Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian Predicts Surge In Theater's Popularity from AI Fatigue

Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit and founder of venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, said he believes that live theater and sports events will become increasingly popular as artificial intelligence reshapes the entertainment industry. Speaking on the "On Purpose with Jay Shetty" podcast this week, Ohanian described a future in which AI-driven entertainment pervades everyday life.

According to Ohanian, advances in technology will soon deliver on-screen content "better, faster, cheaper, and more dynamic." He suggested that every screen will be programmed to display exactly what viewers want, "what we want, when we want it, how we want it," he said. Yet, Ohanian noted that this saturation of highly engineered content might leave audiences missing simpler, more visceral experiences: "A part of our humanity will miss, you know, thousands of years ago when we were sitting around a campfire and that great storyteller was doing the voices and the impressions."

Ohanian, 41, who co-founded Reddit in 2005, predicted a resurgence of live, in-person performances as a counterbalance. "I actually bet 10 years from now live theater will be more popular than ever," he said. In contrast to AI’s polished and endlessly customized imagery, he said that theatergoers would want to "sit in a room with other humans to be captivated for a couple hours in a dark room to feel the goosebumps of seeing live human performances."

He applied a similar logic to sports, emphasizing that the physical presence of human players on the field or court offers an irreplaceable connection: "We need humans doing that. We need to feel their pain and their success and their triumphs. Those are the areas that get me most hopeful."

Ohanian also suggested that AI’s influence will not render human empathy obsolete. Instead, he noted empathy’s increasing significance in a world dominated by advanced technology. "No matter what jobs robots take over," Ohanian told Shetty, human empathy will remain essential.