety,” and said the best way to deal with that is to, first, do physical things, and second, “run towards the technology. Build stuff with it.”
Still, he cautioned that the technology industry is underestimating the public’s growing concerns about job displacement, data centers, electricity usage and the broader impact of AI.
“I think we are under-hyping how much Americans hate AI,” Saper said.
Ryan compared the current moment to earlier technological revolutions, arguing that fears of widespread job losses do not always materialize as expected. He said the introduction of ATMs had many predicting they would eliminate bank teller jobs, but employment in that field later grew.
Still, Ryan acknowledged that AI could significantly alter white-collar employment in coming years and said safeguards will be needed as the technology advances.
“There’s a nonzero chance that we have a colossal problem,” he said.
