Naval Ravikant
Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.
Naval Ravikant did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsExpect more software to retreat to the server and resist “distillation.”
- 13 days earlier
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Their wordsEvery functioning institution is merit-based, not participation-based.
- 6 days earlier
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Their wordsPeople who want to appear moral are attracted to the left. People who want to appear rational are attracted to the right.
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Our reading
Effective Altruism lets people appear both rational and moral and is the ultimate ego trip.
Their wordsEffective Altruism lets you appear rational and moral - the ultimate ego trip.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsThe future is more likely AIs fighting AIs (on behalf of humans) than AI fighting humanity.
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Our reading
The best way to pace the AI frontier is to hold labs fully liable for their models' behavior.
Their wordsThe best way to pace the frontier is to hold the labs fully liable for the behavior of their models.
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Their wordsIf AI is risky like fire is risky, then you want everyone to have it. If AI is risky like a nuclear weapon is risky, then you want no one to have it.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsOn the way to killing all of us, AI will likely kill some of us.
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open sourceAI alignmentAI agents
Their wordsStrong liability enforcement could be helpful in the AI debate. If your agent swarm goes rogue, you’re liable. If your weakly protected model gets jailbroken, you’re liable. If you serve a weakly protected OSS model, you’re liable.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsThe Frontier Lab flywheel is to get the smartest people to use the leading models. Then distill their inputs, your own model’s outputs, and resulting synthetic data and environments. And the people have to use the leading models because they’re locked in mutual competition.
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Their wordsToday's AI hunts and feasts upon the Mozarts, Einsteins, and Shakespeares of our age. To birth a gang of ghostly geniuses that write our code, drive our cars, do our work, and run our world.
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Their wordsYesterday's AIs ate the Internet and became a patchwork mediocrity.
- 2 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThe left is on a project to enforce equality, despite biology and markets. The goal of equality gives claim to the moral high ground, but contradicting biology and markets requires censorship and violence, which makes the whole project immoral.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThe people who want to censor (code, speech, money) are the bad guys.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsFrontier Labs are incented to be fearful as it provides a moral justification for staying closed. Chinese Labs take the consistent position of doing what’s good for all and being open. So the little guys find themselves in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the Chinese…
- 2 days earlier
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Our reading
All user interfaces will converge on the same shape: chat and gestures in, chat and video out.
Their wordsEventually, all UI will be chat and gestures in, chat and video out.
- 6 months earlier
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Our reading
Their wordsSo that’s what I mean—product management has taken over coding. Vibe coding is the new product management.
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Their wordsFirst, the best application for a given use case still tends to win the entire category. When you have such a multiplicity of content, whether in videos or audio or music or applications, there’s no demand for average.
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Their wordsAs the Internet reminds us, the real power and wealth—super wealth—goes to the aggregator. But there’s also a huge distribution of resources into the long tail. It’s the medium-sized firms that get blown apart
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Their wordsFundamentally, what we’re doing is a new kind of programming, but this is the forefront of programming. This is now the art of programming. These people are the new programmers, and that’s why you can see AI researchers are getting paid gargantuan amounts because they’ve essentially taken over programming.
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Their wordsDoes this mean that traditional software engineering is dead? Absolutely not. Software engineers—even the ones who are not necessarily tuning or training AI models—these are now among the most leveraged people on earth.
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Their wordsBut otherwise, I wouldn’t bother learning how to use an AI—rather let the AI learn how to be useful to you.
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Their wordsAnd all abstractions are leaky. So when you have a computer programming for you—when you have Claude Code or equivalent programming for you—it’s going to make mistakes.
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Their wordsSo I don’t really worry about unaligned AI. I worry about unaligned humans with AI.
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Our reading
Intelligence, leverage and judgment are not normally distributed, so outcomes will be supernormal.
Their wordsIntelligence is not normally distributed. Leverage is not normally distributed. Programmability is not normally distributed. Judgment is not normally distributed, so the outcomes are going to be supernormal.
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Their wordsI think every other job out there is going to get eaten up by programmers one way or another over the maximally long term.
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Their wordsSo it is more of a level playing field. I really do think this is a golden age for programming.
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Their wordsYou can take this all the way down, but it always helps to have knowledge one layer below because you’re getting closer to reality.
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Our reading
Being an entrepreneur is the opposite of a job, and in the long run everyone is an entrepreneur.
Their wordsFirst of all, being an entrepreneur isn’t a job. It’s literally the opposite of a job, and in the long run, everyone’s an entrepreneur.
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Their wordsSo no entrepreneur is worried about an AI taking their job because entrepreneurs are trying to do impossible things. They’re trying to do very difficult things. Any AI that shows up is their ally and can help them tackle this really hard problem.