Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky thinks Silicon Valley holds the answer to AI’s growing public perception problem: build things for regular people.
Chesky, a major proponent of AI, acknowledged AI backlash among Americans in an interview on the Yahoo Finance podcast “Power Players with Brian Sozzi” published this week. Part of the reason for it, he said, is the kinds of AI products that Silicon Valley is and isn’t shipping.
“I think part of it’s a narrative issue that we’re not talking about AI correctly,” he said. “But part of it is we need to actually be developing more products that just regular people can use and say, ‘I love AI because AI allows me to have a doctor on demand and I can’t have that. I can’t afford that.’ And so I think we need more regular things.”
Chesky said that compared to when he started Airbnb 18 years ago, many founders now seem to be “afraid” to make consumer-facing products. He said in the last batch of companies at the startup accelerator Y Combinator, where he is on the board, 159 out of 175 were enterprise, not consumer.
“It’s in Silicon Valley’s interest for us to develop consumer applications that improve people’s lives,” he said. “You know why? Because regular people in the United States do not like AI. I’m making a generalization. But if you look at polling of AI, the concept of AI is not popular outside of Silicon Valley, and yet this is a technology that can help so many people’s lives.”
A Pew Research Center report in June found that 40% of US adults believed the impact of AI on society over the next 20 years would be negative, while only 16% believed it would be positive.
The rising AI resistance has put some Silicon Valley figures on the offensive. Several AI companies have put out rainbow-filled, feel-good ads in an attempt to flip the script on Americans’ doom-and-gloom fears about an AI-ridden future. Tech CEOs are also writing lengthy manifestos about what the future with AI will look like, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 6,500-word screed published this week titled “The Future is for Everyone.”
Airbnb declined to provide additional comment when reached by Business Insider.