So Gabe Newell has spoken. Again.
And like any prophet with a billion-dollar yacht and a physics degree from the University of Dropping Out to Do Cooler Stuff, when Gabe talks, the tech world tilts its head like a golden retriever hearing the word “walk.” This time, the big-brained founder of Valve took a break from making Steam money rain like it’s Half-Life 3 announcement day (spoiler: it never is) to declare that AI is the next transformative wave—on par with the invention of computers, the rise of the internet, and, dare I say, the discovery that you can microwave bacon.
But let’s not be subtle here: Gabe Newell just told the world that if you don’t start riding the AI cheat code train right now, you’re going to be the office Luddite muttering into your ergonomic keyboard while ChatGPT 7.2 runs laps around your quarterly reports.
Welcome to the Church of Gabe, Patron Saint of Cheat Codes
Let’s set the scene: a YouTube interview with Zalkar Saliev, a man whose claim to fame is now “the guy who got Gabe Newell to talk like a TED Talker with a Steam Deck.” In between questions about startup culture (spoiler: Gabe thinks it’s stupid), Newell went full oracle and dropped a statement that felt like it was engineered in a silicon lab to trend on Hacker News and every armchair philosopher’s LinkedIn page:
“There was pre-computer and post-computer. There was pre-internet and post-internet. And now there’s pre-AI and post-AI.”
Translation: if you don’t get your AI act together, you’re toast. You’re playing Pong while everyone else is doing backflips in Unreal Engine 6.
The Cheat Code Metaphor, Because Apparently AI is a Glitch in Reality
Newell describes AI as a “cheat code.” Which is a lovely metaphor until you realize it means some people are about to leapfrog their way to success not because they’re smarter or harder-working, but because they figured out how to prompt-engineer ChatGPT to draft legal briefs while their law school classmates are still trying to memorize the Bill of Rights.
This isn’t just a cheat code—it’s Game Genie for capitalism. Want to be a better accountant? AI. Want to write better code? AI. Want to convince your startup is doing something meaningful? Just sprinkle the term “machine learning” into your pitch deck and watch the VC checks roll in like it’s 2015 and you invented a new food delivery app.
But Gabe’s not wrong—at least not entirely. In the same way early adopters of the internet became dot-com barons and spreadsheet nerds became CFOs, those who embrace AI may very well outpace the rest of us. But there’s something undeniably greasy about calling it a cheat code. It makes this revolution sound less like a technological renaissance and more like a glitch exploit for people who think ethics is optional.
From Lotus 1-2-3 to GPT-4: A Nostalgic Flex with a Modern Punch
Leave it to Gabe Newell to summon a software relic like Lotus 1-2-3 from the digital crypt just to prove a point. For those too young to remember, Lotus was the OG spreadsheet software that made accounting departments feel like they were flying fighter jets made of formulas. Gabe’s analogy: if you were the first schmuck at your firm who knew how to use Lotus 1-2-3, you became the office god. Everyone else was stuck with pencils, erasers, and paper cuts.
Now it’s 2025, and the new Lotus is AI. Only this time, you don’t even have to understand it. You just have to know how to use it. Which, to Gabe’s point, is where things get “funny”—as in, soul-crushingly ironic.
“People who can’t code will become more effective developers of value than those who’ve been coding for a decade.”
That’s right. Your cousin who barely passed high school algebra but figured out how to build a chatbot that writes SEO articles about crypto tax loopholes? He’s apparently more valuable than a senior engineer at Google. Because while that engineer is writing unit tests, your cousin is busy shipping product. Or at least shipping prompts to GPT that sound vaguely convincing.
AI as a Ladder. But Also a Trap Door.
This “anyone can do it” rhetoric is intoxicating. Just ask the legions of mid-tier YouTubers hawking “how to make $10,000 a month with AI side hustles” videos like it’s a digital gold rush. The message? You don’t need to know how anything works—you just need to know what buttons to press. And soon, those buttons might include “Generate pitch,” “Design logo,” “Write code,” “Build app,” and “Emotionally manipulate customer support.”
The darker implication, of course, is that once AI lowers the barrier to entry, everyone and their goldfish is now your competitor. The guy who used to fold shirts at Gap? He’s making AI-powered Shopify stores. Your mom? She’s got a Midjourney account and a Printful side hustle. That toddler with the iPad? He’s building metaverses in Roblox.
And you? You’re still trying to “learn Python the right way.”
Gabe vs. Startup Culture: The Plot Twist Nobody Asked For
Mid-rant, Newell detours into dragging startup culture like it stole his lunch money. He calls it “a great way of destroying money and wasting people’s time,” which is rich coming from a guy whose company is basically a digital monopoly that won’t give us Half-Life 3 but will release more skins for CS:GO than the Louvre has paintings.
But again, he’s not wrong. AI is going to make half of these pitch-decked unicorn startups look even more pointless. Why build a SaaS platform that schedules meetings when AI can just read your emails and do it for you? Why raise $20 million for a fintech “disruptor” when some rando with ChatGPT and Zapier can whip up a prototype that does 80% of the same thing... from a beach in Bali?
So What’s the Game Plan, Gabe?
Newell's actual advice for young people was deceptively simple: “Figure out how to use AI to do anything better.” That’s it. Not “become an expert,” not “go study computer science,” not “spend 10,000 hours grinding out models on Hugging Face.”
Just “figure out how to use it.”
You could interpret that as empowering: “You too can be an AI wizard!” Or you could interpret it as the tech mogul equivalent of “just Google it.” It’s a bit like Michelangelo telling you, “just figure out how to paint ceilings.”
Still, Gabe’s got a point. The tools are here. They’re powerful. And they’re surprisingly idiot-proof—up until they hallucinate your business into a tax audit.
Let’s Get Real: AI Is the Wild West With a User Manual Written in Crayon
For all of Newell’s wisdom, let’s not forget that AI is still a dumpster fire in a lot of ways. Models hallucinate facts, code, even math. They reflect biases, make up court cases, and invent new diseases. They’re great at sounding smart and occasionally even being smart, but they’re also just as likely to recommend you drink bleach if you don’t ask nicely.
Yet here we are, standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump off with our AI parachutes... that are still in beta.
Gabe, to his credit, acknowledges the mess. But he still sees it as the defining tech leap of the age. And maybe it is. Maybe it is the new internet. Or maybe it’s the next blockchain/NFT/flying-car-wearing-sunglasses-on-the-moon hype train.
Either way, it’s coming. Fast.
The Final Boss Fight: AI Will Reward the Curious. And Bury the Complacent.
Gabe’s interview might not have been laced with stock options or ChatGPT plugins, but it gave us the clearest peek yet into the billionaire mind palace. He’s not talking about hype. He’s talking about leverage. He’s talking about a world where the “value” is created not by how well you understand something—but how effectively you exploit it.
Which is either deeply empowering or spiritually bankrupt. Probably both.
So what’s the takeaway here? Learn how to use AI. Not because it’s cool. Not because it’ll write your essays or generate your Tinder bios. But because if you don’t, someone else will—and that person might be your least favorite coworker who once printed a PDF and then scanned it.
As Newell would put it: “It all seems super obvious.”
Welcome to the AI era. No, you don’t need to be a genius. You just need to know which buttons to press.
And maybe, just maybe, figure out how to press them before everyone else does.
Otherwise, you’re not just behind the curve—you are the curve. And the curve is being flattened by a very chatty, very confident algorithm that doesn’t need lunch breaks or health insurance.
Sleep tight.