“When I came to Silicon Valley, we thought we were all making the world a better place,” Brian Chesky recalls, 19 years after he co-founded Airbnb.
asserted
he → come → Airbnb
Now, he tells The CEO Signal, “Silicon Valley’s in a bubble, and society feels like AI is happening to them, not for them.”
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AI → tell → them
An industrial designer surrounded by mathematicians and engineers, he describes Silicon Valley as a nightclub he somehow snuck into as a 26-year-old when the bouncer wasn’t looking.
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bouncer → surround → old
“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” he says.
asserted
he → suppose → ?
But he has grown close to CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and he thinks he can help the AI industry’s leaders understand what people who stay in Airbnbs really think of them.
asserted
who → grow → them
The aesthetic Chesky honed at the Rhode Island School of Design permeates his San Francisco headquarters, a former Eveready battery factory whose meeting rooms look like Airbnb rentals from around the world.
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rooms → hone → world
But he implies that other pioneers around him have lost sight of who they’re designing their products for.
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they → imply → products
Tech executives love talking in lofty terms about “humanity,” he says, but his fellow founders should be talking about people — like school teachers and mill workers — and listening to them, too.
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founders → love → them
“I talked to one famous person — I won’t mention who —
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I → talk → person
and I said, ‘Do you talk to a regular person?’
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you → say → person
He goes, ‘Yes, such and such.’
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He → go → ?
I’m like, ‘Well, that’s your nanny,’” Chesky says.
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Chesky → ’m → ?
“We should talk to normal people we don’t pay, people who are willing to tell us to F off and tell us why they don’t like us.”
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they → talk → us
A $250 million pitch to get on ‘the right side’ of the housing issue
Chesky has had plenty of blunt feedback as Airbnb has grown, with cities from New York to Barcelona blaming his company for making housing less affordable.
asserted
housing → get → company
Despite years of engaging with local politicians, Airbnb has failed to stop some of them from implementing caps or outright bans on short-term rentals.
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Airbnb → engage → rentals
Asked whether he has any responsibility for the housing affordability crisis, Chesky replies: “I think we have a responsibility.
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we → ask → responsibility
I think there’s a difference between having responsibility and being the primary cause.”
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I → think → responsibility
Listings on Airbnb typically comprise just 0.5% of the housing stock in cities where it operates, he says, and many of those properties are primary or second homes someone is already living in, rather than units that have been removed from the long-term rental market.
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that → comprise → market
Bans on short-term rentals haven’t reversed housing inflation in cities like New York, he notes.
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he → reverse → York
The bigger issue, Chesky argues, is a shortage of new construction.
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Chesky → argue → construction
Last month, Airbnb positioned itself as a partner in solving that problem by announcing a $250 million fund to provide “last-dollar” financing for housing projects with funding shortfalls.
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Airbnb → position → shortfalls
It’s a small sum for a company with a $100 billion-plus market capitalization, but he says it should unlock an additional $5 billion of new housing.
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it → ’ → housing
“It’s not philanthropy,” he says.
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he → ’ → ?
Airbnb will make a return — albeit a smaller one than some real estate investors would expect — “but we’re also going to be on the right side of this issue.”
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we → make → issue
Even so, he says, concerns about housing affordability are only going to get “much worse” as more people want to move to cities.
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people → say → cities
The two biggest issues in the 2028 US presidential election, he predicts, will be affordability and AI.
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he → predict → election
Chesky’s advice for AI’s ‘Promethean moment’
Chesky says he does not believe that AI will destroy humanity any time soon, but he thinks society is unprepared for the technological power that has been unleashed in this “Promethean moment.”
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that → say → moment
Technology used to feel like a train that people just had to jump on to “ride into the promised land of progress,” he says.
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he → use → progress
“And now people feel like they’re [on] the train tracks, and the train called AI is coming for them.”
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train → feel → them
Silicon Valley cannot credibly police AI, he believes, warning his peers that if the technology is left unregulated, “bad sh*t is going to happen, and there’s going to be overcorrection, and then there’s going to be a hammer coming down.
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sh*t → police → peers
Nor does he believe that Washington can regulate AI successfully, because policymakers don’t understand the technology well enough.
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policymakers → believe → technology
“Bridge-builders” between Silicon Valley, Washington, and ordinary people are needed — and he is putting himself forward as one of them.
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he → need → them
One of his recommendations, he says, is that AI founders should stop talking about impossible-sounding goals like “saving humanity.”
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founders → say → humanity
Instead, they should take on one issue at a time, starting with the most immediate problem AI has exacerbated — cybersecurity.
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AI → take → problem
In the meantime, Silicon Valley is “losing people because we’re not talking about people,” he warns.
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he → lose → people
“We just need to put design principles and humanity into AI.”
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We → need → AI
A new mission in matchmaking
Even as Chesky critiques Silicon Valley’s blind spots, he is using them to define a new ambition for Airbnb.
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he → critique → Airbnb
Innovations like e-commerce and online banking mean that people are spending more time on their devices and less time bumping into friends and strangers in shopping malls, banks, and “the real world,” he observes.
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he → mean → malls
Even our on-screen lives are more isolating than they were, he adds, since tech companies have rejected the form of social networking that was filled with updates from our friends for more advertiser-friendly social media.
asserted
that → add → media
AI’s potential to fuel isolation is far greater, Chesky believes, saying that this may be “the loneliest time in human history.”
uncertain
this → fuel → history
…and 39 more, not listed.
The Aporia
