Reid riffs on AI agents and investments

In this episode, Aria asks Reid about his general and AI-specific investment philosophies, including what draws him to a pitch and what raises red flags. They discuss agentic AI, robots, and hardware. For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

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

• 0:00Reid Hoffman?

  I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 0:01Aria Finger?

  And I'm Aria Finger.

• 0:03Reid Hoffman?

  We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way.

• 0:08Aria Finger?

  Typically, we ask our guests for their outlook on the best possible future. But now, every other week, I get to ask Reid for his take.

• 0:17Reid Hoffman?

  This is possible.

• 0:23Aria Finger?

  So last week, we had a great conversation with Ashton about investing in AI and its potential for our professional and personal lives. And so Reid, let's talk about being early to spot and invest in people and ideas. You've been investing in AI for many years now, pretty much before anyone else. Can you walk us through how you think about making investments in AI companies and products in particular? Like, what draws you to a pitch and what raises red flags?

• 0:55Reid Hoffman?

  Well, there's two parts to this. One is general investing, which I'll answer, and then AI specific. So general investing, Ashton's answer was great. Who you'd work for as a combination of,

• 1:08Reid Hoffman?

  do they bring out the best in you? Do they have a good moral character? Do they have a good compass for where they're going?

• 1:16Reid Hoffman?

  Is the aligned mission there? And then we focused on learning. And one of the things that Ashton talked about was distance traveled as part of this. And I think that was a great measure. I first heard about that from the Kapoor's, Mitch and Frida. And I think it's a good proxy for learning about what it is. Although I think my particular focus on the distance traveled is learning velocity and infinite learning, that you just keep going as part of it. And that's part of the reason I amplified the learning aspect of it. Because if you're learning and you're learning

• 1:59Reid Hoffman?

  this game and the next game and constantly learning, that infinite learner is a key part of it. And you know, I think it was a interesting like and another thing that was part of it is like, you know, they have to be able to run the distance themselves. Part of the way that I, um, you know, kind of look at this is what I give the person the money as an investor and then walk away and say, call me in five years. Uh, because that's part of it. They have the, the game to learn it themselves and, and to what to do. Um, as part of it. Now you try to help as much as possible, just as Ashton said. Now, the things that I would add is that, uh, you want to have a person who has a good

• 2:42Reid Hoffman?

  kind of theory of the game. Uh, now part of it's that learning velocity, part of it's like, do they see what the game is in front of them? Like what, what are the key issues going to be? Is it going to be, is there going to be product market fit? Is there going to be competition? Is there going to be changing patterns and technology? Is there kind of what is the business model? Is it the go to market? Is there, you know, uh, assembling the right talent? Is there? And all of these things come into every entrepreneurial project, but which things are most important? And what's their particular shape here? And part of the reason I add that into as a general thing to what we were talking about with Ashton is because, um, the, the, the notion of not just would you learn from them

• 3:26Reid Hoffman?

  and not just would you have, you know, kind of the infinite learner and learning speed, but you have a context awareness of your game and you're updating that. And that's part of what I get into the conversation, um, you know, that I always have with entrepreneurs about, about, about possibly investing because it's kind of, I'm trying to figure out how do they see their theory of the game? Do I agree? Does it update my theory of the game? Cause if it does, that's a really great thing. That means that they're likely to be, you know, really on point and your theory of the game will change as you learn, as you encounter the market, as you encounter the consumer, the customer, as you encounter competition, uh, in terms of how you're operating. And that's all, I think, in the general framework.

• 4:10Reid Hoffman?

  Then, when it gets to AI, because AI is this platform transnational shift. I mean, you know, Ashton described it as an OS. You know, OS is definitely our common metaphor for platforms. I actually think in this context, I think the platform will have a different shape than an OS. You know, kind of a building applications on top of it. The metaphor, I think, probably needs to be completely changed for it. But it is that kind of transformation. It's like everything there where you have a transistor in a product, where intelligence can be added to a product and service. Phone and computer is obvious, but also like, you know, your Sono speaker

• 4:54Reid Hoffman?

  or your light switch or any number of other kinds of things. I think what will have intelligence amplifying it. And that's the kind of platform transformation. Now, part of this is it's such a massive transformation in the world. You kind of get driven in AI investments to two kinds of questions. One is, is it an area that we kind of understand? And I think this is one of the things that, you know, we're doing at Greylock, which is, well, actually, in fact, there's like a lot of B to B businesses and kind of selling enterprise and everything else. And we understand what that transformation is. And so it makes a much more highly professional investing in it.

• 5:35Reid Hoffman?

  And so I think there's that set of things, which, you know, it's like the, okay, imagine everything you do at work and say, what is the AI replatforming transformation? Whether it's, you know, work productivity or file storage or, you know, marketing or sales or customer service and da, da, da, and meetings and do all that. And then there's the other thing, which is what's the whole new world? Just like the internet was a whole new world that comes about from AI. And then what is, you know, AI and agents and everything else bring into the new world of platform?

• 6:15Aria Finger?

  Reid, it's been a number of weeks since you debuted your AI avatar. So can you tell me more about how you think people can be in many places at once in their own lives with the help of AI?

• 6:26Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think there's gonna be lots of ways. Some of it is that, you know, you'll have an AI like, like everyone will have one or more personal intelligences, one or more co-pilots for themselves. One part of it is it'll always have an ability to kind of, as a word, answer the phone, answer the message, kind of say, hello, is this really important? Oh, I'll go find them and bring the person to you and bring the real person. So that's one place where you're in lots of places because you're fielding variety of inbound and communications. Another one will be, you know, like when you're shopping for stuff, it's like, hey, pay attention to when, you know, this thing, you know, the Taylor Swift tickets may come

• 7:08Reid Hoffman?

  on sale or the, you know, sports tickets or this new product or the thing going on sale or price dropping. And so you have a representation of you doing all of that. I think you'll also have, you know, questions where you might be saying, hey, I'm researching this and researching it takes time and you're out doing that. It's your research agent out doing stuff, right? While you're doing something else, your agent's researching paths A, B, and C and you're researching path X, you know, as kind of ways of pulling it together. And that's just the beginning for how this, you know, kind of a multiple virtual location.

• 7:50Reid Hoffman?

  Then of course, you could even get to, you know, part of why we're seeing the future is like, say, hey, you know, what if you had a, you know, your kind of robot staying home with your pet and doing your own dog sitting? Now we're talking about like virtual locations and then physical locations. Then there's also, by the way, other ways you might project into space. Like, for example, I was using singing. This is maybe one of the things that we will try at some point to get Read AI to do since I can't sing worth beans. It's literally the joke that I usually tell is a horror show. It's the, when I was part of my high school and we were doing the whole school coming together and singing, the very first comment I got, which I think was an accurate comment,

• 8:35Reid Hoffman?

  even if it was a little dismissive, was, you know, Uh, when you can't sing in tune, sing more softly. Uh, and so, you know, getting, uh, some kind of singing, uh, you know, there or other things, other expressions, other dimensions of yourself will be another thing, uh, that could be there. What, you know, could be poetry telling, it could be acting, it could be, you know, one we've already done, me and Klingon, uh, you know, like all these kinds of things are another whole set of virtual projections or, you know, uh, self-projections, uh, that will come with this. And that's like, that's just the beginning and our very quick answer to this question.

• 9:17Aria Finger?

  Fried, I have it even worse than you. My mom is a music teacher and my name is Aria and I also can't sing. So there you go.

• 9:26Reid Hoffman?

  Well, we'll create an Aria AI and then, uh, and then Aria AI can sing in Aria.

• 9:33Aria Finger?

  Finally, I will have my mother's gifts. Um, so when we're thinking, you mentioned, uh, robots to take care of your dog when you're off on your trips. Like when you're thinking about AI hardware and agentic AI, what is the current state? Where are we going? How do you think about that?

• 9:51Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think we're just at the, the very beginning. Um, it isn't, we may even have just literally touched the surface of the water with our toes, let alone, you know, putting in the toes into the water. And I think, uh, I think we'll see a lot more in agentic AI first just through software, uh, first just through what happens with the phone, first, you know, what happens with the computer, what happens with a variety of things. Cause the speed at which that evolves, the speed at which that can be a, a personal intelligence, a co-pilot, a, uh, you know, kind of an amplification, uh, of intelligence, an amplification of experience, I think will be happening at a very fast rate. And so I think that the notion of kind of where do agents play in will first play in and all of that. And you could, you could say it's kind of like a

• 10:34Reid Hoffman?

  virtual space. But by the way, virtual space is also like when you go to the internet and you buy something from, from, you know, Shopify or something else. That's, that's a, that's a kind of a, a virtual space kind of thing. And so. Virtual space is real space. Now, I think there will be a bunch of stuff that happens in robots. I think some of the earliest things which we're already seeing is obviously like, you know, self-driving, you know, like Aurora and other kinds of things where the self-driving car is is a physical robot and that that really transforms our lives. You know, everyone always tends to, because we're very human focused. Yeah, you know, anytime there's a humanoid robot, it's like, oh, my God, let's talk about the humanoid robot. It's like, well, we already have a ton of interesting things going on in robots that have nothing to do with a humanoid robot.

• 11:19Reid Hoffman?

  And and, you know, one of the interesting questions that I think is is thing is like, well, we have a natural tendency to want a humanoid robot because we tend to want to, you know, our whole society, we're citizens of the pole, us all are Aristotle. We surround ourselves with human beings, we focus on human beings. So we tend to want, well, let's have humanoid robots. You know, when we have movies about good robots, they're humanoid robots. Oh, there's also bad humanoid robots, but you know, it's kind of like, but there's a there's kind of a tendency that I actually think one of the interesting questions is whether the most interesting kind of agentic robotic interfaces are not are not humanoid.

• 11:58Reid Hoffman?

  And even though we have a bunch of arachnophobia, you know, is actually in fact, you know, kind of the the the arachno shape, actually, in fact, a much more high functioning, you know, kind of thing. And I think it will be, you know, as Ashton was mentioning, is I think our best thing to return to a manufacturing industry in the in the US is AI and robotics. It's the thing that we should be wanting to, you know, kind of be coming from this. And I think we will see, you know, the same way that we're seeing in a amazing set of things, our paradigm with going on AI is scale, compute and learning. And that scale, compute and learning will be applied to robotics, will do a number of different things that are interesting there.

• 12:40Reid Hoffman?

  I think it will come because of the physical world and a bunch of other stuff and the learning data at a slower pace than the things that are happening through language models and and kind of other kinds of agents. But it will be coming at speed because of that application of scale compute, the ingestion of tons of data and the learning pattern of doing it. And so I think we will have a bunch of different robotic stuff. And I think it's You know, it's what a time to be alive. I think we have an amazing set of human application, not just within, you know, the steam engine of the mind, but it will also be, you know, a return to kind of the steam engine of, of the body, the steam

• 13:24Reid Hoffman?

  engine of physical applications through the application of intelligence into robotics as well. Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It's hosted by Ari Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Aller, Sarah Schlied, Adrian Bain, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.

• 13:52Aria Finger?

  Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Sayida Sepieva, Ian Ellis, Greg Beato, Ben Relis, Parth Patel, and Little Monster Media Company.