1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Benjamin Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: One of the things that I’m excited about in what’s happening right now is the smaller businesses’ ability to afford technology. For that to be more and more interesting, there will need to be more and more interesting technology available at really low prices that are affordable for the small businesses. That opportunity is still very big.

Benjamin Narasin: Well, also keep in mind that affordable is a relative term, right? Going back to those philosophical debates I was having, one of the things that’s distinct and unique about LLMs is that this is the first time in human history that software has been able to attack actual labor.

Previously, software just attacked process. When somebody pitches some sort of system of record or business system is, they’re competing with Excel spreadsheets, or paper and pen. But now these systems can actually do the work of human beings.

Now, the Hippocratic example is an excellent one. These systems are calling people and doing the work that the nurse does not have time to do. Now, I’m not worried about nurses. One, we have far less nurses than we need.

Sramana Mitra: We’ve fewer nurses than is needed.

Benjamin Narasin: Yes, and there’re plenty of things for those nurses to do. They’re horribly overworked. No LLM is going in to draw blood, right? To do the work that is drudgery, but is still important, makes sense.

Now imagine that in your business, you have a person who you could use for all kinds of interesting things, but all they get to do is call all of your customers every time they’ve had a project done, just make sure the project was done right, and make sure they received their invoice and it’s scheduled for payment.

Well, if that person’s earning $36,000 a year and you can buy a piece of software for $1,000 a month, $1,000 a month is not cheap for software, but it’s a lot cheaper than $36,000 a year for the person making the calls.

Then that person can do more productive things. I mean, we all want to see ourselves and others rise up to do the most productive things they can. However, we also have to get stuff done every day, but if it doesn’t get done, it creates big problems. So it’s sort of almost like a Maslow’s hierarchy and evolutionary thing, where the more of the things on the bottom of the pyramid you can slice off, the more of the more self-actualized things the human being can do.

Sramana Mitra: Right now, there are a lot of investors who are also talking about their investment thesis in AI, generative AI, being human-centric AI, so that there’s a human in the loop.

Some of what you’re talking about of a complete replacement of the human from the loop is the other opportunity. So it depends on the domain. It depends on the specific function. And those decisions are very specific to the particular situation. But I think those points of views exist. Some entrepreneurs are focusing on the human-centric side. Some are focusing on the complete replacement. Both of those are coming up.

Benjamin Narasin: Historically, we’ve been worried about technology replacing humans in various ways, but it’s been better than we expected. We were too pessimistic, fearing things we probably should have embraced. There are two great examples in robotics: the ATM and the automatic gas station.

In two US states, it’s legally required to have a human pump your gas. There’s nothing more infuriating than pulling into a gas station, getting out to pump your gas, and then being told, “Hey, you can’t do that. It’s my job.” Then you have to wait for them to come over, pump the gas, and later, come back for payment. It seems like they’re paid to make my life less efficient. Why? Almost certainly due to union rules.

I can’t express enough frustration about it.

Sramana Mitra: There’s gratuitous insertion of human in the loop.

Benjamin Narasin: That’s terrible. You’ve to hear the worst of all and my least favorite union stupidity. In New York City, there are still buildings that require an elevator operator to push the button. It’s not even an operated elevator. It’s literally a button. And when you walk in, you’re not allowed to push it. Give me a break.

So here’s the thing though. People were worried when they put in one of the first robots, which was the credit card reader in a gas pump. Oh my gosh, all these poor people that were pumping gas are not gonna have a job. Well, gas stations are not owned by Shell. They’re owned by Mom and Pops. They’re owned by significant amounts of immigrant communities. It’s a great place to start and build wealth.

So when they make more money because they no longer have to pay somebody to pump your gas, maybe they paid, I don’t know, $100,000 for the meter, but now they have nobody to run it. What did they do with it? Did they put it in their bank account and throw a party? Of course not. They’re business people. They reinvested. That concept created the convenience store and gas stations.

It takes a lot more people to run a convenience store than it does to pump gas.

This segment is part 6 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Benjamin Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital
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