Reid Hoffman: Superagency, How AI Will Help Humans Dominate the Future | Artificial Intelligence | AI Vault

When Reid Hoffman first began studying artificial intelligence at Stanford, the world wasn’t ready for it yet. Years later, inspired by conversations with top tech innovators, he recognized AI’s potential and seized the moment. As the founding investor in OpenAI and co-founder of Inflection AI, he’s at the forefront of shaping AI and the future of work. Now on Spotify Video! In this episode of the AI Vault series, Reid introduces the concept of "superagency," where AI enhances human capabilities rather than replacing them. He also addresses common fears surrounding AI and shares his vision for a future powered by AI-driven agents. In this episode, Hala and Reid will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:49) Reid's Early Interest in Artificial Intelligence (04:18) AI, Jobs, and Concerns for the Future (08:25) Superagency: Amplifying Human Capability with AI (19:34) Training AI to Be a Better Human Companion (23:15) Trust and Misinformation in the Age of AI (25:56) Why Human Expertise Still Matters in AI (28:13) Reid’s AI Twin (31:07) Leveraging AI for Content Creation (32:39) How AI in Action Will Shape the Future Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur, investor, partner at Greylock, and the co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection AI. He's also a bestselling author and host of the Masters of Scale podcast. Reid majored in artificial intelligence at Stanford through the Symbolic Systems program, one of the earliest undergraduate AI majors. As an early investor in OpenAI, he has become a prominent voice championing responsible AI development that expands and amplifies human potential. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Revolve - Head to REVOLVE.com/PROFITING and take 15% off your first order with code PROFITING DeleteMe - Remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans at to joindeleteme.com/profiting Spectrum Business - Visit Spectrum.com/FreeForLife to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Airbnb - Find yourself a cohost at airbnb.com/host Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap Framer - Publish beautiful and production-ready websites. Go to Framer.com/design and use code PROFITING Intuit QuickBooks - Bring your money and your books together in one platform at QuickBooks.com/money Resources Mentioned: Reid’s Book, Superagency: amzn.to/4g7cfVG Reid's Book, Blitzscaling: bit.ly/Blitzscalin Reid’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman Reid's Website: reidhoffman.org Reid’s AI Video, Reid Hoffman Meets His AI Twin: bit.ly/4jzlVeD Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new 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, ChatGPT, AI Marketing, Prompt, AI in Business, Generative AI, AI for Entrepreneurs, AI Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  I am genius. I don't need AI. It's like, no, I am genius because of the way that I use AI. People don't realize is every new major general purpose technology has a discourse that's very much like parallel to the one we're having today, which is this new technology is going to destroy society. 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.

• 1:30Hala Taha?

  Our guest today is LinkedIn and Inflection AI co-founder Reid Hoffman. In this conversation, Reid reveals how AI agents, digital companions, and emotionally intelligent bots will transform our work, our business, and our creativity.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Everybody's going to have multiple agents and assistants for everything they're doing, whether it's podcasting, or writing, or analyzing. And there will be more agents than there are people. Big tech companies who are trying to make a lot of money are building these things. And which things should I trust these AIs on, and which things should I not? And the answer is...

• 2:03Hala Taha?

  How do you imagine our world to be five, 10, 20 years in the future with AI?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  One of the things that I think people haven't really fully tracked yet, but I think would be very interesting, is how...

• 2:14Hala Taha?

  What's up my young and profiteers? Welcome back to another episode of the AI Vault Series. Our guest today is LinkedIn and Inflection AI co-founder Reid Hoffman. Reid believes that AI isn't just artificial intelligence. It's amplification intelligence, a force that can massively expand human potential when we learn how to use it the right way. In this conversation, Reid reveals how AI agents, digital companions, and emotionally intelligent bots will transform our work, our business, and our creativity, and why the real winners will be the people who learn to manage and deploy AI more effectively than everybody else. If you've been feeling anxious, confused, or overwhelmed about where AI is headed, this interview will give you a fresh lens, one that feels far more empowering.

• 2:58Hala Taha?

  So buckle up, yap fam. Here's my conversation with the incredible entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. Reid, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  It's great to be here. I've been looking forward to this.

• 3:09Hala Taha?

  First of all, I want to say I feel very honored to have you on the show. You are a truly prolific entrepreneur. You've literally helped push the world forward for decades. You've been a leader at companies like PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, now Inflection AI. You also were a part of OpenAI. So you've just been behind so many huge companies that have pushed the world forward, like I said. So I wanted to ask you, when you think of all your contributions to the world and all the companies that you work with, because you don't have to work right now, you choose to work. And so you must be thinking about like, okay, what makes me want to work with a company? What is your mission?

• 3:52Hala Taha?

  And what is the red thread with everything that you're doing in the world right now?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I guess probably it's like I'm kind of, you know, to put it a little philosophically, a humanist, which is how do we make ourselves better individually and as a group? So it's empowering a bunch of different individuals' lives. But also leaving the world much better than we found it. And kind of, uh, how do we do that? And, you know, that's kind of the red line through everything I do, including companies. Uh, because you want to do companies that, of course, have all the normal company things of, you know, providing great products, services and jobs and all the rest. But you also want it to be the impact that you have in the world. Leaves the world in a much better place. You transform industries, you transform societies and, you know, like all the companies you mentioned,

• 4:38Speaker 01

  you know, that I've been involved with from the earliest stages, whether it's, you know, personally, you know, LinkedIn and PayPal, or as an investor and board member, Airbnb, OpenAI, um, all of it has a kind of a theory of like, how does this improve? Like, human life, uh, human work, um, you know, quality of experience? How do, how do we elevate ourselves, become more, you know, kind of the people we aspire to be?

• 5:06Hala Taha?

  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, uh, you know, realized its potential impact?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Well, in one sense, my undergraduate major, uh, at Stanford was artificial intelligence. It was called symbolic systems, uh, but it was, it was kind of the earliest undergraduate AI major. Um, but then I concluded the time wasn't right and I went off to do other things. And then it was, you know, discussions with, you know, kind of, um, a set of different people. Demis Hassabis at DeepMind, uh, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, you know, 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, a lot of the, the kind of the, the, the way, the, the fundamentals

• 6:04Speaker 01

  of the kind of algorithms that are being used for the magic of today. You know, 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. And it was like, oh, this is going to generate magic. Actually, none of us are quite sure exactly all the kinds of magic that will come out of it and what will happen once it's GPT-5, for example.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  But we know that we're going to be able to create things that are like kind of capabilities, cognitive capabilities that have never been seen before. And that this is like, 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? You know, or everybody's going to have multiple agents and assistants for everything they're doing, whether it's podcasting, or writing, or analyzing, or speaking, or, you know, or comprehending, and all of this stuff is gonna, is going to, is gonna help.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Or another way of putting it is, anything that has any, any computational units at all is going to become much more intelligent. All of these things come from this scale compute learning revolution. And that was probably 2014, 2015 was when I really kind of got the, you know, the, the, the vision hit me fully, and I went to my partners at Greylock, and I said, hey, look, I think we're going to still make a bunch of money doing this crypto stuff. I did a few things in Bitcoin and other things. So keep doing it, but I'm going to focus entirely in AI. Because I think AI is going to be the thing that, is going to be the next wave.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  And I, you know, want to start working on it right now.

• 8:00Hala Taha?

  And I love how you're so optimistic about AI. I've interviewed so many people about it, Mo Gao Dad, Mustafa Suleman, Fei Fei Lee, like, just everyone, from people who started a long time ago on it to the new guys. And everybody kind of has a different mix. Like, some people are really positive about it, some people are pretty pessimistic. Why are you so optimistic about AI? And can you give us some like, counter arguments to what pessimists typically say?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Well, I'm familiar with every single pessimist argument. And the frequent thing is something along the lines, like, let's take the most extreme. Can you guarantee me that we won't deliberately or accidentally create Terminators? Right? And you go, no, I can't guarantee you. Oh, then it's really bad and we should be, 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.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  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, you know, 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 kind of like, well, we're gonna, it's just like the industrial revolution with the loom and everything else.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And, you know, moving to the power loom. And we're gonna have that. That's gonna have a disruption in society. There's gonna be challenges with that, guaranteed. But on the other side, like when we look at our entire, you know, kind of lives today of societies that have middle classes and prosperous societies. It all comes from the industrial revolution. So the other side of that very typically 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, you know, kind of sense of purpose and sense of commitment. And you say, look, what we're gonna have is all this transition, why would we have amplification intelligence?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right, the thing I described in my, you know, last book, before Super Agency: Impromptu, which is, you know, 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? And you go, well, you know, by the way, that's called a good circumstance, and we'll figure it out. And, you know, we've had societies like European and other nobility,

• 11:20Speaker 01

  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. And then you say, well, why are you so passionate and so positive about this? Well, today, we have line of sight to creating on your smartphone a medical assistant or tutor that is better than your average doctor, and is a tutor on every subject for every age. We just need to make that available to every human to help people. You know, the, you know, eight-plus billion of us around the world, just by having access to a smartphone. And I think that's one of the things that I think is, is like, super important.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  And that's what we're, like, all the doomer and gloomers, you know, essentially, you know, are delaying that future. And that delay has a huge cost in human suffering.

• 12:19Hala Taha?

  Oh, my gosh, I loved everything that you just said. It was like, just so interesting. And I feel like it ties a lot of things together that we've talked about on the podcast before. So, a lot of your book is talking about human agency, right? And the concerns around AI and human agency. You talked about it with jobs, right? And the fact that, you know, you don't think it's gonna necessarily be a bad thing if, you know, AI takes some of our jobs, is gonna add new jobs, will maybe become more artistic or whatever as humans, and figure out our time in other ways. But when it comes to human agency, can you talk to us about how technologies in the past, like the telephone and cars, actually had similar things so that people can understand

• 13:03Hala Taha?

  that we've gotten through this before?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Well, so, thank you for reading the book and asking questions from it. So, what people don't realize is every new major general purpose technology has a discourse that's very much like parallel to the one we're having today, which is this new technology is going to destroy society. So like when cars came out, it's like, oh, you know, you know, like, men, because it was mostly men wage earners back then, are gonna stop getting married and everything else because they're gonna be saving up for the car and it's gonna destroy our institutions of marriage. And, you know, the, you know, these are, you know, kind of dangerous for what happens

• 13:52Speaker 01

  in the streets. You know, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Similarly, you know, like, for example, when, when the phonograph was, had to be pitched, it had to be pitched as, it's gonna be used for church music, right? Because it'll help people to like have church music at home. Because the kid like, well, what are people gonna do this with, you know, what, are they gonna be distracted or they could be sitting on their, their couch, just like television, doing nothing and it's, you know, television is gonna destroy society, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, and matter of fact, we had this discussion around smartphones, you know, in our, within our memories. And so, the thing to remember is to say, yes, it's gonna completely change the future.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's gonna change the future and the way that we experience our agency, how we think of ourselves as kind of operative agents, what we're capable of doing, what other people are capable of doing.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  But that change has thus far always ended up very, like, every single case has ended up being very positive. Now, the transitions have been difficult. The printing press, which was described as, you know, like, oh, it's going to destroy human cognition by reducing the ability of memory. It's going to create a whole bunch of misinformation. The truth tellers in society, which in those days were priests, are going to be undermined. And of course, since we as human beings are very bad at these kinds of transitions, it led to nearly a century of religious war. So you go, okay, so the outcome can be really good, but what do we do about the transitions? Now, one of the things I'm pointing out in the AI context, and part of the reason for

• 15:32Speaker 01

  writing Super Agency and part of the reason for doing this is to say, well, in fact, we can use a, we can use both the lessons from the past, these technology transformations, and we can use AI to help us. So you say, well, shoot, you know, my job's now going to be done with a human using AI. Well, can the AI help me learn to be that human with AI? Can the AI help me figure out which jobs would be good for me with the AI helping me to do them, right, et cetera? Can the AI help me with the transition? And so what we need to be doing is learning from these, from the past, these lessons and transitions, and then deploying the technology to help us do that. Because one of the amazing, unique things about AI is it's the first technology that can do that.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Previously, you were like a dock worker. It's like, I'm a big, strong person. Well, that doesn't help me learn how to use a forklift, right? And now the forklift is there, and now the fact that I'm a big, strong person doesn't really matter, right? So my competitive edge in this job knows no better. It's like, well, but now we have a forklift that will go, hey, sit here, give me direction in doing the following things. Here's the ways that we can work together. 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, 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

• 16:56Speaker 01

  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 working 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, you know, if we go through it, if we do it in the right way,

• 17:23Speaker 01

  we can, 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.

• 17:32Hala Taha?

  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 you imagine humans actually interacting with AI? I talked to Mustafa Suleyman, who I know is your colleague, and he told me that 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.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  So part of what freaks people out a little bit is like, you know, we are going to this agentic universe, where all of a sudden, as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we will 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, is particularly the hollow or reed, you know, ongoing companion, always, you know, always around us and helping us with things. But there's going to be a suite of them, you know, with kind of different specialties and different engagements. And by the way, your, you know, your office is going to have one, your working group is going to have one, and, you know, probably your podcast is going to have one, you know, etc. And we're 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,

• 18:50Speaker 01

  and you work with employees and everything else, that doesn't, that expands your agency, that doesn't take it away. So the, the agency is, I think, extremely important here. But by the way, a lot of it's kind of the mindset. Like if you, 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 and I don't know what it's doing. They go, oh, gosh, I'm I'm essentially going, oh, my God, my agency is being slaughtered. Whereas 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 be here from people sometimes when I want, sometimes when I don't. But I have choice over that. It helps me navigate and never get lost.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Right? So, yes, it always knows where I am, but it also knows where I'm at, helps me never get lost. And so therefore can be an amplification of my agency and it changes. What the landscape of my agency is. And so I think that's part of what's so important about thinking about this new. Uh, agenda revolution. Now, some of this will also be the. Hey, I talked to my agent and I say, hey, I'm I'm. You know, going to go to Rome. Figure out like, look, what a really good itinerary is, book anything that's really important to book early. You know, etc. And then it comes back to me and does that and you go, well, that's really awesome. And you say, well, is it going to mean that the travel agents don't have a job anymore? It's like, well, actually, in fact, you know, travel agents will change because it'll be AI plus travel agent.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  But like, you know, it might be a little bit more along the lines of. You know, here's the things that normally seen like, go see the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Right? You know, that's what you should do. But it may be, oh, you're the kind of person who would really like to do the after hours tour. And this is the way you do it and da, da, da, da, and. And and maybe like agents don't know that much about the after hours tour. Or maybe there's this, this, like, there's a midnight bike ride. You know, that that that that might be really good that, you know, doesn't necessarily know about. So there's ways that these kind of the pulling things together. And by the way, you know, these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which is a lot more than any of us have. About what things will be really good for us. But.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  You know, part of what we. It's like, for example, play with chat GPT and see. What kinds of things are rights?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And at least every time I've used it so far, and I suspect this will also be true of G P T five and G P T six, I can always add something interesting to it. I can change it, I can make it like sharper, more distinct, you know, etc. 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 both, I saw two articles in one day earlier this year, which was, or last year, which was, you know, all that A I is good for is faking homework.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  A I is going to destroy all jobs. And you're like, 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 evolving and changing. And, you know, I for one, look forward to that path.

• 22:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I mean, I have to say, thinking about agents is so mind blowing. And when I think about A I 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 like 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 that it's like, you have to be the best trainer of the A I. Like, I kind of imagine everybody being an entrepreneur, having agents that work at their personal company, basically.

• 23:03Hala Taha?

  And you're, you basically have to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring out how to like mobilize all that A I and all your A I 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 like, you know, 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.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yep, so I think.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Exactly as you say, in addition to training, it's also deploying, organizing, executing, strategizing, all of the above. And that's part of the reason why, with super agency and the other kind of content that I've been trying to get out there and people's hands, like start playing with it, start exploring, because you want to start building the muscles. It's kind of like, hey, what's the way, what is locomotion going to look like now? We've just invented, we've moved from the computers being the bicycle of mind to AI being the automobiles of the mind. All right, let's all go learn how to drive. Let's figure out how these things work, how we want the technology to evolve, how we're going to use it, how we use it together, how we use it individually.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  And getting engaged with it is really important, and that's the most central thing. And again, part of the reason I called it agency, because it's like, own your agency and go do it. And part of the super agency is when millions of us all start doing that, it benefits all of us much more than just even the technology benefits each of us individually by ourselves.

• 24:39Hala Taha?

  So I know that you co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, and one of your big missions there is to create companions that have like 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? Like, why did you get on board with that?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  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, everyone, 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 and is on their side. And what are the key attributes to that? Because if you look at kind of even the very earliest of how other people were thinking about agents, they were thinking about as information processing work. And we were thinking about this as kind of 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.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Now, we've since then, you know, we spoke about pivots earlier, we've pivoted the business. The consumer application of that is now, you know, kind of being run, you know, kind of as part of things that Microsoft's doing. And the, um, what Inflection, the company is doing now is providing that same kind of

• 26:09Speaker 01

  great, you know, 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 we shifted to kind of a more of a B2B model where the pie 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, um, you know, it's, it's a classic startup journey in addition to being an interesting evolution of the AI things.

• 26:39Hala Taha?

  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?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Well, so, um, part of what you're doing, when you're doing the kind of training of an AI is you're training it to say, you know, it's this prompt completion, like what do you say after this is said? And part of what you're doing, both in data and in post-training is you're saying, okay, here is the kinds of things that count as good saying. So you have a whole bunch of humans who are, you know, running the system through and saying, okay, you know, to prompt one, like you say, you know, like the person says, how's your day? And says, well, my pet died today. And it's like, well, I respond A or respond B, which one's a better response? And then human beings respond to that. That's part of how it gets aligned with ours beings, part of how it gets to kind of an EQ.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And you're partially telling your human beings who are training this, where you want to, to, to, to, to nudge and prompt the responses to, so that they're essentially doing the training for this. And so, you know, if it said,

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Like for example, option anyway, oh, that's too bad. You should really look up a grief counselor.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  You know, and option two was, oh, that must be really hard. Oh, my gosh, you know, like, is there anything I can do to help? Is there, you know, like, you know, like, you know, I feel for you. Or, you know, probably wouldn't say that just because it's an AI, but it's like something else because you don't want to make make false antipathy or anything, but to say, look, I'm certain that connecting with friends or other kinds of things, you know, you know, how can I be of most help? And, you know, shouldn't you want to have a conversation about it? That would be the the kind of thing is, oh, B is better than A. And so then by that, it kind of learns how to have empathetic, kind, compassionate conversations. Because you can do that even without, you know, necessarily being compassionate or empathetic yourself. Because as you noted, it's not conscious.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  And by the way, there's a bunch of human beings who are also not there empathetic, who learned to be more empathetic. Just by, you know, kind of go, okay, this is the way you do this.

• 28:47Hala Taha?

  Yeah, makes total sense. It's really cool what you guys are doing at Inflection AI. So one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was trust when it comes to AI. Because I feel like a lot of people are worried about misinformation. There's so many deep fakes out there. And people are just worried about trust when it comes to AI. So what are your thoughts around that?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  So, look, trust is in unfortunately, short supply these days.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Generally, not just with AI, trust in institutions, trust in, you know, democracies, voting systems, other people's intent, you know, other kinds of things. So so trust is challenging. Now, the way that you

• 29:34Speaker 01

  that I think is going to be very important to build and maintain trust of AI. Is for the people who are building it to be very clear about like what their, what their goals are, what they're doing, what they're doing to try to build and maintain trust. You know, part of the reason why, of course, you know, my encouragement with super agency is for people to go try it because as they begin to try it and learn what kinds of good things they can do, what kinds of things they can be empowered, that will be the kind of thing that builds the kind of positive trust in these kinds of circumstances. And you know, my, my advice to individuals, you know, encountering these things, like, you know, a classic suspicion is say, well, big tech companies who are trying to make a lot of money are building these things and they're trying to make money from you.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, by the way, I'm trying to make money from you is usually offering you a product and service you really like, that really is something that you come back for, that you keep using, that's good for you. That's the goodness of modern business. So you go, okay, so which things should I trust these AIs on and which things should I not? And the answer is, well, if you generally shouldn't, you should understand that company is trying to have you as a lifelong loyal customer, that generally speaking, most of them are smart about doing that. So they're going to try to make it good. If it's, if it's something that's particularly important to you, cross checking, it's important. Like, you know, when I go to GBD4 and get a prompt and I go, you know, huh, that doesn't really make full sense to me.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I'm going to go look at this a little bit more, you know, because it's like, okay, you know, if it said something about like, yeah, your lab, your, you know, your black lab can eat that mushroom, it's like, nah, I really want to know.

• 31:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and double check that.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  You know, so, and so you, you know, that kind of thing. And by the way, over time, these will get better and better for, you know, kind of how it operates. And so I think that's, that's the kind of thing, but I think that's the only by engaging and using, having dialogue, having that dialogue match our experience over time.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Um, you know, being accountable as creators and companies for, you know, here are the things that we want in the use and here are the things that are still under development. And being clear about that so that people have a sense of, okay, I understand it's not perfect, but it could be really good for me.

• 31:51Hala Taha?

  So I feel like we're in this like transition period where humans that have a specialized expertise right now are at such an advantage. So for example, I have a podcast network and I'm probably like one of the most knowledgeable people about monetizing podcasts. And I write a newsletter that I write personally with like all my industry knowledge. And sometimes I'll just be like, well, what would chat GPT say? And then it's all wrong and it's just like, kind of just so basic, right? It's so basic, it's kind of wrong. And, and then I just love it because I'm like, okay, like people are getting my newsletter, which is like this like human experience that they can't get anymore.

• 32:34Hala Taha?

  And it's making me feel like I actually am more valuable. I think it will transition where that might not be the case in like two years, but I feel like we're in this transition where specialized knowledge from humans is actually like really desirable.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Broadly, yes. And part of it's obviously kind of like that specialized knowledge being evolved with like how you're figuring out how to use, like you made this comment earlier, how you use these new tools really effectively. Um, and so like part of, you know, even with the depth of experience, the early involvement with OpenAI and all this. Like I constantly am, I'm trying, like asking questions and trying to use, you know, a number of these tools myself for, for, for real things, not just like create a sonnet for my cousin's birthday or, you know, any of this kind of stuff, but it's also. Things that, you know, like, like investment analysis or

• 33:34Speaker 01

  or kind of market trends or other kinds of things. And, you know, frequently, just as you said, you know, like, ah, that's not very good. Okay, fine. And sometimes I go, I iterate on it. And sometimes I go, oh, no, no, I think that's just not very good right now. I'll, I'll use it for other things, but using it constantly. So I have, you know, um, you know, I've enabled the voice agents on my phones so that, you know, I can point my camera at things and, and talk to, you know, chat GPT about the thing I'm looking at, um, you know, say mushrooms, right? And so, uh, and, and, you know, that kind of thing as a, as a, as a way of, uh, of kind of understanding. And I do think that human

• 34:17Speaker 01

  specialized knowledge, creativity will, will, will, will, will even grow at a premium, but it will grow at a premium in the use of the tools too. Like you can't just buy, like, I am genius. I don't need AI. It's like, no, no, I am genius because of the way that I use AI to be an extra special genius.

• 34:33Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm. Totally. So you created, uh, we were talking about deep fakes before, and I came across this uh, interview of you interviewing your own AI on your YouTube. You call it Read AI, and it's an AI video avatar of you. Talk to us about how you felt in that interview. Did you learn anything from it? Did you, did it, did you help you realize anything about AI in the future?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Well, so, um, it came about primarily because I was like, look, here's a technology that everyone's so skeptical about. Our name for it is deep fakes. It's kind of like, like, if your name was disaster, okay. You know, so it's like, okay, but can I imagine that there'd possibly be good things that could work with this? And I was like, well, Let's, let's explore because we should and let's share the exploration. So we'll have this kind of interview and kind of conversation. And as I said at the end of the interview, you know, I thought I was gonna hate this because, because like I'm not one of those people who talks to myself in a mirror. You know, I was like, am I gonna feel schizophrenic? Am I gonna feel self-engrandizing?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Am I gonna feel like, like, ah, I can see all these different ways that I could possibly hate this thing. And I actually was more interesting as kind of a palette and exploration. Like if you said, well, I would, I only wanna talk to ReadAI, absolutely not. But would I wanna talk to ReadAI sometimes in doing these things? And have that as a way of kind of having a dialogue with myself and also showing kind of what's good at. Because once I did that, one of the things I realized is I was, after I made that, I was off to go give a speech at the University of Perugia in kind of defense of an honorary doctorate. And I started wrote out the speech and then I went, you know, I could actually have AI, ReadAI give this speech.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  And all, I'm only really fluent in English and all of these other languages, you know, ranging from Hindi to Chinese to Arabic to all these things. And to give the speech in those languages where people are much like, it was bizarre listening to me, my voice, speaking Hindi or Chinese fluently. It's like, what would I would, what would I sound like if I were speaking Chinese? Now, one of the things that my French friends told me is my, my, my, my, my French sounded like Canadian French.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And, you know, I don't know what, what the story of that is, whether, you know, how it is, is there more data, audio samples of Canadian French? Or somehow it goes, well, you're North American, so we're gonna make you from Quebec rather than Paris. But, you know, who knows? Anyway, so, but it was like, it was humanizing was with the thing. I was, I thought I would, I thought I would really dislike it. And it was humanizing and it started making me realize just like any, just, just as I say to other people, hey, you should use the technology to get a sense of it and control and to kind of, you know, give you, to reinforce your own agency with the technology. It was like, that was me doing that with that. And, you know, we continue to do new things with ReadAI.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Probably one of the funniest ones was the number of different press outlets that asked, we'd like to do an interview with ReadAI.

• 37:48Hala Taha?

  Oh my gosh.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  It was like, oh, that's interesting. Cool.

• 37:52Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's so cool. I feel like in terms of content creation, I've got a lot of creator entrepreneurs that listen to the show. I feel like AI is totally gonna change the game. Like even with me, I have my AI voice if I'm sick, or if I'm like, if I miss a commercial, we can use my AI voice as like, an intermediate step. Like, I'll always rerecord it usually, make sure that it's me. But it's really close to my voice. Like, people really can't tell. And we're working on my AI video. And to your point, like, people probably think I'm crazy creating my own deep fake. But I want to be able to scale myself. And this is the future. And you just gave me such a great idea in terms of the translations. You know, people love to watch content all over the world, and not everybody speaks English.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Not only do I speak English, but also, people most emotionally resonate with content that's in languages that they are native to. And so, most people are native one language. Sometimes they're native a couple. But it's within the languages they're native to, which roughly means languages they learned complete fluency before they were 12, for the vast majority of people.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  It's a human connection. If the person says, oh, I'm hearing this in Chinese, it's warmer, it's smarter, it's more engaging, etc. If Chinese is my native language.

• 39:07Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I do feel like people who have a lot of content out there have a very unique advantage going into the future, because we can actually create these advertisers of ourselves, because we have all this content.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely.

• 39:21Hala Taha?

  So, one last question for you, on the future of AI. So you're obviously at the forefront of this. You've thought a lot about it. You've written books on AI. So I just want you, and you can take your time with us, because I think it's very interesting. How do you imagine our world to be five, 10, 20 years in the future with AI? What do you imagine the world to be like?

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that's a great way to look foolish in the future is to make overly specific predictions, partially because, you know, the usual principle I used to say in this is the future is sooner and stranger than you think. And so, you know, people thought in the 80s, we're going to get AI, but if we didn't get AI, we got the internet, we got mobile phone. Well, maybe now we're going to get AI. I mean, you know, we're going to get what shape of AI is the interesting question. And so if you said, you know, what I think is kind of the the the minimum guarantee is there's going to be like as opposed to like computer interfaces or phone interfaces or else, we're going to have agents. And agents

• 40:24Speaker 01

  are going to be the the primary mode of of kind of navigation. What we describe in super agency as an informational GPS. So in this entire informational digital world, we'll do that. And there will be more agents than there are people, especially when you consider the even though there may be just one agent pie that's kind of then instantiated with what remembers out of its conversations, interactions with Hala, what it understands remembers in its conversation, interactions with Reed, etc., etc. There's kind of this this this this flow of agents. Now, one of the things that I think people haven't really fully tracked yet, but I think will be very interesting, is how agents end up talking to each other.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Because when we have that many agents, you know, part of how you and I are going to coordinate, like we say, hey, what should we talk about in the podcast? Well, one of our preps will be your agent will talk to my agent. And they'll kind of go, well, you know, these topics will be really good. And, you know, hey, when you when you ask a question this way, it'd be great. And when you answer it this way, it'll be great, you know, and da, da, da, da, and you know, that kind of thing. Or this could be a really new, interesting thing to try. And that will be part of the world that we will be in. And I think that, you know, part of that will then make, you know, like, the premium on thinking creatively,

• 41:48Speaker 01

  thinking differently, you know, as you mentioned, will be much higher. The notion that, you know, what we

• 41:58Speaker 01

  You know, kind of like my guess is like, for example, if you go back thirty years and you told someone there were going to be these jobs called web designer, data scientist, other things, they go, what are you talking about, you know, crazy person from the future? And I think that's another thing that we're going to see even more of, which is like, oh, didn't realize that was going to be the job, huh? And that's cool. And, and so I think that's the, you know, those are some of the things, but, you know, I try not to make overly specific predictions because usually they're, may I put it this way, William Gibson, science fiction author, has a really good quote, which is, "The future is already here, it's unevenly distributed."

• 42:43Speaker 01

  And, you know, he's been a great Neuromancer, it was the internet, everything else. Now, he was being asked in an interview, like, how did you see the future? And it's like, look, thank you for, for the compliment, but by the way, if you read Neuromancer, sure, I got AI right, I got the internet right, I missed the mobile phone. And so that's the kind of thing that, you know, we're always looking for is that surprise and delight moment.

• 43:14Hala Taha?

  And who knows with AI, to your point, like, we have no idea what we're gonna see. I'm excited to see it unfold. Okay, so I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. The first, and you can just answer however you'd like, doesn't have to be about anything we talked about today. What is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  So, to become more profitable tomorrow, well, I guess I won't say literally tomorrow, like, it's one day, 24 hour.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I would say the important thing, you know, and this is kind of part of how I think about the world, the important thing is to be thinking about like, what do you think your business, what do you think the environment your business is going to be in in one, three, and five years? And what do you think that environment is going to be changing based on patterns of technology? What do you think that's going to be changing on patterns of competition? What do you think that's going to be changing in patterns of how you deliver your business? Supply chain, etc. And so by looking at that kind of like probable guess, how do you run the experiment today that informs you about which big choices you need to make in that one, three, and five year timeframe? The experiment won't necessarily make you profitable, but the experiment may give you

• 44:39Speaker 01

  the thing that either gets you to more profit or also helps you, you know, navigate the changes where which, you know, which things are the, the new living creatures and which things are the dinosaurs in the future markets.

• 44:52Hala Taha?

  Great advice. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial, profiting in all aspects of life.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  So fundamentally, part of why in the startup U, I said, life is a team sport. Because the startup U is actually the advice I give to entrepreneurs, re-factored to individuals being the entrepreneur of their own life. So it actually applies to founders, applies to CEOs, applies to executives, applies to, you know, you know, people working. But it's this question about life being a team sport. It's, you know, you, you are amplified by your team. It's more fun. You learn more. And they help you in both upside and navigating downside. So the most fundamental thing, life is a team sport.

• 45:40Hala Taha?

  And now we're going to have agents with our team.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. Amongst our team, not, you know.

• 45:47Hala Taha?

  Amongst our team, yes. With our team, we'll also have agents, and everybody will have agents. Reid, this has been such an awesome conversation. I really appreciate all your time, all your wisdom. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Well, LinkedIn, you know, I post just about everything there. I also have read Hoffman.org. And, you know, this year, publishing super agency.

• 46:11Hala Taha?

  Amazing. I highly recommend everybody go get Super Agency. Also get Blitzscaling. I love that book as well. Reid, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  A great pleasure. I look forward to our next conversation.

• 46:25Hala Taha?

  Yeah, fam, this conversation with Reid Hoffman could not have come at a more pivotal moment. We're stepping into a world where intelligence is no longer limited to the human mind, and Reid's vision gives us a roadmap for how to navigate it with confidence instead of fear. His core belief is simple, yet powerful. AI is here to expand what we're capable of, not shrink it. And when we understand that, everything about the future looks different. One of the standout ideas Reid shared today is a shift from artificial intelligence to amplification intelligence. He really wants us to see AI as a multiplier for our creativity, our decision-making, and our impact. For entrepreneurs, this mindset shift is everything. When you stop worrying about being replaced and start thinking about how to be augmented,

• 47:07Hala Taha?

  you open the door to entirely new opportunities. You can run experiments faster, communicate on a global scale, and build ideas fast that would have taken teams, money, and years in the past. And something that really caught my attention was his emphasis on the rise of AI agents. These won't be just random chatbots. They're going to be specialized collaborators who help you think, create, and operate at a higher level. Entrepreneurs will have teams of agents, one for content, one for research, one for strategy. Your job then becomes orchestrating these agents for clarity and intent. If you learn this skill early, you'll gain a massive advantage, because the real competition will be between humans who know how to command intelligent tools and humans who don't. Another theme Reid drove home was the importance

• 47:52Hala Taha?

  of optimism rooted in action. Every major shift in history, printing presses, cars, computers, came with panic and prediction of doom. But the people who leaned in, learned the tools, and experimented early are the ones who built empires. This moment is no different. Treat AI like a collaborator. Start small. Test ideas, build momentum. Let your curiosity lead instead of your fear. Yapbam, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the AI Vault series. And I love bringing you these conversations with leaders who are shaping the new era of intelligence. And Reid Hoffman truly is one of those minds redefining what's possible. Take these insights from today and put at least one of them into play this week because knowledge means nothing without action, Yapbam.

• 48:36Hala Taha?

  You can also watch the full video on Spotify Video and connect with me on Instagram at YapwithHala or LinkedIn at HalaTaha. All right, gang. This is your host, Hala Taha, the Podcast Princess, signing off.