Julius Caesar famously said, "Experientia est rerum magistra" (Experience is the teacher of all things).

Masayoshi Son, founder and leader of the investment company SoftBank, might be the best-taught person on Earth. His company lost $59 billion in the dot-com crash and then $27 billion in a failed experiment operating a $100 billion venture fund.

On October 29, Masayoshi Son had a brief 15-minute conversation with CNN’s Richard Quest. Here are 3 great ideas and 2 small hints from that interview:

Great Idea #1

Mr. Son defines "artificial super intelligence" (ASI) as something 10,000 times smarter than a human, which he believes will be achieved by 2035. He is preparing "tens of billions of dollars" to invest in AI.

Great Idea #2

He thinks that while a small number of "bad guys" might try to misuse AI, they probably won't have enough money to create super intelligence. Developing ASI requires hundreds of billions of dollars, which limits who can do it.

Great Idea #3

He believes NVIDIA is undervalued "because the future is much bigger." His logic is based on two points: (1) Reaching ASI will require $9 trillion in cumulative capital expenses; (2) ASI will replace 5% of human jobs in 10 years, and 5% of the world's GDP is $9 trillion a year. Therefore, he concludes that all investments will be returned in one year and will double in two years.

2 Small Hints

- "ARM is going to become an AI-centric chip company very soon."

- "I'm super interested in AI robotics, not the traditional robotics."

Two Comments

"Bad guys" certainly have access to hundreds of billions of dollars. Masayoshi might be right that they won't be able to create artificial super intelligence, but they won't be limited by money.

I believe that once AI is ten times smarter than humans, it will completely change how economies work. Previous investment returns will become meaningless because AI will introduce new approaches we can't even imagine.

Mikael Alemu Gorsky

Mikael Alemu is an educator and researcher, and the author of two programs: Agentic Software Engineering, on building software with AI agents, and Building AI-Native Agentic Systems, on building software that thinks.

He teaches at the Holon Institute of Technology, near Tel Aviv, where Agentic Software Engineering runs as a credit-bearing course. He is an educator and researcher.

Nine published works, 76 citations. A 350-page textbook under contract with a major academic publisher.

Teaching and programs

Agentic Software Engineering — program, preprint and textbook

The discipline of structured, auditable human-agent workflows for building software. The human frames, specifies and judges. The agent executes. Nineteen modules in four parts, built on a running project called Tribunal, a web application in which agents argue opposing sides of a case and a judge agent decides. Taught for credit at the Holon Institute of Technology.

Agentic Software Engineering curriculum

Building AI-Native Agentic Systems — program, paper and book in writing

How to build systems that hold a language model as a working component, and treat that component as what it is: stochastic, slow and metered. Fourteen modules in four parts, about seventy hours. The running project is the Observatory, a news agency that watches sources, selects what matters and publishes on a cadence.

Research and analytics

Publications — journals and proceedings

Nine works, 76 citations. Research on artificial intelligence in education, with Ilya Levin and Alexei Semenov.

Artificial Intelligence as Game Changer in Cybersecurity: What We Learned in 2025-2026, and how this is relevant for Africa — Preprint, June 2026. By Mikael Alemu Gorsky. arXiv.
ASE-26: a curriculum for agentic software engineering as a discipline — Preprint, May 2026. By Mikael Gorsky. arXiv.
Cognifying Education: Mapping AI's transformative role in emotional, creative, and collaborative learning — Conference Paper, September 2025. By Mikael Gorsky, Ilya Levin. 13th Higher Education Institutions Conference.
Papert's Vision Realized: Constructionism and Generative AI — Article, June 2025. By Ilya Levin, Alexei Semenov, Mikael Gorsky. Constructionism Conference Proceedings.
Smart Learning in the 21st Century: Advancing Constructionism Across Three Digital Epochs — Preprint, January 2025. By Ilya Levin, Alexei Semenov, Mikael Gorsky. arXiv.

The AI Pravda — LinkedIn newsletter

Critical analysis of artificial intelligence and its effect on work and society. 5,500+ subscribers. The complete archive of 103 issues (2023–2026) is published in full at mgorsky.net/theaipravda.

Subscribe to The AI Pravda on LinkedIn

Pro bono

AI for seniors — free workshop

Helping older adults use everyday AI tools. Delivered to Russian-speaking communities in Israel.

For older adults, artificial intelligence is about preserving quality of life, maintaining autonomy, and sustaining the feeling of independence that defines dignified aging. For seniors who have emigrated, AI becomes a bridge: it can translate documents, explain official letters, help compose emails in the local language, and guide users through government websites. The workshop has been delivered to Russian-speaking communities in Israel, where participants — many of them in their 70s and 80s — discovered that AI could help them read Hebrew documents and communicate with Israeli institutions.

Startup competitions — unpaid time

Judging and mentoring early-stage ventures. Helping teams clarify their value proposition, assess technical feasibility, and prepare for the realities of scaling an AI product.

AC/VC LinkedIn group — community

A group for developers and students working with coding agents. The community shares practical insights, code examples, tool comparisons, and honest assessments of what works in production.

Join the AC/VC LinkedIn group

Recent

31 May 2026 — Agentic Software Engineering preprint on arXiv
2026 — paper accepted, Higher Education Institutions Conference

#11: 3 great ideas and 2 small hints from Masayoshi Son, plus 2 comments