Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya recently appeared on episode 2494 of The Joe Rogan Experience, where the two discussed what artificial intelligence is doing to young minds and whether ADHD should even be considered a disorder.
Rogan didn’t hold back when describing how he believes AI is already shaping children’s cognitive habits. “It’s already lowered children’s attention spans and it’s shrinking their capacity to acquire or absorb information,” he said, adding that “what they’re doing now is just relying on AI to answer all their questions for them.”
At the same time, he stopped short of placing the blame entirely on kids. “Is that their fault? Kind of, right? Because it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “You could still acquire information the old-fashioned way. You can still learn things the right way.”
But in his view, the incentives are skewed. “A lot of kids are just concerned with passing examinations and getting into good schools,” he explained. “And what they’re doing is just using AI and they’re getting better test results, but they’re also not as smart.”
Rogan also talked about how it’s changing the way children use their mind. “It’s essentially like replacing our mind,” he said. “And that’s just the beginning. These are the toddler days of AI and where it’s going to be a super athlete in a few years.”
Speaking as a parent, Palihapitiya expressed frustration with the day-to-day reality of navigating this shift. “Kids need to learn how to be resilient thinkers,” he said. “I don’t even know what that term meant before, but I know what it means now, which is like you take this AI slop and you just kind of like pass it off.” He added that gaps in the system make things worse: “And if the teachers and the school system aren’t trained, they’re just like, ‘Wow, this looks good.’”
That frustration, he said, often turns into exhaustion. “I don’t want to police his schoolwork and make sure he’s not che ating or not learning and just like passing off this AI slop,” he said. “What am I, where are my tax dollars going?”
The conversation took a turn when Palihapitiya mentioned that one of his children has ADHD and had been encouraged to try jiu-jitsu. That prompted Rogan to push back against the clinical framing of the condition altogether.
“What is ADHD, man?” Rogan said. “It’s not even real, because I definitely have it. And I think it’s a superpower.”
He described his own attention as selective rather than deficient. “I do not focus well on things that I think are boring,” he said. “But if you give me something that I love, I’ll play pool for 12 hours in a row.”
Palihapitiya said he sees the same pattern in his son. “The reason I got back into golf is my seven-year-old gets on the course and sometimes you can talk to him and he’s not making, you know, he’s like just in his own world,” he said. “And then you start talking about chess or jiu-jitsu or whatever and then we get him on the golf course and this kid is just dialed in.”
“Superpower,” Rogan replied.
Palihapitiya agreed, pushing the point further. “And I’m like, ‘Holy s**t,’” he said.
Rogan agreed and said, “And they say that that’s a disease. That’s crazy. Because if you find a thing that that kid loves, he’s going to excel at it above and beyond most humans.”
