‘Sam Altman is one of my close friends’: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky talks AI, ChatGPT

In a recent episode of The Verge's Decoder podcast, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, discussed the current state of the tech industry. He likened it to the time he came to Silicon Valley in 2007/2008, during a recession and when the internet was going international. Chesky believes that we are entering another major platform shift with artificial intelligence (AI) being as profound as the internet.

Chesky spoke about the importance of tuning the models of AI and how it will be a significant factor moving forward. He discussed the AI stack, which has three to five base models, built by infrastructure companies such as Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft Research. Chesky noted that Airbnb would not be building the base models as they are not involved in infrastructure.

He also talked about how AI has the potential to create an enormous amount of change in a short period, leading to both excitement and mild concern. Chesky noted that AI's impact could be as significant as the Industrial Revolution, and it is essential to be careful as we go through this change.

“Most of the important people that I talk to about AI — and I’ll just qualify this by saying I’ve had a pretty long-standing relationship with Sam Altman. He’s one of my close friends. I talk to him all the time. And I know James Manyika at Google and people like that. Everyone says that this is at least as profound a shift as the internet. And some people say it’s maybe as big as things like the Industrial Revolution,” Chesky said.

Regarding the broader picture of the tech industry, Chesky acknowledged that interest rates are high, and the startup ecosystem is shaky. He highlighted that many tech companies were contracting in 2008, and were in a mature zone where, without AI, it seemed like the winners had won. Chesky believes that the last ten years of low-interest rates led to a situation where there were too many employees doing too many things. He expressed the importance of having people on a single roadmap, having significantly fewer employees, and not having so many first-time managers.

Meanwhile, Airbnb on Tuesday anticipated a decrease in bookings and average daily rates for the second quarter compared to the previous year. As a result, the company's shares declined 11.5 per cent during after-hours trading. In the first quarter, gross booking value grew by 19 per cent to $20.4 billion, in line with a 19 per cent increase in nights and experiences bookings to 121 million. The average daily rate remained unchanged from the previous year at $168. The company predicted second-quarter revenue to be between $2.35 billion and $2.45 billion, which is consistent with analysts' projections.

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