“AI Could Launch a New Renaissance”: Zack Kass Drops Big Predictions on Capital and Power

What if everything you thought about artificial intelligence—its risks, its rewards, its future—was wrong? Zack Kass wants you to think again. With 16 years in AI, including a high-stakes run as Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI, Kass has been at the front lines of this technology’s rise. He’s worked with Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, and Samsung. He’s taught in classrooms from Hong Kong to Virginia. And now, as a global AI advisor and Arnholdt Fellow at Conservation International, he’s using his platform to sound a very different message: optimism.

That’s why AInvest’s Adam Shapiro sat down with him for the Capital and Power podcast. The conversation was electric—part reality check, part roadmap to the future. And it comes just months before the release of Kass’s new book, The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential, out January 13 and already available for pre-order.

Kass pulls no punches on ChatGPT

Asked to grade ChatGPT today, Kass didn’t hedge. “I would say five out of five… I don't think you could give it anything less than that.” He rattled off the reasons: costs collapsing from $60 per million tokens to less than $1.50, multimodality exploding into voice, video, and images, context windows stretching to 100,000 tokens, and safety features reducing hallucinations.

But he also drew a line against the hype. ChatGPT, he insisted, shouldn’t be your ghostwriter: “It shouldn’t do all of the thinking for you. It should do the really hard computational work so that you can actually do the writing and you can do the really thoughtful work.”

DeepSeek, China, and a new AI arms race

Kass also lit up the conversation with his take on global competition. He described the old rules of AI development—“a Sovereign Nation amount of GPUs… a Sovereign Nation supply of geniuses… and a Sovereign Nation supply of energy.” But those rules are bending. DeepSeek’s R1 model, he noted, delivered state-of-the-art results with an order of magnitude less compute, costing just 50 cents per million tokens.

That’s why China can’t be underestimated. “Scarcity breeds innovation… especially if you're China,” Kass warned, rating China’s open-source ecosystem as a “nine out of 10,” far ahead of the West. The bottom line? We may wake up in a world where GPUs aren’t king anymore, and architectures born of scarcity define the future.

The real risks: not Terminators, but thieves

Hollywood-style doom scenarios aren’t what keep Kass up at night. “About 4% of the population is psychopathic. Another 5% have figured out how to make crime pay… people are basically being stolen from with exceptional ease.”

Financial crime cost society $500 billion in 2024 and could hit $700 billion in 2025. Kass argues that AI will supercharge both productivity and predation, and we need urgent guardrails to stop criminals from tearing at the fabric of trust that economies depend on.

The upside: a better world, faster

Kass’s new book is the manifesto for this vision. Its premise: AI could create a “next renaissance,” a period where human potential is radically expanded. He’s not talking about incremental gains—he’s pointing to scientific breakthroughs already happening. AI discovered the first new antibiotic in 60 years. It split HIV out of DNA. Japanese scientists are rolling out biodegradable plastic that’s cheaper and stronger than the traditional kind.

That’s just the start. Kass sees AI bringing down the cost of healthcare, education, and housing—sectors where policy has “priced us into oblivion.” He calls this “benevolent deflation”: everything from flights to flat-screen TVs gets cheaper, while legacy industries face pressure to reinvent themselves.

A deeply personal mission

For Kass, this isn’t abstract. While writing The Next Renaissance, his wife became pregnant. That shifted his focus: “I deeply care principally about the human experience. And I do think that AI is a chance for us to actually put humanity back at the center of things.” He doesn’t want AI to trap us in screens but to give us back time with family and community. And on kids and devices? “I would be very surprised if we had devices in our children's hands at any time before they were 10 years old.”

Why you need to listen

The Capital and Power interview with Zack Kass isn’t just another AI talk. It’s an insider’s view of where this technology is heading, what risks are real, and why the future could be brighter than you think. With his book set to hit shelves in January, Kass is positioning himself as one of the most important voices in the AI conversation.

If you’re tired of the doom cycle and want a serious, optimistic take from someone who’s been in the trenches, this is the episode to queue up next.