PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel warns of tech stagnation: ‘Without AI, there’s just nothing going on’

In a candid conversation on The New York Times‘ podcast Interesting Times, billionaire investor and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel offered a contrarian take on artificial intelligence. While Silicon Valley giants pitch AI as a transformational force, Thiel suggests that it may be more of a lifeboat than a rocket ship—a necessary but modest remedy to deeper societal stagnation.

For Thiel, AI isn’t a “machine god” or humanity’s path to immortality. But he still believes it’s the only visible way out of what he calls “technological…