Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Reid Hoffman: Unlocking Limitless Human Possibilities With AI | Artificial Intelligence | E333
Mon, 03 Feb 2025
Starting as an early AI enthusiast during his Stanford days, Reid Hoffman was eager to explore the potential of artificial intelligence, but the technology wasn’t ready, so he shifted his focus. Years later, inspired by conversations with top tech innovators, he recognized AI’s potential and seized the moment. He became a founding investor in OpenAI and later co-founded Inflection AI. In this episode, Reid introduces the concept of "superagency," where AI enhances human capabilities rather than replaces them, addresses common fears about AI, and shares his vision for a future shaped by AI-powered agents. In this episode, Hala and Reid will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:06) AI as the Next Big Wave (03:30) AI, Jobs, and Concerns for the Future (08:01) Superagency: Amplifying Human Capability with AI (18:38) Training AI to Be a Better Human Companion (22:20) Trust and Misinformation in the Age of AI (25:01) Why Human Expertise Still Matters in AI (27:19) Reid’s AI Twin (30:12) Leveraging AI for Content Creation (31:37) How AI Will Shape the Future Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur, investor, partner at Greylock, and co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection AI. He was an executive at PayPal and a founding investor in several companies, including OpenAI. Reid actively supports various non-profits and has received numerous accolades, including an honorary CBE from the Queen of England and the Salute to Greatness Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for his philanthropic efforts. Resources Mentioned: Reid’s Book, Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future: https://amzn.to/4g7cfVG Reid’s Book, Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI: amzn.to/4an8J8g Reid’s AI Video, Reid Hoffman Meets His AI Twin: bit.ly/4jzlVeD Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold NordVPN - Get 4 extra months on your 2-year plan with NordVPN plan at nordvpn.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, personal development, starting a business, Strategy, investing, sales, selling, psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, technology, marketing, negotiation, money, finance, side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, leadership, mindset, health, growth mindset. AI, ChatGPT, AI Marketing, Prompt, AI in Action, Artificial Intelligence, AI in Business, Generative AI, AI for Entrepreneurs, Future of Work, AI Podcast Productivity, Work-Life Balance, Work Life Balance, Team Building, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Time Management, Life Balance, Goal Setting, Goals, Resolutions
Chapter 1: How does Reid Hoffman view the future of AI?
You co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleiman, and you're really creating companions for people.
We've moved from the computers being the bicycle of the mind to AI being the automobiles of the mind. Let's figure out how we want the technology to evolve, how we're going to use it, how we use it together, how we use it individually. Usually human beings will be replaced by other human beings using AI, and in some cases by AI, but there will also be a bunch of new jobs created too.
Chapter 2: What is 'Superagency' and how does it enhance human capability?
Why are you so optimistic about AI?
Because I think AI is going to be the... The future is already here, it's unevenly distributed.
Welcome back to the show. Today we are playing part two of my episode with Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman is an incredible entrepreneur. He's the co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection AI. And in part one of this conversation, we focused on entrepreneurship. So if you haven't heard that yet, make sure you subscribe. Stop and go back and listen to that one first, especially for an entrepreneur.
We talk all about blitz scaling. We talk about his early failures as an entrepreneur, and he uncovered so many gems in this conversation. You don't want to miss it. If you've already heard that one, go enjoy part two of this episode on AI, where we're going to learn everything that he believes AI will bring to our future, including our own personal AI agents. It was an incredible conversation.
You guys are going to blow your mind with this one. So without further delay, here's my conversation with the incredible Reid Hoffman. AI is definitely transforming the world, and I know that you're doing a lot in AI. So let's start talking about that. When did you first get interested in AI and realize its potential impact?
In one sense, my undergraduate major at Stanford was artificial intelligence. It was called symbolic systems. It was kind of the earliest undergraduate AI major. But then I concluded the time wasn't right, and I went off to do other things. And then it was discussions with...
a set of different people, Demis Hassabis at DeepMind, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, relative to OpenAI, and some other things that, okay, actually, in fact, now is the time. And the particular thing wasn't so much the invention of an algorithm. A lot of the fundamentals of the kind of algorithms that are being used for the magic of today.
There's been a bunch of inventions, but the fundamentals were already somewhat there. What the transformation was, was essentially scale compute and learning machines and data to learn from. It was like, oh, this is going to generate magic. Actually, none of us are quite sure exactly all the kinds of magic will come out of it and what will happen once it's GPD-5, for example.
But we know we're going to be able to create things that are capabilities, cognitive capabilities, that have never been seen before. And that, you know, simple ways to parallel the metaphor is like, well, actually, in fact, every single computational device isn't going to no longer have an interface and a manual. It's just you're going to talk to it, right?
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Chapter 3: Why does Reid Hoffman remain optimistic about AI's impact on jobs?
I'm familiar with every single pessimist argument, and the frequent thing is something along the lines, let's take the most extreme. Can you guarantee me that we won't deliberately or accidentally create terminators? And you go, no, I can't guarantee. Oh, then it's really bad. We should have a cautionary principle. And you're like, well...
That's if you thought that the only thing here was creation of terminators or not. So like, for example, take, this is called existential risk. Let's take existential risk. Existential risk is a basket. It's not just, are there killer robots or not? It's also nuclear war, asteroids, pandemics, climate change, a bunch of other things.
So you say, well, if we create AI, is the basket, well, yes, we may add the terminator robots as a negative possibility, but is the basket of risk get better or worse? And I think it just gets better because it's the only way I can think of to solve pandemics. I think it's already helping in questions of advancing certain technologies around climate change.
There's just a stack of things where you go, just creating it is better. Next thing is people say, well, what about jobs? And you say, well, okay, there's basically, I think always in the transition, there'll be difficulties and challenges and navigating that transition is one of the things I'm most focused on.
But it's just like the industrial revolution with the loom and everything else and moving to the power loom. And we're going to have that. That's going to have a disruption in society. There's going to be challenges with that, guaranteed.
But on the other side, like when we look at our entire lives today of societies that have middle classes and prosperous societies, it all comes from the Industrial Revolution. So the other side of that will very much look like the similar kind of amplification of what we've had here. Now you say, what does that mean for jobs?
Now, obviously we know we need them for economy and people's sense of purpose and sense of commitment. And you say, look, what we're going to have is all this transition by which we have amplification intelligence, right? The thing I described in my last book before Super Agency Impromptu, which is AI means amplification intelligence. And so human beings will be replaced
by other human beings using AI, and in some cases by AI, but there will also be a bunch of new jobs created too. And just like we didn't have a chance to really envision it in the future, we have to believe it's gonna happen. Now, if you said, we've now created our science fiction paradise of Star Trek, and no human beings need to work anymore, what happens?
By the way, that's called a good circumstance, and we'll figure it out. And we've had societies like European and other nobility where there was entire groups of people, classes of people who didn't have to work, and we may do with our lives. So even if we get there, so I think there will be difficulty in transition, but like an amazing outcome.
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Chapter 4: How will AI agents change our daily lives?
Here's the things that you need to watch out for in terms of how to use me and what kinds of things to do. And here's the places where, as I currently understand it, I'm going to be bad and need help and you can help me with. And now I can do the job transition. So that's the kind of thing that I think is why agency is so important to focus on.
And if you look at most of the things that people critique about these technologies, including AI, including smartphones, including cars, is it's this change in agency, whether it's like privacy or work and jobs or capabilities by the state, by other people, that then get people to be highly concerned. And you're like, well, actually, in fact,
if we go through it, if we do it in the right way, it'll be magical, I think, anyway, but it can be less suffering on the path to being magical and better navigated if we do it the right way.
So when you say super agency, basically what you're saying is we have human agency with AI. They'll be helping us become better humans. And that's why we have super agency. And then AI itself is going to be able to do things on its own, right? So can you talk to us about how AI will have agency? And then how do we imagine humans actually interacting with AI online?
I talked to Mustafa Suleiman, who I know is your colleague, and he told me like every human is going to have an AI companion and it's going to help them, you know, go on job interviews, start companies. So talk to us about those kind of concepts.
Part of what freaks people out a little bit is we are going to this agentic universe where all of a sudden, as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we'll still have, we'll have agents. And by the way, we'll have more than one. We may have one that we're, you know, particularly the hollow or read ongoing companion, always, you know, always around us and helping us with things.
But there's going to be a suite of them with kind of different specialties and different engagements. And by the way, you're, you know, your office is going to have one, your working group is going to have one. And, Probably your podcast is going to have one, et cetera. And it'll be here fairly soon. And people say, well, if they're agentic, does that take my agency away? And the answer is no.
The same way that when you work with colleagues and you work with employees and everything else, that expands your agency. That doesn't take it away. The agency is, I think, extremely important here. But by the way, a lot of it's kind of the mindset. Like if you think of your smartphone as, well, here's the way that everyone can get to me all the time when I don't really want to.
And here is this microphone and camera that's following me around and I don't know what it's doing. Gosh, I'm essentially going, oh, my God, my agency is being slaughtered. Whereas if I go, no, here's the way that I can stay in communication with a bunch of the people. I can call out to people. I can hear from people, sometimes when I want, sometimes when I don't. But I have choice over that.
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Chapter 5: What parallels exist between AI and past technological advances?
And this is the way you do it. And maybe agents don't know that much about the after hours tour. Or maybe there's a midnight bike ride that might be really good that, you know, doesn't necessarily know about. So there's ways that these kind of pulling things together.
And by the way, these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which is a lot more than any of us have, about what things would be really good for us. But It's like, for example, play with chat GPT and see what kinds of things it writes. And at least every time I've used it so far, and I suspect this will also be true of GPT-5 and GPT-6, I can always add something interesting to it.
I can change it, I can make it sharper, more distinct, et cetera. And that's kind of a mode for thinking, well, why will I always have a role in the things that really matter is because I'll figure out how to add something to it in a useful way, even as it gets much more powerful.
Now, if you look at it today, like one of the things that I'm a little always bemused by is people say, I saw two articles in one day earlier this year, which was all that AI is good for is faking homework. AI is going to destroy all jobs. And you're like, what? Okay.
Part of that's like right now, you're like, look, there's a very long way away from all this implication that everyone's talking about. I mean, there's some that's right here right now that's really spectacular, but there's a long journey, a long path, a long role for human beings to be participating in various ways and to be evolving and changing. And I, for one, look forward to that path.
I have to say, thinking about agents is so mind blowing. And when I think about AI, and all the talks that I've had, a lot of people talk about it as being like a great equalizer. And we were just talking about how humans are not going to work and everything like that. But I'm competitive, right?
So like, as I've been going through these conversations, I've been thinking about like, well, how am I going to be the best version of me? How am I going to be like a better entrepreneur and compete? But now, as I've thought about it more, I realize you have to be the best trainer of the AI.
I kind of imagine everybody being an entrepreneur, having agents that work at their personal company, basically. You basically have to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring out how to mobilize all that AI and all your AI support. And so smart people are going to be smarter at that. Right.
And creative and innovative people are going to be more creative and innovative when it comes to their own agents. And so I just feel like a lot of people are probably worried that there's not going to be any room for them to your point as humans. But I really think it's going to be how you manage your A.I.
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Chapter 6: How can individuals leverage AI for personal and professional growth?
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So I know that you co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleiman. And one of your big missions there is to create companions that have high emotional intelligence for humans. It's not a workplace tool. You're really creating companions for people. Why do you think that's important? And what gap did you see in the AI world? Why did you get on board with that?
So that's how we start with inflection. And part of that was because we said, well, what's the world that we see that necessarily people don't see that could be a very good product to create? Entrepreneur one, right? And we said, look, this agent, eugenic world coming, there's going to be more agents than people.
Everyone's going to have an agent that's their own personal agent that they have trust with. with and is on their side. And what are the key attributes of that? Because if you look at even the very earliest of how other people were thinking about agents, they were thinking about as information processing and work. And we were thinking about this as a trusted companion for how you'd operate.
And so EQ was as important as IQ. So we trained the inflection model PI, personal intelligence on this. Now, We've since then, we spoke about pivots earlier, we've pivoted the business. The consumer application of that is now being run as part of things that Microsoft's doing. And what Inflection, the company, is doing now is providing that same kind of best-in-class IQ, but also best-in-class EQ.
to businesses that want to deploy this within their ecosystem, to their customers, to their products and services. So it shifted to kind of a more of a B2B model where the PI agent is more the kind of exemplar of one of the unique models that Inflection has that it can deploy for your particular business challenges.
So it's a classic startup journey in addition to being an interesting evolution of the AI things.
And when it comes to having good EQ, I know obviously AI is not conscious, right? So how do you actually train it to have empathy and things like that?
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