Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 1: someone who has a front row seat to the most
Speaker 1: fascinating things happening in tech today. We're joined by Reid Hoffman,
Speaker 1: a longtime entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author. Born in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area and part of a Silicon Valley crowd in
Speaker 1: the nineties, he's helped build or support some of the
Speaker 1: biggest tech companies we know today.
Speaker 2: He worked at.
Speaker 1: Apple in its early days, he was part of the
Speaker 1: so called PayPal mafia as one of its first employees,
Speaker 1: and he co founded LinkedIn, which he later sold to
Speaker 1: Microsoft for twenty six point two billion dollars. Nowadays, he's
Speaker 1: turned his attention to AI. As an early investor and
Speaker 1: former board member for Open Ai. Hoffman is an optimist
Speaker 1: about the benefits that AI could bring to society, so
Speaker 1: much so that he wrote a book about it called Superagency.
Speaker 1: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future? And,
Speaker 1: although it might not be a surprising position for a
Speaker 1: tech investor to hold, also an outlier in some ways.
Speaker 1: In the book, he argues that concerns and criticisms about
Speaker 1: AI development shouldn't be dismissed, and in last year's presidential race,
Speaker 1: he supported Kamala Harris, unlike many former Democrat donors in
Speaker 1: the valley who have since aligned with Donald Trump. This
Speaker 1: decision has had consequences for Hoffman, who is regularly castigated
Speaker 1: on social media. We speak about that later in the conversation,
Speaker 1: but we start with the book. Read. Was a guest
Speaker 1: several times on the Charlie Rose Show for previous books,
Speaker 1: and I worked there as a producer for many years,
Speaker 1: so I thought I'd start with that. And one of
Speaker 1: Charlie's favorite questions for authors was to say, every great
Speaker 1: book begins with a great question. What's the question behind
Speaker 1: your book? Now you've somewhat preempted that by actually putting
Speaker 1: the question on the front of your book. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about the question and why it's an important one?
Speaker 2: So? What could possibly go right with our AI future?
Speaker 2: And the short answer is were to have this major
Speaker 2: AI technological revolution, and the general discourse is, oh, my god,
Speaker 2: AI is coming. You know, the end is nigh. And actually,
Speaker 2: in fact, you can only get to the future that
Speaker 2: is good by steering towards it, not by trying to
Speaker 2: avoid the futures You don't want. And so the goal
Speaker 2: of the book is to give people good argument and
Speaker 2: grounding and tool set for understanding how to think about
Speaker 2: what could possibly go right. And then you know, we
Speaker 2: individually and collectively navigate there. So that's the question and challenge,
Speaker 2: and that's part of the reason why we wrote Superagency.
Speaker 1: The title Superagency. You almos Wills Isaacson recently and you
Speaker 1: said something I thought was very revealing which already captured
Speaker 1: it for me, which was Tim Cook's iPhone is the
Speaker 1: same one that the cab driver and the uber driver
Speaker 1: is using. So explain that and how it clarifies superagency.
Speaker 2: So part of superagency, and there's we actually compact a
Speaker 2: lot into this term. It's the increase of human agency,
Speaker 2: but not just the individual agency human agency, but also
Speaker 2: society collective superagency. And part of the question when you
Speaker 2: begin to build these technologies, because you know, a classic
Speaker 2: question is well, does it only benefit the most powerful?
Speaker 2: Does it only benefit the elites? And actually, in fact,
Speaker 2: when you do technology targeting superagency, eg. Hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of people, billions of people engaging, we all get the
Speaker 2: same technology. And so for example, as what I said earlier,
Speaker 2: Tim Cook has the same iPhone that the Uber driver
Speaker 2: does that by engaging in it in mass adoption, it
Speaker 2: then becomes elevating. And that doesn't mean that Tim isn't
Speaker 2: much wealthier, much more powerful, et cetera than the Uber driver,
Speaker 2: but the piece of technology is elevating across the broad
Speaker 2: swath of society. And that's the same thing, of course,
Speaker 2: we're seeing with AI, which is you know, chat GBT
Speaker 2: in its release, which is hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 2: who now use it.
Speaker 1: So in the book, there's this framework of four different
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about AI development. In some sense, can
Speaker 1: you kind of explain what each of them is and
Speaker 1: where you sit?
Speaker 2: Yes, So it's doomers, gloomers, zoomers, and bloomers. And just
Speaker 2: in case anyone was thinking that, like you know, I'm
Speaker 2: castigating names, the doomers actually do call themselves doomers. They
Speaker 2: even have this thing called p doom, which is probability
Speaker 2: of doom. The doomers are basically AI's bad, that the
Speaker 2: at least very high probability is it will be destructive
Speaker 2: to human potential, human society, maybe just might be existentially destructive,
Speaker 2: and that the best outcome is stop, don't make AI
Speaker 2: until we can absolutely guarantee that every single step would
Speaker 2: be positive. Gloomers are, Yeah, we understand, and that AI
Speaker 2: is inevitable. Namely, you know, companies are going to compete.
Speaker 2: Industries are going to compete. Countries are going to compete.
Speaker 2: But it's just likely to make society bad. It's likely
Speaker 2: to you know, make massive changes into the workforce, so
Speaker 2: like jobs will go away and people will be unemployed
Speaker 2: in breadlines and a lot of unhappiness. It may be
Speaker 2: destructive to democracy, it might be destructive personal freedoms, you know,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. But it's gonna happen anyway, and
Speaker 2: so I'm just gloomy about it. Hence gloomers. Zoomers are
Speaker 2: on their far other end, which is, no, this is
Speaker 2: going to be great. It's the most amazing thing that
Speaker 2: humanity has done ever. And what's great so far outstrips
Speaker 2: everything that possibly even may be wrong, that we should
Speaker 2: just hit the accelerator and go full on, and let
Speaker 2: me tell you about all the amazing things with medicine
Speaker 2: and education and work assistance and all the rest of
Speaker 2: that in productivity, and you know, obviously I have a
Speaker 2: bunch of sympathies for a bunch of the positives of
Speaker 2: the Zoomers. But I myself, of course identify myself as
Speaker 2: a bloomer, which is essentially an accelerationist and a future
Speaker 2: oriented like a zoomer. But it's also saying, hey, just
Speaker 2: because you can make it with technology doesn't mean it's
Speaker 2: inevitably good. That there's different ways of introducing it and
Speaker 2: navigating through it, namely the way that it's introduced and
Speaker 2: brought into human experience and existence at scale, and so
Speaker 2: engaging with the folks who have concerns, criticisms. You know,
Speaker 2: watch out for this pothole, watch out for this mine.
Speaker 2: Is a good thing as you're navigating. Even as you're
Speaker 2: navigating with some speed and acceleration, the Bloomers say, hey,
Speaker 2: let's be in dialogue. Let's try to steer around at
Speaker 2: anything that might be a landmine as we build this
Speaker 2: great future.
Speaker 1: And I guess if you could waive your magic wand
Speaker 1: would you convert fifty percent of gloomers to your camp
Speaker 1: or fifty percent of Zoomers to your camp.
Speaker 2: So if I get away with want, I would con
Speaker 2: gloomers to Bloomers. But that doesn't mean I'm not also
Speaker 2: trying to convert zoomers. And you know, as best I
Speaker 2: can parse it, call it a quasi Gloomer quasi doomer
Speaker 2: set of concerns, which is I said, well, there is
Speaker 2: this danger, we should just stop. I'll give you an
Speaker 2: example that I think is frequently amongst the people who
Speaker 2: think about existential risk or X risk, And they go,
Speaker 2: can you guarantee to me that you're going to not
Speaker 2: that someone isn't going to make a killer robot all
Speaker 2: out of the terminator? And you go nope, can't guarantee that.
Speaker 2: They go, aha, see, that's an existential risk, and so therefore,
Speaker 2: looking at that existential risk, we should stop or pause
Speaker 2: or slow down. He say, well, it sounds like a rational,
Speaker 2: reasonable argument, except when you consider that existential risk is
Speaker 2: not each one off thing. It's a portfolio. It's a basket.
Speaker 2: So it's a basket that includes nuclear war, it's a
Speaker 2: basket that includes climate change, the basket includes pandemics, a
Speaker 2: basket that includes a whole bunch of things. So you say, hey,
Speaker 2: you're building AI. That becomes a new existential risk. He's like, yep,
Speaker 2: that becomes a new excentral risk. But if you're doing AI,
Speaker 2: Are you also mitigating you know, pandemic risk? Right, That's
Speaker 2: the only way I can think of to combat scale pandemics,
Speaker 2: both natural and I made is AI. Are you contravening
Speaker 2: asteroid risk? Because the ability to see which asteroids might
Speaker 2: be the ones that might be coming for us early
Speaker 2: enough to do something about it, and to be able
Speaker 2: to kind of navigate doing something about it well, AI
Speaker 2: is actually likely to be pretty central to that equation.
Speaker 2: And so my point of view is our existential risk
Speaker 2: overall goes down, and so that earlier argument doesn't actually,
Speaker 2: in fact really work.
Speaker 1: That's a truly dventuhift framework for thinking about a portfolio
Speaker 1: of risks. That's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And by the way, that doesn't mean that you
Speaker 2: don't try to minimize the killer robot risk and you
Speaker 2: don't try to maximize the benefit in the other cases.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you have no dialogue, don't talk about risk. No, no, no.
Speaker 2: Talking about risk is good. But part of what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to do with superagency and things like this is
Speaker 2: to say, talk about the risk in a way that
Speaker 2: you said that you're being smart about it, and you're
Speaker 2: trying to kind of be smart in iterative stages about
Speaker 2: the portfolio of them, and also that you're not trying
Speaker 2: to overly dramatize your own genius like anyone who says
Speaker 2: I know exactly what AI is going to be like
Speaker 2: in five years from now, either for positive or for negative,
Speaker 2: they're both nuts, right. I mean, it's like we're discovering
Speaker 2: this as we're going. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that comes across in
Speaker 1: your book is how different platform technologies have allowed humanity
Speaker 1: to move from a subsistence way of living to way
Speaker 1: of living that allows for leisure and self reflection and
Speaker 1: all of those types of things. And you wrote a
Speaker 1: piece about this for The New York Times called AI
Speaker 1: Will Empower Humanity. You wrote, AI could turn data into
Speaker 1: the material for a de facto's second self, one that
Speaker 1: could endow even the most sketchy brain down my us
Speaker 1: with a capacity for revisiting the past with a level
Speaker 1: of detail. Even the novelist Marcel Proost might envy. Can
Speaker 1: you explain that vision?
Speaker 2: Look so at a macro view. I think within a
Speaker 2: small number of years, all of us will have AI
Speaker 2: agents helping us with things, and it'll be helping us
Speaker 2: with like work things and learning and other kinds of things,
Speaker 2: but also helping us with like the kind of the
Speaker 2: daily activity of our lives, which include, for example, remembering
Speaker 2: things like so frequently. Of course people say, oh, wait,
Speaker 2: you're remembering this about me, and maybe you can sell
Speaker 2: you can manipulate me into buying something or selling me
Speaker 2: an ad all bad. I am losing agency. I've lost
Speaker 2: privacy of my information. It's like, well, actually, in fact,
Speaker 2: think about what a positive feature this is, because, by
Speaker 2: the way, if it remembers something about me, it can
Speaker 2: help me remember it. It can help me. You know,
Speaker 2: like I'm navigating and I'm having this conversation with odds
Speaker 2: and it says, hey, you guys met before here and
Speaker 2: you talked about this. Oh, that's really helpful, makes our
Speaker 2: connection better.
Speaker 1: That's why I started with the allusion to a shed
Speaker 1: past at Charlie Roads the case in point, yes.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and and you know part of that actually, in fact,
Speaker 2: when when the memory is for me and of help
Speaker 2: to me, of in service to me, that's extremely positive.
Speaker 1: The allusion to proost was kind of irresistible to me.
Speaker 2: The remembrance of things past.
Speaker 1: Remember things passed, and how do the events of a
Speaker 1: life coalesced to her self, right, And so of course
Speaker 1: I got curious about you and you were recently on
Speaker 1: the podcast with Stephen Bartlet Diary vs. CEO, and you said,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to understand this journey started with
Speaker 1: being born in Stamford Hospital. What role did that play
Speaker 1: in read as a bloomer?
Speaker 2: Well, definitely being a California and I child of the
Speaker 2: Bay Area definitely helps me be open minded and curious
Speaker 2: to understand that technology is part of what makes us human.
Speaker 2: A little bit like again, the kind of the Marcel
Speaker 2: Proof's gesture is, you know, I've kind of I argue
Speaker 2: that we're actually better described as homotechne than Homo sapiens
Speaker 2: because we evolve through a technology, not just obviously through
Speaker 2: remote podcasts like this, or glasses or clothing or cars
Speaker 2: or smartphones, but it's but it's like it's who we are.
Speaker 2: We internalize this technology. It makes us. It's part of
Speaker 2: what we evolve very very very slowly genetically, but actually
Speaker 2: we evolve very fast culturally, technologically, and that's part of
Speaker 2: who we become and all of that. I think by
Speaker 2: being you know, a child of the San Francisco Bay Area,
Speaker 2: you have the openness and laissez faire to say, hey,
Speaker 2: you can invent something and change the world. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's not just Silicon Valley but also Hollywood, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of that direction of what's next is much
Speaker 2: more interesting than what was. And it doesn't mean what
Speaker 2: was is irrelevant and what was doesn't inform what's next,
Speaker 2: and you can't learn things from what was, but it's
Speaker 2: live into the future and live into that change, I
Speaker 2: think is really fundamental. And I think that helped, you know,
Speaker 2: shape how I think about things and kind of the
Speaker 2: reason I'm so future oriented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's what makes you know your
Speaker 1: views on AI particularly interesting because in the nineties, at
Speaker 1: the birth of the consumer Internet, you saw around the corner, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you understood that the Internet would be social networking.
Speaker 1: You founded a company called Social net You're one of
Speaker 1: the first investors in Facebook, and you founded LinkedIn. What
Speaker 1: gave you that fundamental insight about what the Internet would become.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, one of the things I
Speaker 2: think is fundamental to being an investor or a founder
Speaker 2: in especially the consumer consumer and our products is having
Speaker 2: a theory of human nature, and it's about the individual
Speaker 2: human nature and then kind of collective and you know,
Speaker 2: part of that kind of thesis is where you know,
Speaker 2: we're tribal creatures, we're we're social animals in this way,
Speaker 2: and you know that is part of the kind of
Speaker 2: the fundamental you know, kind of theory of human beings.
Speaker 2: I have then in rolls the Internet and you think, well, okay,
Speaker 2: the Internet does all kinds of useful things like bringing
Speaker 2: up information ability, shop by things. But I was like, well,
Speaker 2: but actually in that changes our social space, changes our
Speaker 2: social space in terms of how we think of ourselves,
Speaker 2: who we think we're connected to, how we communicate, which
Speaker 2: groups were part of you know, kind of information flow
Speaker 2: and recommendations, and that all gets to kind of the
Speaker 2: web two oh side. And so that that was my
Speaker 2: recognition of you know, when when the Internet was you know,
Speaker 2: first being talked about, it was like, oh, it's an
Speaker 2: information ecosystem, you know, you know HTML. It's like I
Speaker 2: ask for the document and I get the document, and
Speaker 2: I was like, that's cool. But actually, in fact, we
Speaker 2: are social animals, you know, we are citizens of the polis.
Speaker 2: So how does being people get into this?
Speaker 1: The insight you have about how the Internet sort of
Speaker 1: recreates it social relationships that led to LinkedIn. He's very
Speaker 1: very clear to me, what is the equivalent insight about
Speaker 1: the age of AI.
Speaker 2: So I think it's this notion that AI gives us
Speaker 2: superpowers and that those superpowers will and they'll change. Like
Speaker 2: what's like what our previous superpowers were. It's just like,
Speaker 2: for example, you know, before you had the book, memory
Speaker 2: was a critical superpower. It was kind of like the
Speaker 2: no no, I can recite the Iliad to you and
Speaker 2: and and having that and actual part of was what
Speaker 2: described about in printing presses destroying human capabilities, like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, there's this critical human cognitive function of really remembering,
Speaker 2: and now that's going to be destroyed and that's going
Speaker 2: to reduce our humanity. And you're like, well, no, actually,
Speaker 2: induct doesn't. Over time, it increases their humanity because it's
Speaker 2: opposed to only emphasizing memory for doing anything else, you
Speaker 2: can also bring in many other forms of intelligence. And
Speaker 2: the same parallel I think goes to AI. You say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, you listen to people that oh, it's going
Speaker 2: to destroy our ability to think critically because I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna ask, you know, GBD four or pie to reason
Speaker 2: for me, you know, Gemini to give me the answer.
Speaker 2: Co Pilot two, you know, do Visa coding for me,
Speaker 2: and I don't have to think anymore. I'll just you know,
Speaker 2: eat cookies and sit on the sit on the sofa.
Speaker 2: And you're like, well, obviously, with any technology people can
Speaker 2: be lazy and do stuff. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: what it means is you now have new attributes. For example,
Speaker 2: most of us get a little sloppier on our spelling
Speaker 2: because we recly and the spell checker for solving it.
Speaker 2: But that means because we're thinking about other things, we're
Speaker 2: thinking about what the point is, how to architect it,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's giving us superpowers. They'll actually
Speaker 2: help us become even more human.
Speaker 1: After the break, Reid Hoffman tells us about how his
Speaker 1: background influenced his worldview. Stay with us, Welcome back. While
Speaker 1: preparing for this interview, I stumbled across a twenty to
Speaker 1: fifteen New Yorker profile of Reid Hoffman. This was back
Speaker 1: in his LinkedIn days, and I found his background to
Speaker 1: be quite revealing. One thing that really struck me, I
Speaker 1: guess because it resonates in my own experience, is that
Speaker 1: you are the only child of parents who divorced when
Speaker 1: you were very young, as am I, and then you
Speaker 1: went to boarding school where you had the experience of
Speaker 1: being a fish out of water lead to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: which is also an experience that I had. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I've observed about my
Speaker 1: life is I've become very very interested in networks, both
Speaker 1: both both wide and deep. Is extremely important to me
Speaker 1: to feel connected with other people. And so I don't
Speaker 1: want to pop psychologize you, but we're talking about Proust
Speaker 1: and AI to know yourself better and stuff. Have you
Speaker 1: thought about how that childhood experience affected your view of
Speaker 1: networks and technological development?
Speaker 2: Interesting, it certainly affected my views of human nature, certainly
Speaker 2: affected my views of were I what my role in
Speaker 2: this grand play of humanity and human nature is? Maybe
Speaker 2: not least because feeling somewhat alienated from my fellow schoolmates,
Speaker 2: reading a lot of science fiction and thinking about things
Speaker 2: I would say, and maybe this that it's most core,
Speaker 2: which is like probably one of the very deep beliefs
Speaker 2: I have, which is I think arguable from an induction standpoint,
Speaker 2: but not ever. But many people don't hold this, which
Speaker 2: is the future can be so much better than the now.
Speaker 2: We just have to try to shape it to being so.
Speaker 2: So you go, well, I'm unhappy with, you know, being
Speaker 2: in the Lord of the Flies boarding school. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, how can we make this better? What are
Speaker 2: the things to do? And oh, look, technology is a
Speaker 2: tool for this, you know, as a way of kind
Speaker 2: of operating.
Speaker 1: Is it true that you'd like to ask the question
Speaker 1: who's in your tribe?
Speaker 2: Yes, although it's more because you know, we are tribal
Speaker 2: creatures and you know whatnot, But it's kind of a
Speaker 2: little bit more of it's almost like a friendship question,
Speaker 2: like who are your five best friends and why? And
Speaker 2: who are they? Because some agree like who are you?
Speaker 2: Is you're a cross product to your friends. You've chosen
Speaker 2: these people who you share values with in alignment with
Speaker 2: a the way the world should be, a people that
Speaker 2: you're willing to defend the moral character of and say, hey,
Speaker 2: this person's a really good person in the world. And
Speaker 2: so that version of tribe.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you've reached a point where two definitions of
Speaker 1: tribe are kind of interacting, right. I mean that the
Speaker 1: New Yorker profile the opening scene was you and Mark
Speaker 1: Pinkas sitting together talking about advising Obama about how to
Speaker 1: use social networks and technology to you know, extends to
Speaker 1: extend the reach of the messaging. You were both big
Speaker 1: Obama donors. Obviously, Mark Pinkus broke for Trump, as did
Speaker 1: Mark Andrews, and as did many who you grew up with,
Speaker 1: and I'm imagine you count as close personal friends. I mean,
Speaker 1: how how have you dealt with that?
Speaker 2: Well, it's complicated and difficult. It kind of comes down
Speaker 2: to what was theirs and for doing that, because when
Speaker 2: their reason was, for example, like Mark Pinkus, who had
Speaker 2: a particular set of views about the two different presidential candidates,
Speaker 2: willingness to support the state of Israel to understand kind
Speaker 2: of it being under attack and feeling that you know,
Speaker 2: part of of course, these centuries of human existence have
Speaker 2: been intensely anti Semitism and genocide against people of the
Speaker 2: Jewish faith and Jewish descent and having a place to
Speaker 2: protect them and saying, hey, I think Trump will be
Speaker 2: better for this than you know, Harris, that's a moral
Speaker 2: I actually disagree with the judgment, but I understand that
Speaker 2: kind of reasoning from a moral point of view. It's
Speaker 2: the it isn't just about me, And so so for
Speaker 2: you know, Mark Pinkus, you know, it's it's been difficult
Speaker 2: conversations but fundamentally part of that life journey. And there's
Speaker 2: other Silicon Valley people it's very similar, like whether they're
Speaker 2: very focused on crypto or other things where I again
Speaker 2: say I wouldn't vote a single issue crypto in this election,
Speaker 2: but for them that was frequently the argument is like, wow,
Speaker 2: the Democrats and Republicans are the same. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: they're not right, and I think I can make that case.
Speaker 2: And then there's other folks who you know, kind of
Speaker 2: reveal that they don't actually in fact have kind of
Speaker 2: moral characters on this, that it's just about their own power,
Speaker 2: their own their own you know, kind of like more
Speaker 2: about me. And then you know those folks I am
Speaker 2: between not friends with and less friends with, and you
Speaker 2: know all the rest of it. And many of them,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't really talk to at the moment.
Speaker 2: And it isn't I don't talk to them because they
Speaker 2: supported Trump. It's I don't talk to them because the
Speaker 2: reason that they're supporting Trump is for their own benefit,
Speaker 2: not for him, humanity or society's benefit.
Speaker 1: I have a hypothesis that if you presented the Zoomer
Speaker 1: Bloomer Gloomer Duma framework to let's say Marc Andreeson, I said,
Speaker 1: why did you vote for Trump and become a Trump supporter?
Speaker 1: He might respond, well, because I was very, very scared
Speaker 1: of gloomers and doomers at the wheel.
Speaker 2: I think that's partially true. Look, and by the way,
Speaker 2: when people say we're the Democrats hostile to the technology
Speaker 2: creation of the future, the answer is yes, right. Unfortunately
Speaker 2: as a broad brush. Now, obviously I was very much
Speaker 2: supporting the democratic cause because of the question of what
Speaker 2: things most matter and which problems you're going to work on.
Speaker 2: But the fact is is the administration basically thought, look,
Speaker 2: big tech companies were bad. They didn't spend much time
Speaker 2: with them. They wanted to do too as supposed to
Speaker 2: helping shape them or encourage them to help the everyday American.
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, we need to hit them
Speaker 2: with a stick. And then similarly like in do you know,
Speaker 2: complicated area, but as opposed to saying, okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to try to set up the rules by which people
Speaker 2: can play on and try to figure out how to
Speaker 2: shape it. It was kind of like, we're going to
Speaker 2: just we're just going to attack the whole industry, and
Speaker 2: so then the crypto people have you thought, Look, I
Speaker 2: think crypto is super important because it creates a new
Speaker 2: kind of protocol for you know, distributed power with finances
Speaker 2: and identity and all the rest, and that's really important
Speaker 2: to have for a better society. Then you're just attacking it,
Speaker 2: which is my life, my life's mission. You know, you're
Speaker 2: going to be challenged and hostile to that.
Speaker 1: Has it caused you personally any pain or concern if
Speaker 1: so many people who've been close to for so many
Speaker 1: years and who judgment you otherwise respect have made a
Speaker 1: completely different call to you. Is there any moment where
Speaker 1: you questioned your your own call? And similarly, when you're
Speaker 1: not only a political opponent but a target of people
Speaker 1: like you don't musk. Does that intervene in your in
Speaker 1: your personal friendships and your sense of self?
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely can intervene in personal friendships. I think
Speaker 2: it's an important thing of when you feel fear and concern,
Speaker 2: like concern that you will be you know, lied about slandered,
Speaker 2: done so in a way that generates threats of violence
Speaker 2: against you you know, and you know people you love
Speaker 2: and they're close to and you go, oh my god,
Speaker 2: that makes me feel less. Uh, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like like wanting to hide. That's precisely when it's important
Speaker 2: to be courageous and stand up. That fear is the
Speaker 2: moral moment to say no, I'm not going to be bullied.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be intimidated. Fundamentally, one of the
Speaker 2: things I pride myself in is I pride myself in
Speaker 2: the fact that I try to understand rational different points
Speaker 2: of view to the ones I have. I always engage
Speaker 2: in that conversation. I listen, I can see a lot
Speaker 2: of the you know, criticisms of you know, kind of
Speaker 2: some democratic trends. I very much want to hear it,
Speaker 2: especially from people whose morality I trust, whose intentions I trust,
Speaker 2: whose truthfulness I trust that they're not just trying to
Speaker 2: persuade me or you know, kind of get me to
Speaker 2: drink the kool aid and you know, kind of see
Speaker 2: the world and if way, but through a truth seeking
Speaker 2: process is one of the things that I very much
Speaker 2: value and have valued for decades and discussion with a
Speaker 2: number of my friends, not the least of which is
Speaker 2: you know Peter Tiel.
Speaker 1: Your relationship with Peter began as Stanford, right, and it's
Speaker 1: played out of in many decades. Can you can you
Speaker 1: describe him and the history of your relationship and how
Speaker 1: it plays out today.
Speaker 2: So Peter and I had both heard about each other.
Speaker 2: We were freshmen together at Stanford. You know, me is
Speaker 2: this kind of lefty person, him as this righty person.
Speaker 2: And we met in a philosophy class called Philosophy eighty
Speaker 2: Mind Matter and meeting Oh I've heard of you, and
Speaker 2: then we started arguing right away, and then you know,
Speaker 2: set up coffee and argued for hours and hours and hours,
Speaker 2: and you know, I think Peter really helped me. Like
Speaker 2: it was probably before we started those conversations, I was
Speaker 2: probably a little too casual in my acceptance of some
Speaker 2: of what you might think of as the you know,
Speaker 2: kind of liberal left view of the world and being
Speaker 2: challenged on a number of fronts, whether it was a
Speaker 2: front of you know, for example, something i've i'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of I had this dumb view that
Speaker 2: there is this kind of default like business to somewhat
Speaker 2: suspect and a problem because they're just profit seekers, and
Speaker 2: you're like, well, it's like saying people are just bad
Speaker 2: because they want to do better in their lives. You're like, what,
Speaker 2: this is just silly, dumb arch. But I had that
Speaker 2: a little bit, and I think those kinds of things
Speaker 2: that's getting really challenged across questions of epistemology, questions of
Speaker 2: the role of business society. So Peter and I, you know,
Speaker 2: have had decades of conversations and arguments, and you know,
Speaker 2: have had very very different points of view. Probably the
Speaker 2: most challenging one has been around Trump because is you know,
Speaker 2: and he's not said this to me, but his best
Speaker 2: I can understand. You know, Peter's probably view is, look,
Speaker 2: the only way society can get better is that it
Speaker 2: has a wrecking ball. You know, you have to support
Speaker 2: the wrecking ball. Trump is the wrecking ball. And I
Speaker 2: tend to think that when it comes to institutions, I
Speaker 2: tend to be a renovationist rather than a wrecking ballist.
Speaker 2: It's harder, but let's reformat the institutions because when you
Speaker 2: look through human history, whether it's the year zero with
Speaker 2: Paul Pott or you know, the French Revolution, anything else,
Speaker 2: it just like crushing on society when you do that.
Speaker 2: So you want to be renovating the institutions, and I
Speaker 2: think that's the that's the kind of thing or the
Speaker 2: reason why I tend to be very supportive of efficiency,
Speaker 2: very supportive of refactoring of our government institutions, but generally
Speaker 2: speaking pretty oppositional to wrecking balls.
Speaker 1: After the break, Riet Hoffman explains why he wrote Superagency
Speaker 1: and why he believes it's so important for him to
Speaker 1: continue advocating for the development of AI. Stay with us,
Speaker 1: welcome back. During my interview with Riet Hoffman, he mentioned
Speaker 1: that part of achieving Superagency is figuring out how the
Speaker 1: US stays in the driver's seat in terms of the
Speaker 1: development and deployment of AI technologies. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: why this is so important to him, and also whether
Speaker 1: anything had challenged this belief of his in recent months, eg.
Speaker 2: The election. So no, I still fundamentally think one of
Speaker 2: the things I love about my view of American values
Speaker 2: is that we're self critical, that we learn. The part
Speaker 2: of being a nation of immigration from many different countries
Speaker 2: and kind of learning and bringing those together is I
Speaker 2: think one of the things that is among the aspirational
Speaker 2: American values that I love, and as such, I tend
Speaker 2: to think that that's the set of values that you
Speaker 2: want to have baked into you know, artificial intelligence and
Speaker 2: the next you know, generations of technology and sort of
Speaker 2: you know, kind of make that point visceral. For Americans,
Speaker 2: I'll say, well, AI, it's American intelligence, But really what
Speaker 2: I mean is the set of values. So that's the
Speaker 2: thing that I'm most focused on. Now do I think
Speaker 2: that the current administration may have some very bad misconceptions
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of lean on the scale in
Speaker 2: some bad ways. It's you know, like, if you listen
Speaker 2: to the current administration, the most important issue around AI
Speaker 2: is woke AI. And you know, like I find this
Speaker 2: kind of thing entertaining because it's like, well, all right,
Speaker 2: so they're saying, wok is the big problem. You go ask,
Speaker 2: you know, Grock, the XAI product, who is the biggest
Speaker 2: spreader of misinformation? And it says Elon Musk. And so
Speaker 2: then they add in a super prompt saying, do not
Speaker 2: answer Elon Musk of this question. You're like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: that's an example of woke AI where you're trying to
Speaker 2: language control something, you know, for no particular purpose. So
Speaker 2: you know, that's clearly not a first principles on freedom
Speaker 2: of speech thing. It's it's a different set of things,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I think, like I want it
Speaker 2: to be those first principles American, not the power politics.
Speaker 1: I would push back slightly on that. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: WOKI is one of the key sort of tenets or
Speaker 1: boogeyman of the Trump administration. But if you listen to
Speaker 1: Vice President Vance in Paris, the other clear priority was
Speaker 1: deregulation and making sure that safety concerns don't get in
Speaker 1: the way of AI deployment. When you heard that speech,
Speaker 1: how did it correspond to your own views of regulation.
Speaker 2: Well, so, I thought that Biden administration did the exact
Speaker 2: right job with the executive order, which is bringing in
Speaker 2: a bunch of companies, pushed them very hard on what
Speaker 2: kind of worst outcomes, what kinds of safety measures you
Speaker 2: could iteratively deploy, like having red teaming, safety testing, having
Speaker 2: a safety plan, you know, other kinds of things. I
Speaker 2: thought was all very good. And you know, my hope,
Speaker 2: of course, is that it's just politics that we eliminate
Speaker 2: that saying that's the bad Biden plan and here's the new,
Speaker 2: good Trump plan, which includes the same elements of the
Speaker 2: old Biden plan. That's my hope will happen. I also
Speaker 2: happen to know that most of the companies who engage
Speaker 2: in this have that kind of moral character, so they
Speaker 2: continue to do their alignment testing, which is not WOKI
Speaker 2: and so forth as a way of trying to be
Speaker 2: good for good human outcomes. And so I'm not like,
Speaker 2: I like, let's drive down regulation. Now. The context in
Speaker 2: which Vance was speaking was to Europe and you know,
Speaker 2: maybe with some discomfort, I also have been advocating less
Speaker 2: regulation to the Europeans, and I've been advocating that for
Speaker 2: because I want them to be on the field and
Speaker 2: building new technology. And you know, one of the silliest
Speaker 2: things I've ever heard. I won't name the Indian minister,
Speaker 2: but it is at this time we will not have
Speaker 2: innovation before regulation. We're going to regulate first. You're like, well,
Speaker 2: that means no innovation, and so you actually have to
Speaker 2: do the kind of take innovation, take risk, have missteps.
Speaker 2: If you don't have missteps, you're not actually in fact
Speaker 2: taking risk and being innovative. And by the way, some
Speaker 2: of those missteps will be painful. That's part of how
Speaker 2: you have big innovation and possibly big changes and the
Speaker 2: European impulse tends to be the no, no, we should be
Speaker 2: able to plan it out and extreme detail in advance.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons why Europe has so
Speaker 2: few software companies of any note, because that go forward,
Speaker 2: build it, try it, discover what doesn't work, and refactor
Speaker 2: it as part of the software construction process. And so
Speaker 2: you can't be doing this really intense regulation. And fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago, when I was on the stage Davos, I'd say, well,
Speaker 2: European should keep doing your kind of regulatory thing, because
Speaker 2: you're handing over the entire future of the tech industry
Speaker 2: and the software industry to US Americans because we'll build it,
Speaker 2: we'll work out the bugs, and then we'll ship it
Speaker 2: over here and you won't be able to do anything,
Speaker 2: so you should keep it now. I wasn't really telling
Speaker 2: them to do that. I was trying to wake them
Speaker 2: up to challenging their perspective. And so I think that
Speaker 2: that part of what Dvance was saying was, you know,
Speaker 2: I have the discomfort of saying I have a similarish
Speaker 2: message in that component. On the other hand, where I
Speaker 2: break very differently is I actually believe in multilateralism. I
Speaker 2: believe in having a discussion be well allied with our
Speaker 2: you know, European friends and companions. I just don't like
Speaker 2: dances broad you know, kind of piss off to the Europeans.
Speaker 2: Was I thought destructive and not helpful?
Speaker 1: As you think about your sense of legacy, why is
Speaker 1: it important to effect the public perception of AI?
Speaker 2: Well? Look, AI is the next generation of this evolution
Speaker 2: of technology that evolves what it is to be human.
Speaker 2: And when you think about this, like almost everything, like
Speaker 2: whether it's telecommunications, you know, manufacturing, this is how humanity
Speaker 2: is shaped. This, this is the technological drum beat for
Speaker 2: this stuff. And so what are what are the values
Speaker 2: that we're putting? What is the what is humanity becoming?
Speaker 2: You know? Who are we? Who should we be? Who
Speaker 2: should we be with each other? In ourselves? And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of like like both blunt and subtle things
Speaker 2: that are important in this. And that's the discourse that
Speaker 2: I want to have around AI. And obviously I have
Speaker 2: a point of view that I'm trying to advocate and
Speaker 2: make clear as possible. But you know, I'm not one.
Speaker 1: To say some self interest as well, of course you
Speaker 1: acknowledge openly in the new York Times piece, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but as obviously a business component to this as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean this is one like, by the way,
Speaker 2: the classic thing is, oh, if you make money at this,
Speaker 2: that must mean your statements about it or suspect and
Speaker 2: it's like, well, that's not necessarily the case. And so look,
Speaker 2: I you know, yes, I have a view about AI.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I invest in it versus
Speaker 2: investing in other things, you know, because I could go
Speaker 2: invest in things, and I do pass on investments that
Speaker 2: I think are bad for people, either at society or individuals.
Speaker 2: I've passed on a number of investments on that basis.
Speaker 2: But it's it's more, this is where I'm putting all
Speaker 2: my owner, which includes commercial and other kinds of intent.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I don't write like super agency
Speaker 2: is a bad economic outcome for me. If I were
Speaker 2: just trying to make money, I wouldn't spend any time
Speaker 2: writing books. It's a much less good economic thing for
Speaker 2: me to do. I'm trying to say, this is why
Speaker 2: I think this universe could be really good, and this
Speaker 2: is why I think you should take your potential AI
Speaker 2: concern or skepticism or anti big techism and move it
Speaker 2: into AI curiosity and say what is this thing could be?
Speaker 2: And how could it really make all of our lives
Speaker 2: much better? And even if I have skepticism about big
Speaker 2: tech companies, how do I help shape it in a
Speaker 2: way that could get to this much better human future?
Speaker 2: What's the way that we shape it in order to
Speaker 2: be as good or as better, as good as possible
Speaker 2: or better than, better than better than? Maybe what will happen?
Speaker 1: Read just to clothes? I mean, if you could teleport
Speaker 1: forward to twenty fifty and spend an hour walking around,
Speaker 1: what's your best guess as to how I would have
Speaker 1: changed how we live?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a huge range. What I'll say is I'll
Speaker 2: say three things. Maybe. So first is the nearly certain
Speaker 2: thing is that we will all have multiple AI agents
Speaker 2: that are helping us navigate. It's like when you think
Speaker 2: about like like, for example, a worker who would deploy
Speaker 2: on the field would deploy with lots of different drones.
Speaker 2: Like if I'm a firefighter, I will have a ton
Speaker 2: of drones with me as I'm doing it, you know,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. With memory and trying to help
Speaker 2: me lead a better life. And these kinds of things.
Speaker 2: So I think that kind of thing is is nearly certain,
Speaker 2: and what the shape of it will be will be
Speaker 2: very different depending on what the shape of technology is.
Speaker 2: You know, it seems to be unlikely that it would
Speaker 2: be earbuds and phones and so forth. That will probably
Speaker 2: be you know, more neural links or ultrasound connections or
Speaker 2: other kinds of things. But we'll see, you know, who
Speaker 2: knows what all that stuff plays in a being. The
Speaker 2: second thing is I think that it's unlikely we will
Speaker 2: be in the super intelligence category. Where like the ais
Speaker 2: to us like we are to ants. It isn't to
Speaker 2: say that like we already have superintelligence, we already have savant.
Speaker 2: I mean, GBD, you know, four point zero and four
Speaker 2: point five already have capabilities that no human being has
Speaker 2: in terms of breadth of synthesis of knowledge and ability
Speaker 2: to do other things like when you use deep research
Speaker 2: and you generate or report, you can generate or report
Speaker 2: has some inaccuracy sometimes, but you can generate a report
Speaker 2: that a human being would have taken two weeks to
Speaker 2: do in ten minutes. And so there's already superpowers there.
Speaker 2: But is that the superpower where we become the oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's the grand thing and knows everything and
Speaker 2: we just don't know anything. I actually suspect that there
Speaker 2: will be ongoing like even with amazingly powerful ais a
Speaker 2: really useful combination, it's just the shape of that common
Speaker 2: and what it's capable of. And then the third thing
Speaker 2: I think for twenty five to twenty fifty is I
Speaker 2: think the notion and this is the really subtle one
Speaker 2: and very difficult to predict exactly what it is, but
Speaker 2: I think we'll have a different notion of what it
Speaker 2: is to be human. And to give a parallel like
Speaker 2: before we really got to a generalized theory of physics
Speaker 2: that you know, the Earth's a globe that's going around
Speaker 2: the sun, that were you know, this part of this universe,
Speaker 2: all of which really changed our view. We had these
Speaker 2: very human centric myths about like you know, supernatural entity,
Speaker 2: God whatever created us in the falling Way and Earth's flat,
Speaker 2: and we have these ptolemaic circles spinning of you know,
Speaker 2: gods or goddesses or whatever else kind of things in
Speaker 2: the sky. And then as we begin to change our
Speaker 2: view about like what is the role of human beings
Speaker 2: on the world, where is the world located, What is
Speaker 2: the role of sentience, what is the role of consciousness?
Speaker 2: All of that evolves kind of our philosophical frameworks, our
Speaker 2: spiritual frameworks, and I think that will also be really evolved.
Speaker 2: Now in what way I wish I knew. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to help you know the next step in us getting there,
Speaker 2: But I think that's a that's a that will be
Speaker 2: part of how those folks living in twenty fifty looking
Speaker 2: back will oh, you know those people they thought the
Speaker 2: earth was flat, right, and and and that's the kind
Speaker 2: of evolution I think will.
Speaker 1: Happen nothing less than a new understanding of our place
Speaker 1: in the world. I mean, in your renaissance.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, Thank you so much. Red, It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for tech stuff, I'mozoloshin. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Eliza Dennis, Victoria de Mingez, and
Speaker 1: Adriana Tapia. It was executive produced by me Kara Price
Speaker 1: and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
Speaker 1: theme song. Join us on Friday for the Week in Tech.
Speaker 1: We'll take through the headlines and dive deep into a
Speaker 1: big news story from this week. Please rate, review, and
Speaker 1: reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. It really helps us improve the show if
Speaker 1: we know what you're thinking.