An Interview With Keynote Speaker Zack Kass on the 'AI Renaissance'

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Zack Kass is an AI evangelist, technologist, businessman, and the author of The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential. He was a key player in bringing open AI to market and the keynote speaker at APEX EXPO 2026.

Immediately following his presentation, I brought Zack to our booth, where we had a most eye-opening conversation about both the positive and negative impacts of artificial intelligence, and going beyond what’s “impossible.”

Marcy LaRont: Zack, it is great to meet you. I very much enjoyed your keynote. You focused on how AI can make the world a better place in real, substantive ways, but you don’t ignore the negatives about AI technology. Would you comment on a few of those things highlighted in your presentation? 

Zack Kass: I've given my keynote enough to know that I spend more time talking about what breaks than what doesn't, which I think you have to do. You can't just stand up and declare, “Here's how everything will be amazing,” without acknowledging what could unintentionally make our lives worse or harder.

But broadly, of everything that AI can do, it allows an individual to do a lot more. It’s the idea of a sovereign individual with greater agency and control over their outcomes. However, that control has some downside consequences. Bad actors can do more, but good actors can do more too, and when they do, we make scientific discoveries and reduce the cost of goods and services.

This is the story of human progress, and in the camp of good outcomes, we’ll see deflation. We will have more time, and we will have scientific discoveries that could cure some previously incurable diseases or even overcome worldwide food insecurity. My core belief is that, at some point, humans will have solved the economic problem.

But what happens if we do actually solve the economic problem? What happens when everyone is housed, fed, and cared for? Then what? This is a very upsetting idea for many people, not because it's impossible, but because it breaks many of their mental models. 

LaRont: Most people don't believe it's possible, so even hearing you say that it's possible is an interesting perspective.

Kass: I think people are willing to believe it's possible, especially in the developed world, to look at their lives and say, “Yeah, I have way more than I need.” A lot of people here who have been part of this electronics gold rush have more than they need and continue to work because, for a number of reasons—some physical, some emotional—but none of them would argue that their problem is economic. Increasingly, more people are willing to believe that, in fact, they will have what they need, and they will also discover what they want. This fuels the idea that the future battles we fight will be spiritual, not economic. 

LaRont: That sounds like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We'll be operating near the top now, as opposed to staying down and struggling for the basics, where much of humanity has been for so long.

Kass: That's exactly right. If I had traveled around the world in 1800, I wouldn't have been able to do this job. If I had said, "Don't worry, you won’t have a job that gives you purpose, but you will have so much more,” people would have responded, “Sir, I'm starving to death,” or “I just buried my wife and my child.” You cannot tell people everything will be great when they're fighting for their lives. But today, I think people largely believe they will have what they need. 

The developed world isn't fighting for its life anymore. We are now toiling for something else. Status and emotional needs will not be met by the things we buy, so we will be forced to find another solution. 

LaRont: You mentioned some of the downsides we are seeing with Gen Z, including idiocracy. Please explain you talk more about that.

Kass: Since we started doing this research, every generation has been smarter than the last, on average. Now, our data shows that Gen Z appears to be dumber than millennials, marking the first time we've observed this trend in any generation. Gen Z is also less likely to read, ride a bike, or swim; there’s both a motor and intellectual dysfunction. Sadly, this is Gen Z in the developed world. This is negatively attributed to AI because people can now outsource their thinking. But more than that, this is a population that long ago gave up summer jobs because their parents said, “You don't need to work during the summer. We'll give you an allowance.” 

You and I grew up when discretionary spending was more exceptional, when our parents said, “We are fine, but we don’t have a ton of money. If you want spending money, get a summer job.” Moreover, parents now essentially say to their kids, “We're all going to go out to dinner, but here's an iPhone/iPad/electronic device, so that we don't have to spend time with you. You're a distraction to our meal, or to others.”

We're watching a population that doesn't just get to do less; they're being asked to do less. We just ask so much less of kids than we used to. Some of that's good; children shouldn’t have to grow up in a world where they have to work to survive. But I certainly believe in a world where kids should be challenged, and parents become very uncomfortable with their own child's discomfort.

Because, as a result, many children are saying, “Cool, I don't want to do anything.” But that leads to a generation of underperformers. At the same time, we have a population spiking in all sorts of new ways. Many parents describe seeing a child who is much smarter than they were at that age because they have things their parents never did. Your kid has access to more knowledge and information than they probably should, but it’s enough to make anyone who wants to be very smart. If you want to be an exceptional programmer, athlete, artist, or someone who contributes to the novel sciences, you can be. This new level of agency and personal responsibility marks a dividing line we need to constantly reinforce.

LaRont: It's an interesting paradox, and it's also a great juxtaposition for hope; if you want to be truly exceptional at anything right now, there's so much at your disposal to become exceptional. 

The arc of technology, as you well know, is progressing so much more rapidly than it ever has. In our industry, we talk a lot about “failing fast.” How do you think AI can help us fail faster for better ultimate success? 

Kass: I like to say, “fail inexpensively.” AI offers us the value of inexpensive failure. Building in the digital world is still expensive, but it's never been less expensive to build a prototype than it is right now. Every exhibitor on this show floor is a beneficiary of the fact that you can build prototypes in no time compared to the time it used to take. I was talking to a very senior friend in AI, and his observation is that if AI software is the new hardware, then hardware is the new biolife sciences. All these things are now getting faster on a discovery timeframe. Critically, it's not just happening faster; it's happening much more cheaply. 

There are guardrails in every industry and every company that you cannot cross. They're prohibitively expensive to cross either because of a catastrophic failure or a compliance issue. Your regulators will shut you down if you do X. Find those guardrails and then let people operate more freely within them. Convince people that progress requires failure, that the cost of the token has come down, and the cost of actually manufacturing the thing has come down. Do that, and we should be able to try a lot more stuff.

LaRont: In your keynote, you posed some tough life questions. From your perspective, how can we or should we use AI to make the world a better place? What questions should we be asking ourselves?

Kass: We should ask ourselves a lot more frequently whether something is truly impossible. One of my greatest gripes with society today lies at this fatalistic intersection, where older people with all sorts of access and means have become fatalistic and nihilistic because they see the younger population so cynical and disenfranchised, while younger people see or describe themselves as fatalistic and nihilistic because the older population has given up fighting for them. Everyone spends all this energy bemoaning their fate without spending enough time asking how these things can actually be fixed.

• Does housing have to be prohibitively expensive? No, it doesn't. 
• Does healthcare have to be prohibitively expensive and broken? No, it doesn't. 
• Does the acceptance rate into great universities have to be zero or 1%? No. 
• Can we build more infrastructure? Yes.

So often, we describe problems as inherent brokenness within society when they should be described as opportunities to fix things. Have we forgotten that we can make many things better?

LaRont: You said very plainly that every generation thought that something we completely take for granted today was impossible. Today, we barely remember when we didn’t have those “impossible” things, like airplanes, computers, and smartphones. “X” was always impossible until it wasn't. We need to remember that perspective. 

Kass: Yes, and if we do this right, the worlds of our children will be unimaginable in a good way, and also in other bad ways. I assume that we will invent horrors that we haven’t yet even thought about.

LaRont: If you could leave us in this tech industry with some final words of wisdom, what would they be?

Kass: Electronics stands to be one of the great beneficiaries of the next chapter in human experience. Obviously, everyone here is having a pretty good time compared to what they used to have, but electronics will also be among the great beneficiaries. In my keynote, I tried to speak to people who would build the next great device.

For example, I recently invested in a company that's developing a robotic cane that uses both telemetry and visual data to guide a blind person around neighborhoods. As a society, we don't talk about these things. We don't talk about the fact that a million people in the United States who are legally blind do not leave their homes for fear of being mugged or something else horrible. This cane features a one-button emergency response system, a 12-hour battery life, and a voice-activated user interface. You can say, “Take me to a Starbucks,” or “Take me to a train station.” It means a blind person can be in a city they're not familiar with and not feel in danger.

There are so many ways in which electronic components are enabling the world to be a whole lot better. I want people to see their work as noble, and they probably already do. But people are waiting, not just for better defense and aerospace tech, but for better consumer hardware that allows children to learn faster, disabled people to participate more, and a surgeon to conduct surgery from across the world. The electronic components in this room will build the world I described.

LaRont: It's very exciting. I believe many people in this industry consider their work noble, but this brings it to a different level and gives it a greater perspective, which I appreciate. Thank you, Zack. 

Kass: Thanks so much for having me.

Get a summary of Zack Kass's APEX EXPO keynote here.