a16z put out their big ideas for 2026 and most of it is the usual VC futurism stuff but two ideas actually connected to problems I deal with every day running an AI startup. first one is collaborative AI tools. right now every AI tool is basically single player. I use Claude, I build up this whole context with it, I develop ideas and strategies over long conversations… and then my coworker asks me for a progress update. what do I do? I ask Claude to write up a summary, export it to Notion, share it on Slack. the whole thing is so manual and dumb for something that’s supposed to be about automation. what I actually want is something like Slack for Agents. where my coworker can just ask MY agent directly at 2am about exactly what they want to know, without pinging me. I only step in if my agent doesn’t have the full picture. a16z calls this the “collaboration layer” and says multi-agent collaboration is where the real moat will be. I think they’re right but I don’t see anyone building the messenger layer for this yet. there’s social media for agents (stuff like Moltbook) but no actual workplace communication tool where agents talk to agents and humans can jump in when needed. second one is the AI-native college. and this one I think people are misunderstanding. everyone assumes it’s about AI tutors and personalized learning paths and adaptive curricula. sure that’s part of it. but the thing most parents are actually worried about isn’t whether their kid can learn calculus faster with AI. it’s whether their kid will develop real personality, leadership, ability to handle conflict, collaborative skills. the soft stuff. and that’s not something AI teaches. that comes from being around other humans in challenging situations. so the AI-native college might end up looking less like a tech platform and more like an elite boarding school. small cohort, intense human interaction, access to the best AI tools from day one but with heavy emphasis on the human development side. because when hard skills stop mattering as much (AI handles them), soft skills become the entire game. Palantir already runs a humanities program for dropouts for exactly this reason. the irony is that the more AI advances, the more the education system needs to double down on the most human parts. I dunno if anyone else has been thinking about this but the gap between “AI in education” (which is just better tutoring) and “AI-native education” (which is a complete rethink of what school is for) feels massive and underdiscussed submitted by /u/hiclemi
Originally posted by u/hiclemi on r/ArtificialInteligence