Boris van de Ven: “AI isn’t a gimmick, it changes everything”

We talked to Boris about his first encounters with AI in video games and how he now uses tools like Claude to do weeks of work in minutes. He shares his view on the opportunities and threats of AI, from education to politics and the future of jobs.

Yo Boris! The first time I read about AI myself was in PU, 20 years ago. How did you look at the subject back then: did you already find it fascinating, or did that come later?

In the world of video games you really did hear the term “AI” all the time. Games were sold on the idea that opponents reacted in smart, realistic ways, but in reality everything was just scripted. That actually made the term artificial intelligence meaningless.

That only changed with the arrival of the big language models. For the first time you could talk to a computer in plain language and it understood you. That really felt like a new era.

What did you think when the first language models came out?

At first it was seen as a gimmick. Fun that you could have a funny conversation with an AI. But what was really happening was that, as a society, we had quietly passed the Turing test. A huge moment, but hardly anyone noticed. To me it felt like we had founded a colony on Mars, that’s how big a step I thought it was. And I immediately thought: this is much more than a toy.

“Everything that can be automated will be automated before long.”

How big is that impact going to be, in your view?

Huge, really total. Everything that can be automated will be automated before long. Picture a robot that does your dishes, then does some odd jobs for the neighbor and gets itself paid in Bitcoin. It sounds bizarre, but that’s where we’re heading.

A more concrete example: bookkeeping. I hate it, but it’s perfectly automatable. Yet the current software doesn’t do it, because they’re afraid of mistakes and liability. And eventually a small team, or even a few students, will build something like that, and it’ll work better than anything we have now.

Do people underestimate how fast this is moving?

Yes, massively. A lot of people don’t get exponential growth. They see AI as a gadget, just like the internet was once underestimated. But meanwhile Elon Musk puts up a data center with 200,000 Nvidia GPUs in a matter of months. The scale this is happening at right now is truly bizarre.

And still you see articles with headlines like “programmers are becoming less productive because of AI”. Nonsense. For me personally: what I used to do in a week, I now do in two days.

An example: I had to do a competitive analysis for a company. Normally that would keep me busy for weeks: gathering data, digging through sources, analyzing everything. This time I put my question to Claude, walked away for a bit, and when I came back there was a complete report waiting for me. Sixty sources processed, every question answered, clearly presented. It was literally minutes of work instead of weeks. For me, that shows perfectly how radically AI can change the way we work.

What other tools are you working with?

Lindy, an AI tool I follow and find really interesting for sales. With it you can have thousands of phone calls made, generate leads and feed them automatically into your CRM system. That saves a huge amount of time and money. You pay a few cents a minute, and yet you’re having conversations in fluent Dutch. But as long as the AI doesn’t clearly identify itself, things can go wrong.

If I get a call and someone pretends to be human, I’m out. But if the voice says it’s a digital assistant, then I am willing to listen. A nuance like that decides whether applications like this work.

“School is mostly about giving the right answers. Whereas with AI, it’s about asking the right questions.”

You have kids too. Do you also think about the impact of AI on education?

I’m very critical of our education system. School is mostly about giving the right answers. Whereas AI is precisely about asking the right questions. That’s the irony.

If kids don’t learn to think critically, they’ll always be playing catch-up. As far as I’m concerned, education should be about asking questions, thinking outside the box and being critical of answers, including the ones from AI. Only then will kids be prepared for a future in which AI is everywhere.

Do you also see risks in using AI?

Yes. The biggest risk is putting everything into one tool. Then in no time that tool knows everything about you. That’s why I use different tools, separate browsers and sometimes VPNs to keep things apart.

On top of that, AI systems aren’t really intelligent yet. They lack the ability to improvise, and they lack context. You can have them make ten thousand phone calls for a few cents a minute, but ask for a tuna salad recipe and they’ll blather on for twenty minutes without realizing it’s a joke. That’s not real intelligence yet, but it’s progressing so fast that the gap keeps getting smaller.

I’m definitely going to try that next time one of those robots calls me. By the way, how do you see the role of politics when it comes to AI?

Politicians already pass their responsibility on to consultancy firms. Soon they’ll do the same with AI tools. We’ll probably still vote for people, but the real decisions will be made by systems. That could lead to bizarre situations.

I believe that in the short term AI will be smarter than a large part of the population. Only the most creative and critical people will be able to keep up for a while, but in the end they’ll be overtaken too.

Do you think there will be any work left for people at all?

I don’t think everyone is going to be laid off en masse. What will happen is that a lot of people end up with pointless jobs. And you can actually already see that now. A large share of working people have a so-called bullshit job: sitting in meetings, passing reports along, filling in forms. It feels busy and important, but it contributes little. Soon AI will take over the real production work, while those empty jobs simply stay around.

In that light, what do you want to pass on to your kids in a world full of AI and bullshit jobs?

That they learn to think critically and ask good questions. That’s the only real skill you need. The world is full of hallucinations, from AI and from people alike. Whoever can see through them will stay on their feet.

Thanks Boris! Finally, who would you like to see in this series?

You really have to interview Nalden. He’s the founder of WeTransfer, sold it and is now an investor. He knows a ton about AI startups and trends. That would make for a super interesting conversation.