So what happens after AGI?

0:03Today, we're joined by Aubrie Pagano, a general partner at Alpaca VC and the author of a fascinating white paper on the world post-AGI called the Aquarius economy. No one in tech seems to want to talk about the future these days, but we're going there. I'm Helen and I'm also joined by Ashley. Great Chat is brought to you by Mercury, the fintech used by entrepreneurs through every stage of company building. We use Mercury to run this podcast and love recommending it to other founders and fund managers. Try it for yourself. Visit mercury.com to join over 200 ,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to make managing their money unbelievably simple.

0:41Hey guys. Hi. Hello. Aubrey, welcome to Great Chat. Thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to join the chat. It has been a long time coming, I think. It was a busy week. Well, since we have three VCs on this week's pod, maybe we should start with, did you guys all get your granola crunched? Like the Spotify wrapped of meeting summaries. I did. Yeah. I felt seen. I think a lot of people said that. I felt like a little too seen. It like called me out in ways that were complimentary. It was kind of like nagging and glazing together it's like oh your catchphrases oh my god I'm so busy I like I've only done five percent of what I want to do or something like that and it's like yeah and yet you're prepared and blah blah blah and I was like okay shit I'm gonna I think they all have my messaging they're all a little sycophantic I also think that like there it really tried to weave like the bigger picture you know like because I've been building the the firm and the fun throughout the whole year and so they're really just trying to like give me validation for like the milestones that I was meeting and all of this and I was like oh I feel like you could probably manipulate this too I think the thing that really um threw me off was like I was in like the top six percent or something like of of active people for the category and I'm like I don't need to that's that's weird like what are what is everyone else doing um I don't even think I use granola that much but anyway I guess I have used it consistently the whole year so they have a 12 months worth of data on me but well it's one it's interesting because it's like it obviously takes into account like all your internal conversations too it's a some of the stuff that it surfaced for like oh right I forget that it's like listening to everything um and so that's kind of it's like yeah it's a big part of the security discussion around all these note-taking apps but it's like oh right they are really listening to everything and I kind of agree with actually in some ways it was like yeah I think my catch rate was like you managed to find like the needle in the haystack like no matter how hard however and I was like is this a compliment like yeah I think it's a compliment oh and yours was like how can I be helpful or something yeah even it's like even though you have like no time um acknowledge the portfolio life and then I don't know it really validated like one of my first investments and how much time I spent with that team and um you know it like very clearly fitting the thesis of the fund and so that was nice because I think it's a solo GP it's a very lonely journey and you can't wait for anyone to like give you a gold star you have to like do this yourself or wait for granola crunched I thought it was a brilliant a brilliant like a lot of people who've tried to replicate the magic of Spotify wrapped missed but this was good yeah and it makes sense because like it's such an identity thing right People who are really into music are like, oh, I have really good taste and I want to show people.

3:48And this was a little bit like playing into hustle culture. We're in this very 996. Everyone's hard charging. And it's like, I'm the top 5 % of investors when I take meetings. And it's telling me how good I am at my meetings. And I will say Great Chat was highlighted as one of the big accomplishments of 2025. So Great Chat was also seen in this particular moment. I've met a couple of startups that are sort of doing meeting insights, specifically like how it fits into your like your whole picture. Like the Oura Ring gives you data on, you know, like the sleep quality and like, you know, stress and things that could be affecting your overall health.

4:30And meeting signals are actually, I think, like pretty important. It's like, oh, was that a bad meeting? Were people yelling? Was it tense? Was there a lot of silence? you know, all these things and like sort of giving you insights and feedback on like, you know, who do you meet with that is stressing you out? You know, who fills your cup and things like that. So I feel like, oh, Granola probably has the opportunity to do a lot of things like that too. Another layer abstracted, I have talked to startups trying to use all of this like meeting recording data to give you a picture of your like mental and like psychological health throughout the day.

5:07Yeah, exactly. And I feel like I'm very good at like bringing a lot of energy to Zooms, even if I'm not feeling it, but I'm so curious. It would be like, you're trying too hard. This, this is, this is false energy. Um, so I, I, I'm, I'm, I think I'm, I'm here for those insights. Maybe Granola will beat the, we'll see if that's like a feature or a whole product to, to do the meeting insights piece or if the AI note takers will gobble that up. Yeah. Well, Sally's not with us today, but I did a dinner with her last night and we talked a lot about the the Netflix Warner Brothers um what's her hot take I mean I think her hot take was we still don't know like anything could happen every day um and then I think like the just the general bundling and unbundling that's like TVD is gonna be like probably one of the more interesting things to watch I have two takes one is I'm surprised that like the reception seems pretty like ranging from lukewarm to negative from like all areas and I feel like we've been in this very like capitalist hard-charging moment where we're like yeah like M &A is back and I can I guess I would have thought that like tech and uh like you know I get why Hollywood isn't excited but I would have thought there would be more excitement um especially from the the tech world on this acquisition and this like further consolidation and I think it's interesting that there isn't And then my other take, or maybe more of an observation, is it seems like one of the reasons why Hollywood specifically, but maybe other parties too, are afraid of a Netflix acquisition, is that theater releases are already really struggling.

6:46And this could be the nail in the coffin. Because Netflix has historically been obviously very anti-theater. And I think they're kind of being a little hand-wavy right now to get this through. but I don't know I just I like it's funny I haven't gone to see a movie in the theater for like years and yet like I think a lot of us all have that nostalgia um when it comes to going to see movie in the theaters especially like opening weekend and so that feels like that's like the sort of like sort of a more like a bigger thing that's at stake um than sort of the corporate power games I saw Zootopia 2 with my son this weekend highly recommend it was very very good And it was like the first time I was in a theater, possibly all year, but it was lovely.

7:28And yeah, so, you know, maybe I should do that more than once a year. But the comment that I had in the chat was Netflix was like super aggressive in sending like the customer email out. Right. Yeah. And I thought that was a very confusing, like consumer experience, like user experience, because it's not even close to settled. And I don't know, like, so maybe that was strategic on their part. And I don't know. I don't love when there are these games being played and customers are sort of like left, you know, sort of confused. Yeah, or treated like they're dumb, right? Yeah, you're number one comms rule.

8:10You're not smart enough to always treat your audience like they're really smart and they know what's going on because they can feel it when you don't. So Netflix saying like, hey, this is happening. and then someone reading that it's like TBD is actually like not a good thing for that relationship. Totally. Yeah. And I think people are having a pretty negative reaction to it too, just because there wasn't in any of that customer communication expectation setting around what that means. I think people are really worried about because of the unbundling, you know, does this mean my account's going to be even more like this implies higher prices because they have more of a a premium in terms of the type of properties they have.

8:51And I think people are also frustrated because they're like, okay, well, I like, you're literally cracking down on like me, you know, using my sister's account for a login, but you have all this money to buy up all these properties and raise prices. So I think like customers, to your point about customers being savvy, it's like, because information is so flat. I think the reception from, you know, the wider community has been pretty negative because people are like reading the t-ups and being like this doesn't really make sense that's such a great point like netflix has been raising prices right pretty consistently year over year they all have like every time i log in i'm like what happens aubry i saw you post something really interesting on linkedin yesterday interesting and kind of sad and worrisome and um it was a new york times article where i think like the big reveal was that only 50 % of people under 25 have like ever had sex.

9:48And I think this is something that gets like, there are all these sort of generational, like, oh, Gen Z isn't drinking, Gen Z isn't dating, Gen Z isn't having sex. But like that 50 % number feels really big. And like 25 is not, you know, you're not a baby at 25. So I'm curious, like, why did you feel that was worth highlighting? Yeah, it's so funny. I know I had a friend text me, like the hottest of hot takes at like 9am on a Monday. But I was like, you know, this is kind of a taboo thing to post on LinkedIn to talk about the fact that people aren't having sex. But to me, and we'll get into like, you know, a lot of my writings that I had been doing over the past couple months.

10:27But to me, it's like one of the most troubling things that has long ranging implications for our society and for the economy and for capitalism is the fact that people are not, you know, especially young people are not making human contact the way that humans have evolved to, like in a very real way. Like that stat is just staggering to me that 50 % of people who are, you know, young professionals still haven't had intimacy with anyone. And I think it's, you know, it's funny. Someone in the comments was like, oh, but what about 50 years ago? It was like 50 years ago, the average birth rate was 25 years old.

11:07We're having sex. That's right. So it was funny. That's really funny. That's like a like a gotcha that blows up in your face a little bit when you think about it. Right. Well, this is this is definitely not the audience. But I also saw yesterday on probably Twitter a clip of Nick Fuentes on Pierce Morgan. And and I think it was real, but he basically admitted that he's never had sex with a woman and that he i don't know if he's ever dated but he admits that he's heterosexual and that he is attracted to women and i'm like this i don't really know much about him but i do know that he's got a million followers on you know x and um they're a very very popular podcast an alarmingly popular podcast and if that is like another generation sort of hero that is just so different right and like so different I guess maybe I could like intellectualize and say like well COVID and there are all these things that you could attribute it to but like even podcast culture itself where you know I actually thought about our own podcast where it's like no guys last night I had dinner with with Sally and Angela we went to Angela's house I'm like this is we are we meet up in real life right this is not just like a a show that happens on the internet where everybody else listens to the show on the internet as well and so I don't know but I think like those stats were or him admitting that and then like me sort of like doing a little quick check on like how influential and how far-reaching you know sort of influences was kind of hand in hand with with the with the New York Times article and the LinkedIn post that I was reading it's kind of amazing I guess that's a choice to talk about that and And yeah, like who knows if he wanted to, I think Piers Morgan was being pretty like, yeah, but no one can make you answer that question.

12:59It's like a very private question. Even like 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I feel like you would have deflected the question. No, it would have been like, yeah, of course I get girls all the time. Like, exactly. Very easy to lie, like very hard for people to prove otherwise. That is fascinating. And I feel like I want to process that some more because I also, I think one of the challenges that you wrote about Aubrey is just like the awkward, like there's a lot of awkwardness in like intimacy and honestly like most human interaction and I think you know we've were we're working remotely now like we've like streamlined our lives in ways that um that have like removed a lot of the awkwardness you don't even have to go to the grocery store to buy things you can have them brought to you and so um and so anyways that's that's it's like so fascinating that he did that and I I wonder if that made a lot of people feel seen the way our granola crunches made us feel seen.

13:49Well, it probably made 50 % of people under 25 feel seen. Yeah. Yeah. This actually feels like a great transition, Aubrey, to your piece, because even though what we're talking about is like AGI and what comes after AGI, like so much of it is cultural and social in terms of what you focused on. And so maybe just to, maybe just to tee up how we all came to be on today's episode together. Aubrey, I remember I ran into you somewhere and you told me that you were working on, I think you called it like a white paper, on what happens post-AGI. And I was instantly hooked just even before I knew what it was about or any of the details on what it was about because one of my big gripes with this current moment is I feel like we're not talking about the future very much.

14:37We're very focused on the present and the near future. And there's this sense that AGI is looming and we're running at it. But like there's just very little discussion about what comes after aside from like doomerism or just like vague notions of abundance. And so you were very kind to share your paper with me ahead of it being published. And I loved it. And it was so not what I expected. It honestly felt more like science fiction than anything else, which is like my highest compliment. I love science fiction. So we're going to talk about this today. And everyone listening, you should absolutely go read Aubrey's piece on the Aquarius economy.

15:18There's even like a audio reading of it if you don't want to read it yourself. But maybe before we jump into your writing directly, like I am curious, like, is it just me on like with the insight that like no No one's really talking about what happens after AGI and why do we think that is? Yeah, I mean, my hot take is that, one, it's really hard, right, to be prescient about a future that is maybe so transformative that it's really hard to conceive what it could look like because none of us have had AGI before. So I think that's part of it. But also I think it's like to what end? Like who does it serve, right?

16:05Like for a lot of people, it doesn't serve them to talk about like, you know, I think there's big talking heads who are like, oh, everything will be like I've heard Elon Musk be like, oh, yeah, once AGI happens, like we're all going to have robots in our home. It's going to be fine. No one's going to work. We're just going to like play video games. Like it's like this very like, OK, that's how I'm going to talk about it because that's like serving me for the now. So many people who understand AGI, it's in their best interest to maybe not fully uncover everything they think about how it could be and the nuance there.

16:36I think it's either people talk about it as, oh, it's going to be fine. Like just invest in our like chip company or people are very doom and gloom about it. And we know from like history that it's like neither. There's always like a middle way. I saw the most amazing financial times chart that was like possible economic outcomes from AI. And there were three. One was like abundance. And then the graph just went like one was like complete societal collapse. And the graph went like that. And then one was just like, it just continues on its current track, like, you know, growing incrementally. And I was like, this is the most insane chart, but that's actually kind of how it feels.

17:21like what the options are we all have different takes on how far along we are to achieve AGI like how many years within our lifetime and all those things um but even just like reminding us that like well one reason to believe that it's going to be here much faster than we think is like the extremely rapid um decrease rapidly decreasing cost of you know uh the inference costs and sort of everything that like what was it the the stat was like um it gets 10x cheaper every 12 months. And if we just continue on that pace, like it's, you know, not crazy to imagine that a lot of really crazy stuff is going to be here really, really soon.

17:58And so I thought that was a great insight, something that I thought about for quite a bit. Totally. No one can predict exactly one, even if you look at, right, like even I know one of the questions you asked me is like, who's kind of thinking about this and doing a better job of thinking about the future? Like there aren't many examples, honestly, that I could point to, but like the one, Helen, to your point of someone who's been thinking about that line and how quickly superintelligent is going to be here is Leopold, I can never say his last name. It's like Aschenbrunner, but he wrote like the big article last summer of situational awareness and he raised a big fund off of it.

18:32But I loved, he had this quote at the end of it that was like, soon, he said, just soon AI will be running the world. He didn't say when, but he's like, we're in for one last rodeo. And that's kind of like, it's kind of the sentiment that I feel. It's like we know that if superintelligence and AGI comes, no matter when it comes, like things may shift a lot. And so this is kind of like our last hurrah as humans, like without superintelligence. It feels like the last dance. But that concept of, you know, we're, we have one last rodeo, I feel like probably resonates, like, pretty deeply with a lot of people, regardless of your thoughts on whether it's AGI, that is the thing that will disrupt everything.

19:17I mean, I just feel like there's like, we're seeing institutions, you know, sort of like crumble before our eyes and sort of, you know, all of the things that we thought were sacred and, you know, sort of like foundational, really be challenged. And it's not just AI, I think that is threatening a lot of this. It's, yeah, there's a lot. So I just feel like that must, that is such a powerful message and getting people to think about like, okay, one last rodeo before it all changes. I mean, like a topic that we've had on the pod quite a bit is like, well, when you have kids, you know, what is the goal for them as a parent?

19:51Like, you know, we were all raised in this generation where our parents were like, OK, go to college and get a white collar job when you graduate. And that is the definition of success. And I think now, like for those of us with kids, like it's it's it's something that we think about. on like how good is that path going to be by the time you know our kids are uh in the workforce or or you know after after college so yeah I mean maybe I'm projecting too much onto that quote but it also just sounds so deterministic to me like it's like this is gonna happen no matter what like maybe we can influence at the edges versus like we're you know right now at least we're still like building this future and and granted the belief is that like at a at you know when we reach super intelligence that's a little bit out of our hands because ai will be you know able to act autonomously but um i just i really struggle with the sort of like throw up your hands like well what's gonna happen is gonna happen um and i feel like it's actually a very convenient narrative to your point around incentives, because it makes like maybe tech isn't the villain because this is inevitable.

21:04And of course, we have to work on these things. They're going to happen anyways. We got to beat China versus like, let's be really thoughtful and think about what are the potential futures and what are the things we could do today that could influence those outcomes or at least prepare us better for what's ahead. And Aubrey, that's why I loved your paper, because you actually tackled some of the bigger some of the bigger themes on the other side of AGI. I'm curious, when you set out to write this, did you think you were going to write 50 pages that envisioned a whole new societal power structure?

21:38Or what were your intentions when you started? And where did you end up? No. And yeah, to your last point, I totally agree with you about the determinism that's in some of these tech accelerationists who are like, this is inevitable. This is happening. It's happening in two to three years, like just deal with it. Like I actually, I was sort of allergic to that. And so part of the reason that I wrote it was I was like, I just need to get my own head straight about this. Like I'm seeing such divergent stories all over to your point where it's like, some people are like, oh, AGI is here. Like their breakthroughs already, you know, it's too late.

22:15You know, we're going to be using this for weapons soon. Like, and then you see people being like, yeah but in the midwest like people still don't use chat gpt like and there's a bunch of blue collar workers that are completely ai proof and so don't worry about it so i was like okay i need to get smart and make sense of all this to really get right if we think that this is as transformative as like the telephone or the internet or some of these big technological breakthroughs like what do i think it's a the best way i've always found because i'm a little bit of an introvert which is like the fact that podcasts have become so popular is like to my to my demise but i um But I was like, okay, this is how I can make sense of it.

22:52So I started to write and research really almost as like an internal language to be like, how should we as a fund like orient to all of this? And then it just, the more we did that, like the bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger gotten the more we like tried to get down the rabbit hole to be like, but then what, but then what? it became this like very out of the box long thing we we actually thought we were going to publish it in the summer like I ended up spending like six months on it and we just at a certain point and I say we like my right hand at my firm helped me do a lot of research I was like we're just stopping like we just have to stop because you could actually go down these tendrils of like what could happen forever and so I think you've created a whole like cinematic universe like I'm I'm ready for the content.

23:40Netflix should acquire this white paper. I know. We are literally going to do an AI movie with one of my friends, I think, in Hollywood, like a little short. It's just like a fun thing because for us, it was like, how do you envision the world and how do you even talk about it without sounding crazy? And we were like, well, maybe one way is to kind of talk about it in a narrative format versus saying like some of these accelerationists who are like, this is happening. It's like, okay, let's just say we don't know that what's happening, but like, let's envision a future world where some of this happens, like what could outprop from it.

24:15And so I think abstracting away from hard facts and reality to to notions of like a narrative future and almost like a story, I think helps people grapple with it. And it feels less like you're talking about their future, right? You're talking about some abstract sci-fi future. And so we thought that was like more approachable, less scary, and allowed us to build kind of like a shared language internally where we're like, I mean, we'll get into some of it, right? But we're like, oh, that's so like Aquarius coded. And we're like, oh, this is a guru platform. Like we have this now language where we could talk about the future, the kind of shorthand, but usable, but has utility.

24:56I love that you said story, because I think my like big gripe right now is that like all the quote unquote stories we're telling are like very like ARR and like big valuations and deal making. And I think we're as an industry doing a very poor job painting any picture of the future, whether it's AI or otherwise. And I do think like human beings connect most with stories. It's how we can like wrap our heads around possible futures. And so I really, I think it was the right approach versus like something that was like, this is what will happen. And that would have felt a little bit absurd. And so maybe we can talk a little bit about some of where this led you.

25:41I think one of my favorite parts of the paper was the contention that in a world where AGI can do all the work, basically there's no more scarcity of human labor. AGI is doing all the work. Like the value of humans, our comparative of advantage becomes spirit, which I thought was a fascinating word to pick. So do you want to, do you want to define what you mean by spirit and maybe ground that in? Like what does, what does leaning into that? We hear, we hear the word agency a lot right now. It feels like spirit is what comes after agency. So like walk us through that evolution. I'll try to break it down a little bit for the folks who haven't read the paper, but it's basically we're marching toward AGI, right, or marching toward compute being so cheap that the cost of AI labor is so much cheaper comparatively to humans that we eventually automate ourselves out of job knowledge work to start than the more kind of facile industries, eventually teachers, construction workers, like surgeons are the last to go.

26:43But if you assume that like in all sectors that there's going to be some level of automation, people will need to define work and meaning differently. And so what we talk about is like, people need to feel like efficacious and like they can do something tomorrow and they can wrench their brain and be creative in order to feel like they can progress. That's basically the concept. And it's like, when you don't feel like you can progress toward anything, you stagnate. And stagnate meaning literally like you get depressed, you commit suicide. Like it's structurally society would be a big problem. And so in that way, we talk about, okay, humans, we think one, not all humans are going to just like be like, oh, wait, I hear like, we'll just give up our agency.

27:30Like we don't need to progress. We don't need to like advance. Let's just like, let them do stuff. And let's be like, Wally, let's like sip food on the couch. Like, so part of me, we posit that that's not what's going to happen. But then if you take that and you say, okay, you know, people are going to try to preserve their agency. It's like, what is the part of human agency that really differentiates us long-term from machines? And so we actually took, again, more from philosophy, but there's philosophers who around the time of the industrialization talked about machines and technique and the human spirit and talked about those two things at odds.

28:09Is that like mechanical technique and machines and AI over time are optimized for the lowest cost and the most efficiency and the most throughput. And human spirit is the opposite. Human spirit is something that technique cannot touch or shouldn't touch. And it is the things that we as humans do and know that you cannot reduce down to a technique. So they're the things about our human agency. And again, we have, it's really hard to define, but it's like their words like creativity, empathy, knowing. It's like all these softer skills. And I've talked about this in other places too, where it's like, these are things historically that people talked about as soft and like almost feminine.

28:57You're saying the future is female. I'm basically saying the future is female. I've seen a shirt like that. I think I was. We're bringing it back. That's so funny. It's actually funny because I had a male executive be like, I've had these softer skills all my life. And like, I think now in this future, these are things that are going to be more valuable. And so the thought is that like, if you automate a way and create massive efficiency around these technical skills, like what is left for humans in terms of places where they can progress, where they can find meaning? It's in these more spiritual pursuits.

29:30And again, spirit, we're trying to use the word not as like the woo-woo religiosity way. It's like these are transcendental feelings about meaning and about what life's purpose is. And so in some ways, I think people struggle with that because it's like if you don't have your work, if you're not an Excel monkey building stuff, like what are you if you're not that? I think some people are going to struggle with that. But I think the people who can embody this human spirit and agency more, like, are going to thrive in this future and be able to monetize that. And I think there can be, that's why we call it the Aquarius economy.

30:06I think there can be whole economies around things that we didn't used to think were work or had such high meaning in the economy. Some very large percentage of the way consumers are using AI is for like therapy use cases or, you know, just journaling or like getting feedback on sort of like your feelings and then sort of situational, you know, challenges that somebody's facing. Like I actually do think that maybe for a lot of technical types in particular, they are turning to AI for some of that softness and some of that like, you know, stereotypical femininity. Yeah. I mean, I think some of it can be programmed in.

30:45I do think it's funny because I was talking to one of the board members of one of the large AI therapy companies and what the interesting insight that they told me was that there was a retention problem for people who were just using the therapy by itself. That actually the people who were most retentive were using the therapy alongside in-person therapy. What I would posit, and I guess my real view is that those things can help as almost like a band-aid, but they do not replace contact in a human-to-human way. Maybe it's one of those things where it's like, it's better than nothing. But I wonder if they have the same kind of accretive effects that they posit that they do.

31:27I think something we debate in the chat about like more recently was like pets, AI pets. Oh, like a Tamagotchi? Yeah. Yeah. I think that was both Ashley and my reaction, right? It's like, no, no one wants that. No, if you've ever had a real pet. Exactly. Like we're dog people. And I'm like, no, that's like not even in the top, like the things that the AI can do while I don't doubt its ability to like build companionship and sort of like hit on a lot of the things that I think pet ownership or pet companionship can offer, I think it's just like, no, there are these tactile things. There's these like warm and fuzzy feeling, you know, there's like all of this stuff that kind of hard to put into words, but I just, you know, I have my doubts and like, but then there are people who are like, yes, but, you know, you haven't seen how good the AI can get.

32:16It's like, okay. And so I feel like this is kind of like that debate where it's like, I don't know, like Like maybe the portion of the population that would argue that that doesn't come close to, you know, what it's like to have a real pet, like maybe they weren't going to have a pet anyways. Therefore, right, like they're a large enough percent of the population that would like then adopt this pet, if that makes sense, right? The goal isn't to convert Ashley and I. It's to like reach a much larger Tam that wasn't going to actually get a real pet. That has merit of its own. You know, it's like I was talking to someone else about actually running and the fact that like sometimes people get motivated to run because they're like need to take care of a group.