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Economy
Big Tech GOP Donor Marc Andreessen Claims AI Better Than Human Workers: 'Never Gets Sick... Never Files HR Complaints'
"Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them," one software engineer wrote about tech industry bosses.
May 21, 2026
A leading billionaire right-wing donor and tech evangelist raised eyebrows during a podcast appearance this week with a blunt explanation for why he believes artificial intelligence is superior to human workers.
The past few months have seen a wave of tech industry layoffs that companies have acknowledged were driven wholly or in part by AI: From Meta, which slashed 8,000 jobs on Wednesday and reassigned thousands of other workers to AI roles; to Intuit, which announced a cut of about 17% of its workforce the same day to put more focus on the emerging technology.
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who leads one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz, declared as recently as last month that despite report after report of mass layoffs, "‘AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” and the industry would facilitate a "massive jobs boom" because it allows individual workers to be "endlessly more productive."
But during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday, he seemed to suggest that he viewed the human workforce as not only inferior to AI but also an expendable nuisance that employers would be better off without.
He imagined the programmer of the future "overseeing an org chart of bots" numbering in the thousands, which would go on to exponentially increase productivity.
This, he said, is preferable to the current, inefficient model of hiring human laborers. He used the example of the graphic design work on Rogan's set to illustrate the point.
"You hire somebody... and you tell them you want a screen display and you want it to be an animated version of the thing you got back here," he said. "They spend, you know, two weeks doing it. It's like, 'Okay, that's pretty good, but I actually want the whole thing to be whatever, purple and green.' And they spend a week doing that. And they come back, and you're like, 'I actually prefer the old version.'"
“The guy gets, like, pissed at you because he’s like, ‘I just wasted my time.’ The bot’s like, 'No problem,' you know, no sweat, like whatever you want, and we can try it 12 more times if you want. Or you tell it, you know, this is terrible. Like, I can’t believe you came back to me with this. It has all these bugs. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll go fix these.’"
"By the way, [it] never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high," he continued.
"Never gets depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him," Rogan interjected.
"Never files HR complaints," Andreessen added.
Andreessen said this mass adoption of "armies" of AI workers would begin in tech fields like coding, but would quickly expand out to other fields like writing, medicine, and law.
He described artificial intelligence as technology that would grant workers a "universal basic superpower." But while some proponents of AI expansion imagine it as a tool to liberate workers from long hours by automating menial tasks, Andreessen said it was actually doing the opposite for workers in the coding world.
He said one would assume that “if AI coding makes them four times more productive... then maybe they’re working only a fourth the time and now they’ve got a great life,” but “what’s actually happened is virtually to a person, they’re all working more hours than ever to the point where there is a new term of art that’s used in the valley called the ‘AI vampire.’”
“You’re up all night doing AI coding because you are so productive," Andreessen said approvingly. "You’re getting so much done that you can’t turn off. The opportunity cost of going to sleep is too high because if you go to sleep, you won’t be with your 20 AI coding agents, keeping them working on all the projects that you have them working on. And so people stop sleeping.”
"They're clearly, clearly, clearly not taking care of themselves, and they're absolutely ecstatic," Andreessen said, "because they are able to produce five times, 20 times more code per hour than they could in the past."
The comments drew widespread backlash from critics across the political spectrum, who noted Andreessen's cavalier disregard for the fate of human workers in his imagined future scenario.
His mention of "HR complaints" in particular raised red flags for those who noted that the male-dominated worlds of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism have had many high-profile sexual harassment scandals.
But more broadly, it was interpreted as an expression of contempt for workers who demand a modicum of dignity from their jobs.
One software developer, who writes the Substack blog Dialectics of Decline on Substack under the name Scarlet, described Andreessen's comments as an encapsulation of an attitude that she recently said was "destroying the career I once loved."
I noticed that my bosses were getting infected with the mind virus sold to them by the AI hype men. They started to believe we weren’t needed anymore, or, if we were, we were now capable of producing 10x the amount of code in the same amount of time...
Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them. They want to streamline their businesses by—ideally—not needing to hire humans at all. They are being sold a dream of a 100% agent-operated business where they purchase tokens instead of labor hours, and at a fraction of the cost. After all, agents won’t ever try to unionize. They don’t need weekends off. They don’t get sick or fall pregnant. They can’t strike. They won’t fight back.
It’s a mindset that Andreessen—one of the most prominent fixtures of the so-called “tech right” that spent big to elect Trump in 2024—is apparently seeking to export to the entire country.
Andreessen Horowitz and its billionaire founders have dumped an unprecedented $115 million to influence elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, more than other more prominent donors like Elon Musk and George Soros.
According to a report last week from the New York Times:
Already Andreessen Horowitz has put $47.5 million into the crypto super PAC network, Fairshake, since Election Day 2024. And the firm’s interests have expanded beyond crypto. It helped found Leading the Future, a super PAC network focused on electing pro-artificial intelligence legislators, which is modeled on Fairshake, and donated $50 million to it. Fairshake and Leading the Future both back Republicans and Democrats.
Andreessen Horowitz and its co-founders have also together donated $12 million to MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, including $6 million in March. A trust linked to Mr. Andreessen donated nearly $900,000 to the Republican National Committee that same month.
Andreessen's comments on Rogan's show inspired calls from progressive legislators, including Silicon Valley's Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said it was an example of why Washington should "tax agentic AI more than workers" rather than providing tax breaks to companies that invest in AI infrastructure.
But the influence of tech oligarchs like Andreessen is also starting to unnerve some on the right, like the influential conservative pundit James Lindsay, who said he was getting "really sick of anti-human tech weirdos leading anything."
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Memorial Day Cookouts Will Be 13% More Expensive This Year on Average Thanks to Trump's Tariffs, Iran War
After the president made clear he doesn't "think about" Americans' financial struggles, a report highlights rising costs of beef, produce, and other supplies for backyard barbecues due to Trump's policies.
May 21, 2026
With the US-Israeli war on Iran pushing gas prices up past $4.50 per gallon and American households already having spent nearly $300 that they wouldn't have otherwise on fuel, some families may opt to stay home this coming Memorial Day weekend—but a new analysis released Thursday shows that even without travel expenses, celebrations are likely to be more costly than they were last year thanks to President Donald Trump's policies.
Both Trump's assault on Iran—and the predictable result of the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade waterway, in retaliation—and his tariff and trade policies are likely to make the holiday more expensive, with prices for barbecue classics up 13% on average since last year, more than four times the inflation rate, according to two think tanks, Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation (TCF).
Ground beef for hamburgers is up 20%, while Johnsonville bratwursts are up 28%, Kraft hot dogs are up 12%, and Martin's rolls are 19% more expensive than they were in 2025.
Those shopping for produce won't fare much better, with the average price of a head of iceberg lettuce up 19% over last year, seedless watermelon costing 17% more, and six ears of yellow corn costing a whopping 98% more than it did in 2025.
"Higher fresh-produce prices in particular reflect Trump’s mishandling of the economy," reads the report. "Last year, the number of farmers filing for bankruptcy rose 46%, as Trump’s tariffs unleashed chaos and uncertainty in the industry. Fertilizer is an essential component for growing every item of produce and tariffs in place for much of 2025 drove fertilizer prices ever higher; these prices have remained elevated even after the Trump administration was forced to roll them back due to backlash."
"From the ticket counter to the cookout, consumers are scaling back and going without in the face of Trump’s summer sticker shock."
Janelle Jones, senior fellow at TCF, emphasized that both the tariffs and the war are "two decisions the president made and can undo whenever he wants but by his own admission he doesn’t spend any time thinking about Americans’ financial situation."
"Families are getting squeezed on the price of everything, and leaders in Washington don’t seem to be paying attention," said Jones.
Higher tomato costs—which are up 22% over last year—come after Trump ended the US-Mexico tomato trade agreement that had been in place for decades. Instead, he imposed a 17% tariff on tomatoes that come from the country's southern neighbor.
Even the act of serving food and packing it up as leftovers will be more expensive this year, with heavy-duty aluminum foil costing 18% more—also thanks to the tariffs—and disposable plasticware up 20%.
"The Middle East is a major producer of oil and petrochemicals, which is used to produce plastic," reads the report. "Increases in the price of plastic will ripple across grocery bills for months to come as packaging gets more expensive as well."
Less than two weeks after the president—who campaigned on reducing the cost of living—proudly stated that he doesn't "think about Americans’ financial situation" when it comes to the unprovoked Iran conflict, Groundwork and TCF also highlighted the impact the war of choice has had on jet fuel prices, and in turn, air travel.
"Jet fuel has soared to record highs and companies are passing these costs on to consumers," the report states. "The average domestic airfare ticket is now 31% more expensive than in January, according to industry data. For a family of four, this equates to an extra $360 on plane tickets for a typical flight."
Fuel prices contributed to Spirit Airlines' decision to shut down entirely, leaving larger carriers with no budget airline to compete with.
“Trump’s senseless tariffs and illegal war are robbing American families of their relaxing summer vacation," said Breyon Williams, chief economist for Groundwork. "From the ticket counter to the cookout, consumers are scaling back and going without in the face of Trump’s summer sticker shock.”
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This Memorial Day Weekend, Americans Will Spend $3.5 Billion More on Gas Thanks to Trump's Iran War
The average household has already paid an additional $291 for gas since the war began and could spend $1,450 by year's end.
May 20, 2026
Americans' travel plans for this Memorial Day weekend have gotten a lot more expensive as a result of President Donald Trump's war with Iran.
A tracker released on Wednesday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) projects that Americans will collectively spend an extra $3.5 billion on gas over the holiday weekend due to the global rise in oil costs.
The costs of gas have risen sharply, to above $4.50 per gallon across the US on average, as a result of Iran's restriction of travel through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the war that the US and Israel launched at the end of February.
“Americans were already struggling with the high cost of living before this war started,” said Carl Davis, research director at ITEP. “The fact that their summer travel plans just got a whole lot more expensive isn’t going to help with that.”
Using publicly available data and price forecasts from the US Energy Information Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the US Census Bureau, ITEP determined that as a result of the war, Americans have paid about $39.6 billion in additional gas costs in less than three months since the war began.
It is projected that if current conditions continue, the total cost would be about $193 billion by the end of the year.
The average household has already paid an additional $291 for gas since the war began and could spend $1,450 by year's end. However, the cost varies by region, and the tool allows users to estimate their household's added cost based on where they live and how many family members they have.
The tracker only accounts for increased gasoline prices. It does not include price hikes caused by the war on other essentials, such as home utilities and food. Federal data released earlier this month showed that inflation has surged to its highest level since May 2023.
It also does not account for the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on the war. Pentagon officials said that it had cost $25 billion in April, though other independent estimates have placed the total cost much higher.
As Trump flails in response to rising prices, which have driven his approval ratings to their lowest low of his second term, he has proposed suspending federal gas taxes. Lawmakers in both parties have introduced bills that would temporarily suspend the tax, which adds an extra 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel.
However, ITEP argued that these proposals would be "ineffective as they offer very little relief to families" and that they "also run the risk of straining public budgets at a time when governments at all levels are facing some of the same higher costs as the public brought on by this war."
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In Leaked Audio, Zuckerberg Tells Meta Workers He's Been Using Them to Train AI Ahead of Mass Layoffs
"AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion," said one engineer, urging his colleagues to sign a petition to stop Meta's use of an AI tracking program. "It’s not too late to pump the brakes."
May 20, 2026
Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company's offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company's new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to "learn from watching really smart people do things."
A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.
"The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks," said Zuckerberg. "So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do, who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company."
LEAKED AUDIO: In an all-hands meeting on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg tells employees that he's training AI on them ahead of mass layoffs.
"The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things... The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is… pic.twitter.com/lt9eeJ3cwh
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 19, 2026
He assured the company's 78,000 employees that "no human is looking at or watching what people are doing on their computers... None of the data is being used for looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It's purely just that we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks."
Zuckerberg explained how the employees have been used to train the model that could potentially replace many of them days after Meta announced it was planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce as the company invests heavily in AI, spending $125 billion to $145 billion on the technology—more than double what it spent last year.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that employees "revolted" when they learned about the AI tracking program, and expressed fears that they had unknowingly been training a model that would ultimately replace them.
An engineering manager asked on the company's internal communication platform how workers can opt out of having their computer activity monitored to train the AI model, only to be told by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, "There is no option to opt out on your corporate laptop."
Another employee told Bosworth, “Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning."
On Monday, The New York Times reported, employees learned that in addition to the layoffs, another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to help develop AI tools.
About 2,000 employees began working this month on a new Applied AI and Engineering team, which is set to use the data gathered by the AI tracking program Zuckerberg described to build AI tools. Those who volunteered to join the group would not be included in this week's layoffs, the Times reported.
"Every company is training AI on their employees," said Chen Avnery, an independent adviser on AI governance and data platforms. "Meta just said it out loud. The question stopped being, 'Will AI replace you?' a year ago. Now it's whether you're building the agents or generating their training data."
More than 1,000 people in the company have signed the petition calling to halt the AI data program, according to the newspaper.
Software engineer Mack Ward urged his colleagues to sign on earlier this month, telling them in an internal post that "AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion."
"It’s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,” Ward said. “Speaking up is never easy, but ‘easy’ isn’t what you were hired to do.”
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