Palmer Luckey says AI won’t save founders from the hardest part of their jobs

• Palmer Luckey said AI won't spare founders from the hardest parts of running a company.
• Founders remain responsible for legal issues, people, and major decisions, Luckey said.
• Luckey said AI likely won't replace a founder's most difficult work in the next decade.

Palmer Luckey has a warning for people who think AI will let them start a company and spend their days building its technology.

The Oculus and Anduril founder said at the Moonshot Live event in Los Angeles that AI may change how a founder works, but it does little to relieve founders of responsibility for the company or the people in it.

"You're still on the hook legally. You're still on the hook for all the interpersonal stuff. And you can delegate some of it, but at the end of the day, it's your call. It's your decision. It's the same thing for fundraising. It's the same thing for general product architecture." Luckey told show host Peter Diamandis. "And when people make the wrong decisions, it's your choice as to when you need to overrule them, override them, replace them.

"I don't see AI replacing that part of it anytime soon," Luckey added. "Not because it couldn't, but because the gains everywhere else are so much larger that I think we've got a good 10 years of speed running all of the other parts of the business before they cover that."

Luckey's view echoes a distinction in OpenAI's recent report on its own researchers' use of AI. The company found its biggest automation gains in tasks including coding and technical support. People still did most of the work of choosing research priorities and deciding which results to pursue. As AI handles more technical execution, judgment and decisions made about people may become more valuable soft skills.

For aspiring founders, Luckey's message was blunt.

"If you are like a hobbyist coder or a hobbyist engineer and you think you're going to start a company and you think you're going to be doing all that stuff, no, you're going to learn a hard lesson," Luckey said.

"When you're a founder, you don't get to actually work in any of the tech," Luckey added. "All the other people get to have all the fun."