Reid Hoffman Talks AI Outlook

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Well, our next guest needs no introduction, but we're gonna give them one anyway. He's a Silicon Valley legend. He helped build PayPal. He co founded LinkedIn. He was an early investor in Facebook and Airbnb. He was the first investor in open Ai. He co founded the AI company Inflection Ai. He's on Microsoft's board. He's a partner at the VC firm Greylock Partners. He's a New York Times bestselling author, and he's also a podcast we have read Hoffmans.

Great to be here. Thank you for you.

As we were just talking, it's the loudest environment where we've ever done a radio show before it so hopefully it'll work.

It's working so far, so far, so good.

But I have to ask you, are you a real or am I talking to some sort of AI digital twin round?

Well, and explain why I have to ask that question, please, So.

As you as you know, I did an interview with myself where I was talking to my own digital twin read AI, and.

I did it in order to kind of show that not only obviously there's a.

Whole bunch of concerns, there's concerns and political and misinformation and and and a deep makes and a bunch of other stuff that are real concerns. But even here there's optimism to look at what can we shaped towards. And I wanted to show not just how that message and so I was like, okay, well let me talk to my own read AI and see how it works. And so and the reason why you asked that question, of course, and you said, well, wait a minute.

That was pretty good. It was we're here in person, you can tell this is I'm the real.

Sounds like this looked like you. Yes, yeah, it is like you looked.

Like video audio and the words we're all AI generated.

It was zero from me. It was other than mirroring off.

My earlier videos, mirroring off my earlier podcast.

Use your use your book to train as well.

Yes, yeah, it used all everything I written to good answers the way read wouldn't answered.

We're all going to have digital twins someday, and we're gonna use us.

We go to the DMV for me, So I think we must.

It's certainly possible. Certainly, if you're a media person, you'll have a digital twin. Certainly if you're a leader, you'll have a digital twin because it'll be used in If you're a lawyer, you'll have one because then people can talk to your digital twins and maybe at a cheaper rate the dog you are preparing for your meeting or that kind of thing. So I think it will be a stack of areas for digital twins that will be very real.

But I'm not sure all eight billion people were.

Also district well, so so why should this excite us and not scare us and want us to all move to bunkers.

So it should be, but naturally it should both excite and scare us.

The scaret is the negative is the.

Scas is of political misinformation, you know, things that are going to be happening this year in the US until we're in other major elections of democracy. It should scare us because there's questions around a minute, what did someone who created a deep make of me doing something or saying something?

I really am poor? Like you know, like you know how I.

Think Trump is a corruption in democracy against the rule on what happens to your created I love Trump.

You know that would be obviously a problem.

And so there's all kinds of ways that there are real problems are So on the other hand, we will we will, as we always do with technology, to figure out how to navigate and get that not perfectly but sufficiently, and there will be great things like for example, that's part of the reason I started showing me. Hey, look here, I'm making a deep bake of myself and it's not that bad.

You know, read when you sat down, I said, the conversations we have a lot of blueberg and we've written about this is here.

You have Lincoln kind of the social.

Media site, that kind of the social media site that seems to be clean, pure, You can stress any conversations so we can get it right. So how is that kind of a guiding for since in terms of jenai and how do you think about this? What are the guardrails? How do we regulate it?

Yeah, and so the good news is the mostly frontier model companies, Microsoft, Open Ai, Google are all putting a lot of energy in that kind of making these models healthy participants within the US, but within the global kind of media ecosystem, like don't generate fake inflammation, be civil, you know, don't do hate speech, don't enabe it self harm. They all put a lot of energy and a lot of work in that, and I don't.

Can invest hundreds of millions of dollars and teams one hundreds of people in order to do that.

Now, one of the challenges is is that some of these models are an open source, and as an open source, someone else takes the open source model to something that's not any of that with that right, and that's part of the reason why we still have to navigate this.

So you have trust so that we can navigate it correctly and safely in the future AI.

So the ultimate answer is absolutely yes. That doesn't mean that there aren't.

Potholes, you know, bumps in the road, under scrapes all the rest, and I guarantee you there will be those two.

The US can't get Vladimir Putin not to invade in Ukraine. The world can't get him not to stop fighting there. What convinces you that we could.

Get a leader like him not to use AI? Oh bad?

Zero percent?

Like if you said that, uh that Hooton will be using AI to disrupt the US elections, you know probably support Trump because that's his exit strategy from Ukraine.

Uh, he will do that. One is no way of having it. The defense is not getting him not to do it.

The defense is integrating AI in our own tech platform.

I'm using our stronger AI in defects.

So essentially saying, okay, well, maybe you see something on Facebook and met platforms might have developed something that says, Okay, well this isn't necessarily.

Something that's true.

Yes, but do you.

Trust Do you trust Facebook to do that?

Actually?

So, and you have a deep history with the company, Yes, I have a deep.

History of the company.

I actually have talked to Zucker Bigger about it, and they're investing in it. I think they're making a real effort. So I think like they're really try. I'm more worried about Twitter that I am about Facebook on this matter.

Okay, why are you more worried about Twitter?

Well, because, looks Elon.

Musk is someone you also go way beastly.

Yeah, and look, Elon is a literally one of the heroes of our generation.

You know, uh, Space and.

Kind of Starlink and Tesla and easy just amazing, amazing, amazing. You wouldn't have any of this about it. It is so spectacular. On the other hand, before he buys Twitter, he's like, oh, we have this problem with robots and then after he bought the lot trying to get out of the and then after your body, oh what robots, and you're like, oh, the robots are still there. There's still like Internet Research Agency watching robot farms doing shit.

Are you doing anything about them? I'm not hearing anything.

To be fair, I did see I did see an ad on.

Twitter recently with a deep bake of Jeff Bezos pushing a cryptocurrency. It's a paid ad, yes, that has showed up repeatedly in my feed obviously not a proved vice.

Yes, yes, yeah, And so therefore, what are you doing about AI and j Well, you know, elon is so complex.

Back from Milkin, he did a conversation with Michael Milton.

He said, very important to have.

Maximum seeking AI and maximum curious AI. And then it's taught not to lie nor do things that are not true.

Well, walk the lock, don't just lock the dock. Well, can I ask? I'm as curious as we have.

All these conversations about jen AI. How is it going to impact my life? How's it really going to impact him's life, How's it really going to impact your life?

So here's a simple way of looking at all of us are going to have a personal AI assistant that it's going to be helping with us with its focus on us, right, so it'll be like, Hey, what do you need help with? Do you need help with figuring out say something like like where to go? What's entertaining to do you know in the cities and I or Oh I'm having this, I'm trying to figure out this thing with my kids. Oh, we can help you with that. Oh I'm trying to figure this medical thing. Oh I

Which has pides personal intelligence is.

People will stay, Oh, I got these eight ingredients with my friends what should I name? Or my toaster broke and I fixed it and you're like, actually, in fact, it helps with all of that. So that's that human amplification that's helping us navigate our lives, which is the thing I guarantee will be.

That I love the ingredients in the Fridge part of it.

Hey, if you're just joining us, we're speaking to the REDA Hoffmann, the PayPal of LinkedIn, of open AI, of Inflection AI, of the podcast Possible. But this certainly goes on read I'm wondering about winners and losers when it comes to AI AI in terms of companies.

You're on the board of Microsoft. I'm mented a couple of the.

Big companies that you've invested in, that you founded. Is there a concern that we're just going to see the big companies like Microsoft, like in video, like Amazon, like meta platforms, they're going to be the only winners when it comes to AI.

What I guarantee you is they're not going to be the only one. They will be winners.

Right.

Satia has just done a masterful job, like like remember it started with a.

Million dollars deal with a five O one C three.

I think in the first time in the history something like that's happening, like genius strategy from talking and I think it will be Uh, it'll across all of these companies. I think they will have strong winds going in the future. On the other hand, you know at bray Locke, we're investing a whole bunch of AI company.

We do it reasonably well.

We have a whole portfolio that we're excited about. And I think that the I think that it's just you don't play the same game. It's a little bit like and you said, hey, I gotta start up. I'm gonna try to make a new desktop search company. You're like, well, one of the difficults, right there is this company called Google.

It's a little challenging.

Okay, you know, I'm gonna make a new handset mobile phone device. You're like, oh, there's this company called a whole it's a little challenging. So you know, you don't do it that way. But there's gonna be a whole range of other AI companies.

The things that will like everything from opportunities that the large.

Tech companies just can't focus on, to taking interesting risk and making that risk look good and then all of a sudden building out ins and mean, so I think there's gonna be rain.

The startups are well excited about ideas. We have podcasts. We have a great podcast.

You have a great new podcast.

Tell us about possible, Well, tell us about it, like you want to talk too.

What are the conversations you want to have, so for me, it's possible.

It's too much of the dialogue is about technology being dangerous to us. How we evolve this humanity, how we become better and more human.

It's throd technology.

It's it's clothing, it's classes, it's it's it's food, it's cooking, it's fired, it's buildings.

All of this is.

Technology that's helped us make us as the human names we are. AI will be saying as the whole point I'm on the Possible podcast used to say, this is how technology can help us become more human, not to go, oh my god, what's coming in technology. It's it can be great for us, and it's not that hard to shape.

We just need to shape it. Whether it's AI, whether it's just the use of phones.

And you know, obviously people like to talk about what social networks and they go, wow, that's going to have a talented It's like, well, look at LinkedIn. LinkedIn's work out pretty well, it's doable. It's doable, so let's do it.

We don't want to end with something that everybody loves to talk about politics.

We all agree.

Look, you've been open about your feelings about these some Trump, do you help fund Eugene Carroll's definition of lawsuits against the former president. There are a lot of business leaders out there, some of them people you work with very closely, to say that business under a President Trump administration was better than business under a Biden administration. And that's why we're in the corner of Donald Trump when it comes to twenty twenty four.

What do you say to them?

So I understand the approach that Trump reason is more regulatory lightweight than Biden. And by the way, generally speaking, being more regulatory lightweight is a good thing. I try to encourage the Biden administration to do that. On the other hand, what's more fundamental is the rule of law. Business works much much better with a healthy, strong rule of law.

You do not want to have leaders who are literally in a court.

Like had been convicted by a court of you were slandering about your sexual assault and a jury found you guilty. Right, we should be a rule of law country first. And by the way, this is what's the business leaders. By the way, rule of law is what makes great business. That's the reason why actually Biden is a matter of president for business, even though the regulatory thing won't be exactly what you.

Want, and we'll have to work on it. But rule of laws fundamental and to your perspective, your point of you, yes, my mind, yes, business.

But I do wonder that you know, soon as you look at the November election, that outcome, if it is not another Biden White House present, former president from back in the White House, what does it mean for the tech industry or in terms of the rule.

Of laws not plowed?

Well, So, look, I there's the tech industry can pride under either administration.

But I do think that if either buy nor trust stuff.

But if I think Trump's elected, I think history will look back as the beginning of the end of the American world order, and that will have a massive effect on global business.

How far are you willing to go? It's a reelect your.

Well, I'm willing to invest, I'm willing to speak, I'm willing to campaign, I'm willing to try to Like when a prominent business leader speaks up and says I'm pro drought, I call them and I said, let's talk about it.

Do you ever change their mind?

Of course?

Look for example, look, one of the things you have to do is think about blind spots, like I just said something that was positive about how Trump's administration was running. Like I inspite to say you want a new regulation, we're move an old one.

It's an exactly right thing.

But I think what you said about globally the perception of the rest of the world potentially what the US means and what it is in terms of busy.

People will not trust us. They will say we now no longer trust that. You're into the world of law and equal system all the rest.

All right, if you weren't in a world where Jenna AI was everything twenty seconds, what's the other technology? We should have it on radars quickly.

Well, so the other thing that's following behind it is synthetic biology. And when you put them together, by the way, like the invention of new pharmaceuticals, new medicines, everything else, it's like, let's just hold on to get to the future, because the future could be so amazing.

You do you think about what AI could do right and just play around?

Thank you so much, Thank you for enjuring my pleasure.

Appreciated read.

Thank you so much.

That's Reid Hoffman of PayPal Linked.

Saying that your Time's best selling author his podcast Possible The Possible Podcast.

Season two started. It's out now,