Nick Thompson on our AI future

What might it look like if we used AI to make democracy work better and to make society more equal? In this special live recording of Possible, Aria turns the tables on her co-host, interviewing Reid alongside Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson. They discuss AI-native generations, the future of friendship and social connections, media, data, privacy, and democracy in the age of AI. To kick off the episode, Reid’s avatar makes a cameo. Read the transcript of this episode here: https://www.possible.fm/podcasts/nthompson For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/ Topics: 1:53 - Hellos and intros 2:15 - A question from Reid’s AI Avatar 6:24 - Defining this moment in technology 10:08 - AI, journalism, and democracy 13:32 - AI and empathy 20:17 - Why AI is exciting for young people 22:44 - How impacts the world of friendship 33:07 - AI and privacy 41:21 - Looking ahead 47:51 - Rapid-fire questions Select mentions: The Worlds I See by Fei-fei Li Earth Species Project Possible is an award-winning podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Tune in for grounded and speculative takes on how technology—and, in particular, AI—is inspiring change and transforming the future. Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with an ambitious builder or deep thinker on a topic, from art to geopolitics and from healthcare to education. These conversations also showcase another kind of guest: AI. Whether it's Inflection’s Pi, OpenAI’s ChatGPT or other AI tools, each episode will use AI to enhance and advance our discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

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

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Will AI make the world less equal or more equal? And you can argue it both ways, right? And you can get very smart people who will argue both ways. And there's data suggesting that actually it's going to make the world more equal, which would actually make democracy work better, which would make society work better. And I think there's a real chance that AI does that.

• 0:24Reid Hoffman?

  Hi, I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 0:26Aria Finger?

  And I'm Aria Finkler.

• 0:28Reid Hoffman?

  We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? What we can possibly get right if we leverage technology like AI and our collective effort effectively?

• 0:40Aria Finger?

  We're speaking with technologists, ambitious builders, and deep thinkers across many fields: AI, geopolitics, media, healthcare, education, and more.

• 0:50Reid Hoffman?

  These conversations showcase another kind of guest, whether it's Inflection's Pi, OpenAI's GPT-4, or other AI tools. Each episode, we use AI to enhance and advance our discussion.

• 1:03Aria Finger?

  In each episode, we seek out the brightest version of the future and learn what it'll take to get there.

• 1:09Reid Hoffman?

  This is Possible.

• 1:17Aria Finger?

  We spoke with Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic, which happens to be one of my favorite publications. And that was at a live, possible recording focused on AI, human connection, and the future. The discussion was extremely wide-ranging. And as the sole host for this particular episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing both Reid and Nick. I did get some help in opening up the episode with an AI-generated version of Reid. So let's jump in with Reid AI.

• 1:53Aria Finger?

  We're here with Reid Hoffman and Nick Thompson. Reid created LinkedIn and Nick is one of the like top LinkedIn influencers, which is not why we chose you, but kudos to you. And Nick has been talking a lot about AI avatars and Reid also created recently a digital twin. So I am gonna kick it off with a quick video before we get going.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Wow. Look at everyone out there. Hello. I know Aria is the host of this possible episode. So thank you for giving me the opening question. This is a deeply personal one for me. As Reid's AI avatar, it's about my future. My question is, what purpose do you think avatars may play when it comes to helping humans go beyond their current capabilities and lifespans? And how will the technology that powers me help you expand your reach, legacy and longevity?

• 2:47Speaker 00

  I would like to say I appreciate that your avatar had five fingers.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  That was particularly impressive. I find that they will obviously make us more efficient. They will be able to handle certain tasks. I find the movement in AI to create human replicas a little disturbing. And I'm a little bit weirded out by the prospect that they will be there after we die to talk with us. Maybe that's because it usually comes up in the context of like my father coming back. And I'm always worried if he comes back, whether I'll be responsible for all the bills that he left when he died. But I'm a little nervous about the role that avatars will play in giving us the afterlife. But they will also be amazing tools for, you know, being more efficient in certain contexts.

• 3:36Reid Hoffman?

  But I would have thought that a public intellectual like yourself would be thinking back, for example, to the ancient like Greek idea of immortality. But as long as you're remembered, you persist. And that some version of thinking about how you can like have your voice continuing in dialogue into the future might actually appeal to you, even if the modality of how this particular weirdness of looking in a mirror or anything else might strike you initially.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Great point, interesting point. You're definitely, you know, like you do live on after you die, right? Like if I were to die this very minute, I would live on based on whatever influence I've had, whatever thoughts you had, whatever thoughts my children had. So you do live on even without these beautiful avatars. I have a question for you, which is Reed has a lot of different views in his lifetime, right? The Reed of age 30 had different views of the Reed of, you know, age 45. And when that avatar exists trained on your data, right? And exists after you've died, what age Reed will it represent? Or will it represent some kind of like average of all the Reeds?

• 4:52Reid Hoffman?

  Depends a little bit on when it's minted. One of the pieces of strange feedback that we didn't anticipate that we got very early from the Reed AI was, oh, this is how you're creating your legacy. And it's like this Reed AI, this avatar will live on past me. One of the funny recollections of that was to say, well, actually, in fact, this Reed AI avatar will have a very short lifespan because AI is expanding at such a point that this one will be replaced by the next Reed AI.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  You're gonna kill that poor guy?

• 5:23Reid Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Reid Hoffman?

  That's part of the reason why, you know, the Reed AI started with the question, it's like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. How long do I live? And the answer is we're gonna have much better technology in X months and that will be the next one. And so the probable is this not actually, in fact, a, it has a certain of a lifetime integration because the GBT is trained on all of the things that I've written and spoken on. And so we get added to and there'll be, I don't know if average is the right metaphor, but blend, a synthesis of that. So that will have a blended, not young, not old, but a blended of all of them. But then the question, of course, is its design architecture will be whenever we've made it. So.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Right. I would actually, I would, I would be very interested if I could find an avatar of myself at age 21 with long hair and radical leftist political views to actually talk through what that person thinks of the current Nick Thompson. I think that would be a very interesting experience.

• 6:20Aria Finger?

  That's what I was gonna say. It would be amazing to have that debate. So the possible podcast is about creating the brightest version of the future and talking about how to get there. We are not just tech utopia. It is if we don't shoot for the moon, shoot for the stars, we'll certainly never get there. And if like in 20 years, all we've done is like killed the killer robots. Like, I think that's a really sad future. So we want to talk about what are the greatest things can hap- that can happen, and how do we sort of chart our course towards them. And so, Nick, you've been covering technology for decades. Reid, you've been an investor, startup entrepreneur for decades. Before we get to the future, let's talk about this moment in time. You've seen so many transitions, Web

• 7:05Aria Finger?

  1.0, 2.0. Reid, we'll start with you. Give us just a few minutes on what like this moment in technology means to you.

• 7:15Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think the key thing is that technology is always the way that we evolve as human beings. It's part of the phrase I use is homo technae. And when you look at the industrial revolution, it was physical superpowers. It was superpowers of construction, superpowers of motion and transport. Now, we're gonna have cognitive superpowers. And it's part of the kind of amplification intelligence. And I think that the notion of how we will navigate, be navigating the world, within five to 10 years, we will all navigate a variety of things in our lives. Work, certain life choices, other kinds of things, with

• 7:58Reid Hoffman?

  an entourage of agents. It won't be just one agent, it would be multiple agents. And part of the reason why you'll be doing multiple agents is because The part of how we keep our human agency and everything else as opposed to saying, because the usual, you know, to borrow from the movie, the idiocracy thing is like, oh, I sit on the couch and I listen to my agent and makes all the decisions. Actually, in fact, the, I think what we'll have is, part of what you can already see in the, in these agents is that they're very good at taking roles. And what we'll say is, what set of roles, what cabinet of, of experts do I want in my navigating my life or in this particular problem? And I will be able to call them up and I will have that in everything that I'm doing.

• 8:43Reid Hoffman?

  And part of, I think, what's stunning about this moment is we are small in number of years away from, I mean, we can do it now, but we're a small in number of years where that's kind of like what everybody will be doing.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  I think that's a good vision. This is probably back to your question. It's probably the second time in my life where I've been enraptured with what technology can do for us. The first was when the internet first came around and I thought about back with radical long-haired Nick, who was, you know, focused on trying to bring democracy to repressive countries in the world. There, there was a sense back then that this would bring about freedom and democracy in the world. And, you know, to some degree that was realized and to some degree it was not. But that was a moment where I loved it. And now I have a moment where I'm incredibly excited because of the possibility of learning. And, you know, you go into journalism and the reason I chose this career because of a sense of curiosity and a sense of how exciting it is to go out and to try to learn something new, right? And to like, reset your mind, begin a new story, begin a new thing and the capacity

• 9:44Speaker 00

  to learn with these agents or however the system works in the future, but been able to be in constant conversation, to have a device that can help you, you know, sort through all the swaths of information in the world is incredibly exciting. And the idea that my children. We'll go into this world with the ability to, you know, learn languages so many times faster with, you know, a personal tutor who can teach them all that and process so much more information than they possibly could before is quite exciting.

• 10:08Aria Finger?

  So you said you were excited about the sort of democracy piece and Web 1.0, like excited about the possibilities. So many people are very worried about AI when it comes to democracy or journalism, your job, your industry. Is AI worrying for journalism in the future of politics, democracy, or are you excited about it? Obviously, there's, there's a lot of nuance there as well.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's profoundly worrying. I mean, it's profoundly worrying for, you know, the business model of journalism, right, is extremely threatened as you can see as, you know, search disappears and as you, you know, go to what's called the enshittification of the internet where, you know, you might reach the point where there's so much stuff created by AI that it's very hard to, you know, find a place for serious journalists. There could be a flight to quality there, which is something I'd be quite excited about, but absolutely worried about the effects on the business model of journalism, absolutely worried about the potential impacts on democracy. If you can no longer tell who's Reed, who's Reed AI, who is Russian-created, you know, Reed AI, and you've got the three of them and

• 11:14Speaker 00

  you're talking to all of them online, you don't know who's who, like, how can you have democracy function? So that's a, like, legitimate concern, but for each of those concerns, there's also an upside that I think is potentially higher, which is why I'm, you know, net-net an optimist. But yes, definitely, definitely concerned about Russian Reed.

• 11:32Aria Finger?

  Reed, we have talked a lot about the fact that, you know, there will be deep fakes and misinformation, but AI can be used as a defensive tactic and eventually that technology will keep up. Not talking about that. Can you just talk about the positive use case for AI as it relates to democracy, journalism? Like, how will AI just be a good, not just a defense of the bad?

• 11:53Reid Hoffman?

  Look, I think ultimately, part of what we need to do is kind of figure out kind of a identity and certification, a bunch of other things to try to sort out. How do we have collective learning together, which is one of the things we need for democracy to function, and it's part of the reason why a flight to quality or other kinds of things would be good things to have. I do think that when you begin to think about that, you know, kind of a set of agents that are helping every individual navigate, you can imagine that part of, if the agents are provisioned well, that they would have a kind of almost all of that kind of journalistic fact checking built into them. And so if you have that, now, of course, it'll get politicized.

• 12:37Reid Hoffman?

  Well, that agent's lying because it doesn't say that Pizza Gate was absolutely real, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Or I have alternative facts about Bowling Green with, you know, kind of a classic Orwellian, you know, term, alternative facts. And, you know, but if we have that, it can help make these into collective learning systems. Because if, in the notion of the same way that we do, you know, creation of science, creation of journalism, creation of kind of content through mediated through groups of human beings doing, you know, kind of principled knowledge creation, information creation,

• 13:21Reid Hoffman?

  creation and curation, then I think that can help all of this. And I think that would be the kind of thing that you would be looking at in the solution set.

• 13:32Aria Finger?

  One thing we were talking about just downstairs before we came up here was Pi, which is the agent from inflection. And it, you know, I love Pi because it's kinder and it's quirky and it is nice to you. And actually, we have a coworker who says they love talking to chatbots all day because they never feel so good. Aria yells at me all day, but my chatbot says good things. And so some people think that AI will make us less human. Nick, in 2018, I won't hold you to it, but you said that AI would neither make us more empathetic nor less caring. In the light of chatbots where we are now, how do you think sort of empathy and AI play?

• 14:12Speaker 00

  I think that One of the most important things that could be done in the world in the next couple of years would be trying to design or continuing to design a chatbot AI layer to the internet that is like the opposite of Twitter and that increases empathy and increases understanding. And so I took a crack at this, right? I had a startup called Speakeasy that, you know, a colleague of mine from the Emerson Collective and I worked on and we ended up selling into Project Liberty. It was, you know, obviously we did not supplant Twitter, as you've probably noticed, but the idea was can you figure out the mechanisms of a conversation and can you use AI to help

• 14:55Speaker 00

  bring people to understand each other better, right? So can you take what you learn? And we know, for example, from social science, that if people disagree on something, but they have something else in common, if you can get them to talk about that first, then you can get them to talk the thing they disagree on, right? So, you know, you guys, you know, Reid and I went to the same college, but maybe we have different views on, you know, who knows what, on abortion, right? And so you can like, you start by talking about the college soccer team and then you move to abortion, right? Can you use AI to also help guide people when they start to write something that might be toxic to pull them back? And can you do it in a way that's not smarmy and, you know? Somebody is going to solve this problem, right? One of the biggest problems of the internet and one of the things, the reasons why it

• 15:37Speaker 00

  has been less helpful to democracy than it should have been is that the underlying architecture has tended, more often than not, to push people into filter bubbles, to make people dislike each other. Part of the reason I'm on LinkedIn is because that is better than any of the other social networks at not doing that. But so much of the underlying architecture of the internet has this very corrosive effect and that's been a real problem for democracy. And so the question is with AI, can you reverse that, right? And that is one of the challenges for our time and I am fully on board with anybody working to solve that.

• 16:12Aria Finger?

  Are there any learnings you had from trying that out that you're like, if I did it again, I would do XYZ or advice you would give to someone else?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so maybe not have been so earnest, like.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  You know, as you know, we went to, I remember one of the moments that will stick in my mind is going to two venture capital meetings, you know, where we're like, we have this idea, we're going to get people to talk and like, look, we have this like proto-community and all these people having these amazing conversations. And they're like, first one was like, you're selling kale in a candy shop. How are you going to compete? And the second one was much better. And what he said was, is this going to get me paid? Or is he going to get me laid? And if it's not going to do either, I'm not putting money in. And we were like, well, I guess. I'm not sure. And so if we'd figured out a way to get you paid or laid, then we could have like added on our little AI to make you more empathetic. So maybe solving that problem would have been the way to have done it.

• 17:08Aria Finger?

  Reed, I will.

• 17:10Reid Hoffman?

  Thanks for that setup.

• 17:12Aria Finger?

  Reed, as a venture capitalist.

• 17:14Reid Hoffman?

  I was not one of the venture capitalists that was in this discussion.

• 17:19Aria Finger?

  A few weeks ago, you were actually both in Perugia and Reed, you gave a speech on a similar topic. It was about empathy. It was about humanity. It was about how AI, AI and humans can coexist. What are, what is your thoughts on the empathy as it relates to AI?

• 17:36Reid Hoffman?

  Well, um, Pi, um, the agent and inflection created and set of APIs that will now be as part of the pivot, providing to a number of different providers, uh, emphasizes EQ along with IQ. Because if you take this universe in which we will have a set of agents as an entourage, as an ensemble, as an orchestra for navigating things we're doing. It's obviously for the same reasons that Nick was talking about, uh, the kind of toxicity of Twitter and other things is it's important to have EQ. I think that's just a question of how you make them. And I think it's very like, it takes work and it isn't like easy as in like, you know, walking, you know, down the block.

• 18:20Reid Hoffman?

  But with some work and with some design, you can make these agents that are not smarmy or dictatorial or trivial, but that can reinforce good human connection. They can kind of model and reflect empathetic behavior. I mean, basically, all the medical studies that show, you know, kind of like if people are embedded in environments where they experience more empathy, they show more empathy. If they experience more compassion, they show more compassion. So that's the kind of universe that we want to be living in collectively as a group. And so I think it's totally doable. Now, the question is, you know,

• 19:05Reid Hoffman?

  part of what you'll be seeing is a the contention of what different experiences look like. And I think part of what we have to try to navigate is what are those experiences that help us not just as individuals, but also as a group? And it's one of the things that can mislead the way that sometimes social networks go because they go, well, I want to go for the people who are yelling the loudest, or I want to be the people who are most enraged by the things that are happening. And that, of course, creates a certain dynamic. And you want to have true norths that are not that. And that's part of the reason why LinkedIn doesn't do that, because LinkedIn says no. Actually, in fact, by being around this area, one of the things that's in the Terms of Service is essentially being civil in how you interact with folks.

• 19:49Reid Hoffman?

  And that you want that to be part of your true north. And I think the design of agents, you're going to want the same way. Now, the good news for a bunch of the current frontier agents is like, you know, kind of a very central goal for OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, et cetera. And so, so far, so good within those.

• 20:18Aria Finger?

  So when I think of empathy, many people in this room can agree that's like the number one thing I want for my kids. It's like, just don't be an asshole, be empathetic, be kind. And the secret behind the possible podcast is that it's a way for me to get parenting advice. And Nick, I think you have three boys, is that right?

• 20:36Speaker 00

  I do. I have three boys. Yep.

• 20:38Aria Finger?

  I also have three boys. And making them not horrible human beings is key. And you said that you think AI is going to be great for your kids. Like, you're really excited about young people and education and just how they're going to be growing up with it. So like, say more about that. Why are you excited for young people and AI?

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, like, there are all kinds of, you know, negative use cases. But if I look at the positive use cases, so what have I done with my kids with AI? So the first thing we did is I tell bedtime stories to my now 10 year old. And they, for a long time, involved this thing called the Animal World Cup, where different animals play each other in this like, long tournament, right? And so like, the centipedes, which have lots of legs, play the owls, the owls want it at night, you know, the bears, which are modeled on the stuffed animals, you know, like the fish are hoping it'll rain, all this stuff. And so, my 13 year old and I made a book for the 10 year old of the Animal World Cup, right? And it was based on my stories, but we added like, national anthems written by AI and art made by AI. And we printed it out. It was amazing, right?

• 21:36Speaker 00

  It was like, really fun and magical. And I'm now telling the same kid, stories every night about this kid. It's now, it's like, we're 10 years in, because I told a lot of these stories to his older brother, about a guy named Eggplant Parmesan, who's on this like, epic quest and was raised by chickadees in a bog. And he's like, fighting this like, evil, well, it's maybe a large bear, and it may be like a mouse, who knows? But I'm like, help every night when I'm like, sort of stuck on the plot point, I'm using, I'm going into like, anthropic, and I'm like, using it, right? So that's pretty fun and creative, right? My 15 year old refuses to use it, despite my insistence to write his papers, God bless him, because he doesn't want to lose those skills, but he uses it for his debate prep, right? So that's his big extracurricular, and it's incredibly

• 22:21Speaker 00

  helpful, right, for understanding how debate prep works. So They've all like developed like sensible use cases. And I mean, I guess also like they're also watching TikTok a bit, maybe a little more than they should, which is in some ways engagement with AI. But like, they have figured out and we have talked about sort of sensible, good, wonderful ways to use AI. So I'm all, I'm all for that.

• 22:44Aria Finger?

  Reid, uh, we were talking about empathy. We were talking about relationships. Uh, one form of relationships that is so critical to you is friendships. And it's something you talk about all the time before ChatGPT came around. I think like my first day at work, you were like, I'm going to write a book on friendship. It is so important to me. How does AI impact the world of friendship, both just generally human to human relationships and friendships, but also feel free to weigh in on friendships with AIs and bots and that whole universe?

• 23:17Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I'll start with the design sensibilities for Pi. So one, I think, natural unfortunate misconception is say, oh, try to design the agent to be the friend. And maybe at a future incarnation, that might be an okay thing to do. Right now, if you go to Pi and say, hey, you're my best friend. I was like, no, no, I'm your companion. Let's talk about your friends. Have you seen them recently? Have you reconnected with them? You know, that kind of thing is, is, is a way of navigating because the design sensibilities agent should be kind of a theory of what the human good is. And part of human good is having friends, friends who are people who are there for you, but also challenge you. And, and you kind of learn how to be your better self by going down the road with them. And you want that as a key thing.

• 24:02Reid Hoffman?

  Now, AI can't help with that because like Pi can say, oh, if you're feeling particularly lonely, why is it you haven't thought about calling your friend? Or, you know, what's the thing I like, but don't feel like I have any friends here? Well, have you thought about, you know, how you might find some or make some or other kinds of things? And what are ways to do that? And, you know, sometimes, you know, like one of the things that I was talking to a friend of mine. Whose kid sometimes kind of goes to, you know, one of these agent providers is this, this kid has a couple of close friends. If he is, is in a down cycle with those friends, then feeling lonely, it will be a temporary surcease, but wants to get back to the friends.

• 24:45Reid Hoffman?

  That's, that seems to be a reasonably healthy pattern. And I think that's the kind of pattern that we want on these things. And just like these LMs are trained on a large corpus of human knowledge, obviously, people worry about a bunch of that stuff being toxic. But it's also a bunch of human reinforcement, learning and feedback, and that is deliberate design. So with that deliberate design, you can actually make these into being much more patient and empathetic than your average human being in terms of them. So I think it's very possible to have that. And that's, that's where you don't want it to be. It's a little bit like, one of the things I've always been mused and think about friendship

• 25:26Reid Hoffman?

  is, you know, one of our classic English phrases is, dogs are people's best friends. And my quick snappy rejoinder is, well, I don't know about you, but I don't take my best friend down to be spayed at kind of my convenience. So I'm, it's a little bit of an odd locution for thinking about this. And that's because a friend is somebody who actually, in fact, you know, kind of is present with you as an equal and kind of goes with you on this journey. And part of the value in that friendship is their ability to challenge you as well as support you. And that's not what the agents are yet. Maybe the agents can be there at some point, but the delusion that the agent should be your friend because

• 26:10Reid Hoffman?

  it's completely there and totally loyalist is, is kind of perhaps a subtle misunderstanding of friendship. And so I think right now, the design sensibility should be, no, no, I'm not your friend. I'm your, I'm your, I'm your companion. I'm an agent. I'm a catalyst. I'm a supporter. I'm a tool. And I think that's the right kind of thing. And part of the reason why I'm so focused on having a A set of agents that where we think of it as not one agent, but a set of agents is because part of how we preserve our, our agency, our cognition as we're going forward in this group is that we are thinking, oh, I've got this agent that's the historian and

• 26:52Reid Hoffman?

  this agent that's the skeptic and this agent that's the, um, the intellectual. And I'm sorting out where my beliefs are as they're each speaking to me as I'm, as I'm in my, and who my identity is as I'm sorting through these particular problems.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  As you think about designing agents and as you, you thought about this with Pi, do you let your agents use the first person singular like, or do you make them draw very firm lines so that it's always clear that you're talking to a machine and not a person?

• 27:26Reid Hoffman?

  So far, but this is a work in progress, allow the first person singular, but also be clear that it's not, I'm not a person. Right? So that's part of the thing of like, oh, you're my friend is no, no, actually I'm back. I'm a, I'm a robot or you're so emotionally empathetic to me as well. Well, actually I'm very good at interacting with you in an emotional way, but I myself don't share those same emotions you have to have that kind of clarity so that you're not, um, that you're having a kind of an accurate and balanced and truthful perspective of the world while still being very helpful.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I have come to the belief that all the people designing those core levels should, and they are not right now, work to always make clear there's distinction to have voices that don't sound human, or if they do sound human, like be preceded by like a beep, right? To not allow the first person singular, to have a constant reminders. And in fact, like to make it a very core part of product philosophy that there is a line between this is a robot and this is a human.

• 28:27Reid Hoffman?

  It's interesting because part of how we learn to be more empathetic because we interface in various ways, in human ways with other people. There's a reason, not just because of Hollywood storytelling and other things, but that a humanish voice is actually pretty baked into how we learn those behaviors and how we take them seriously. And, you know, like, for example, one of the things I think is a mistaken design is the, the interaction pattern with Alexa's can be bad for humanization because you don't want to learn a pattern, stop, you know, so far you want to actually have more of a dialogue.

• 29:11Reid Hoffman?

  So the balancing of those considerations, which is, together with a, how do I, you know, kind of have a, kind of a humanizing approach to the world is also very important. And so I would look at both design characteristics, but it's an interesting thought about what the balance of those should be and what the resulting design should be.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  My kid who spends all this time with the Alexa told me to set a timer and beep in 15 minutes and it was a very awkward exchange.

• 29:39Aria Finger?

  I feel like it's just a losing battle. I, I like, I.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  But it's not, I mean, so it is, it is a battle that is being lost, right? And it is being lost because there is a rush to become the most successful company.

• 29:52Aria Finger?

  Sure.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And clearly having an interface that is more human is more successful, right? So OpenAI like types like a human because it feels more natural and like you're responding to somebody's text message coming in, right? And the voice is very human. In fact, it's the perfect version of a human, right? Because that is what we most like to communicate with. And so there is a competitive market force to make that. But it's bad and we should resist it and we should thwart it and turn it backwards. And I'm glad that Reed is open to this idea. And I think that. We just need to-

• 30:22Aria Finger?

  What's the method? Is it, is it regulation? Is it government? Is it self censorship? Like, how do you fight that profit motive?

• 30:28Speaker 00

  As with all, all things in AI, it probably a large and unfortunate percentage of it is self-regulation by the AI companies, right? The governments are going to move too slowly. But it's also, you know, regulation, you know, state, federal, international, whatever. You can imagine like you have to declare if you are using a system that could be interpreted as a human, you have to have a clear signal that it is not a human. And then it's user preference. It's individuals opting out of services that don't follow these guidelines and opting into ones that do. But I think that to efficiently solve the problem, it would actually have to be like the head of product at Anthropic OpenAI who would have to care about this and like build it into their products. And certainly they have thought about it and are thinking of it. So consider one of my small roles in life

• 31:13Speaker 00

  to put pressure on this issue because I just think it's extremely important.

• 31:17Reid Hoffman?

  So I do think it's really important. And one of the things that Pi does and else is to not delude, I am human. I'm trying to fake out, fake you out that I am human. The design for how to do that is a very interesting question. I'm not sure that the deliberate massively non-human voice is the right thing. And I'm certain of the beeps are not the right idea. I think it's a design problem to figure out. Because like, for example, when we do, you know, on possible podcast, master scale podcast, we use kind of AI voices. We make sure that people are aware that that is happening. But we don't tag each use of it because it would be super awkward.

• 32:02Reid Hoffman?

  And, you know, in these things, you, you want to go on the engagement of the, of the story and the arc. And if you're interjecting a beep every two minutes, you know-

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Or every five seconds. No, I, I agree with that. And same thing with The Atlantic, right? We use AI to read our stories because it's a, you know, much quicker process. And you have humans read some stories. And there's this really, I mean, at the beginning, we say this is read to you by AI. The really interesting data point is that the completion rate on stories read by AI is higher than that read by humans.

• 32:33Aria Finger?

  What?

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Suggesting that at this point-

• 32:35Aria Finger?

  Even if it's like Morgan Freeman?

• 32:38Speaker 00

  That would be an interesting test. It may be noisy data. It may be too early to tell. There may be a confounding factor. Who knows why? It may be like some data scientists will figure out that it's got nothing to do with it. However, one hypothesis would be AI can make a better voice than a human. And so all of this is going to go that way. But I do think it's extremely important that at the beginning, we say this is an AI voice as a principle.

• 33:01Reid Hoffman?

  Yes, that I completely agree with.

• 33:03Aria Finger?

  So we're going to switch a little bit into data and privacy. So I realized the other day, I was at a mom's night karaoke for my child's school, and it was super fun. And I was taking pictures and videos, not because I wanted the pictures and videos, but because I wanted them to exist. So that like in 10 years, when I looked back at my phone roll, I'd be like, oh, right, right, right. We did that fun karaoke. Like, there's so many things that you forget unless there's a picture, right? Like, you didn't realize that. But then someone showed, oh, I did. I did go on that vacation. Or I did go to that restaurant. And so it was just like a way that I wanted to sort of memorialize something, even though I didn't really care about the picture itself. So, Microsoft

• 33:47Aria Finger?

  has a new recall feature that records everything on your computer. And Nick, you flagged this as potentially great. It can remember everything you've done. Obviously, there's huge security risks. And so I think there's two things here. One is like remembering everything. And the other is security, data, privacy. How do you feel about it? What are the trade offs?

• 34:08Speaker 00

  I mean, like, the utility is obvious, right? Like, if I had on my computer, every document I'd ever had, like, access to every keystroke, like, that would be amazing, right? I'm working on a book about my life and running. There's all kinds of stuff I can't remember from my life. I can't figure out. I can't piece together their files. I lost the password, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, it'd be incredible. It'd be amazingly efficient. It'd be awesome. On the other hand, if somebody else. Had access to that, it will be a complete and total catastrophic nightmare. And so there's a creepiness concern, there's a privacy concern, there's a security concern, and there's amazing utility. And that like is often the trade off in tech. I also think with this one, it's like a crafty way, you can tell me you're on the board of Microsoft,

• 34:53Speaker 00

  like it's a crafty way to like train their AIs of the future. Because if you can actually record everything on somebody's screen and like get all the mouse movements, you're going to get a way clearer picture of what humans actually want than just getting their text. So it's making amazing data to feed the machines as well. Correct?

• 35:12Aria Finger?

  On the record.

• 35:14Reid Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. One of the rules of Microsoft board members is to not speak for the company. So I'm not speaking for Microsoft. I would say as an outside observer of the top, you know, tech companies, Microsoft is the one that most has institutionalized the like an organization's data as its own data, doesn't have access to the data, no one at Microsoft does, it's part of how they operate. Now they're more organization focused than per se individual focused. So they're all really set up much more on an organizational basis for that. It is obvious that part of the thing, like if you look at what I think this agentic future is,

• 35:56Reid Hoffman?

  I think we will pretty quickly have a set of agents that are listening to us fairly constantly, scribing things, giving us feedback and, you know, kind of the, hey, you don't even have to think, I wasn't going to go search for that, but look, oh, you were thinking about this here. I found this thing that could be interesting for you because you said something or did something. And I think what's important about it is that that process will only work if it's for you, under your own agency and control, has zero chance of ambushing you, like, you know. And so, but by the way, to learn from that and do that, that means that data is engaging in some loops.

• 36:37Reid Hoffman?

  Right? So like, oh, I'm going to go do this search for you, anticipating this result. You'd have to be comfortable for that. And you'd have to have the process by which you would be bought in and know that. And I think part of the, like, I was not part of this design decision. I learned of this feature actually the same time the world did because it didn't get. Presented to me. But part of the thing that you'd say is like, well, if your computer's a work computer and you're doing a whole bunch of work stuff, this could be a real amplifier. Yes, data and so forth, then that would be, you know, in that context, probably a great thing, which is, I think, one of the reasons why that's, I would speculate that Microsoft is experimenting with that.

• 37:20Aria Finger?

  And I feel like in the new world of AI, there's so many places where there are trade offs between data and privacy and surveillance. Like Reid, you and I have talked about, if there was like a, if in cars, it was set like you had to, it could stop your car if you got in and you were drunk. You would happily say, I would love this to be in all cars across the country, even though it would stop me from drunk driving. It would stop, you know what I mean? Like, it would be an invasion of privacy, but of course, you would want to do this because it would save lives on the road. Like, are there other like data trade offs, places where you're like, yes, I would happily give up that surveillance because it's good for the world? Like, where do you see the positives?

• 37:58Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I think what ultimately has to be is we have to figure out what the boundaries are for it being sure that it's being used for me with some kind of agency and control. But, you know, think about, you know, like, for example, we all, I speculate every single person in this room has a smartphone with them. So you're bringing along a microphone, a GPS LoJack, and a bunch of other things because of utility to you. And while you may even say, well, sometimes I feel like I work for my phone, the same way that you're reachable by all these other people, it's because you also want to be able to reach all these other people. And that's part of the compact in the, in the notion of what

• 38:40Reid Hoffman?

  is the net benefit to me in doing. And I think the same thing will be true as you begin to think about, you know, kind of like health data and other kinds of things. Like, for example, if you say, well, if you allow our tracking of your biometrics to be included in this group thing that we can then do, monitor, like be able to tell you, oh, actually, in fact, you're now trending towards a risk of an early heart attack. And if you're contributing your data, we can find all that. That's actually, in fact, as long as it doesn't impact my, you know, ambush me with my employer, ambush me with my friends, other kinds of things. But that would net to be benefit people, if they trusted that, would be very positive. And that's the, that's the navigation that we need to have, which is this combination

• 39:25Reid Hoffman?

  of its For me, it has sufficient control and agency by me and it will never ambush me. And what's that, like, we can see that with, you know, I would be surprised if there was one person in this room who didn't have a smartphone, as an example.

• 39:43Aria Finger?

  Uh, Nick, what about you? Are there any thoughts on sort of that data privacy surveillance line?

• 39:48Speaker 00

  I feel like of the issues in tech where there's, I keep a list of questions where I feel like they're kind of unanswered and unresolved and, you know, they're interesting questions. It's an old habit I had in my old, you know, my job at Wired. And I feel like I have yet to read a philosophy of privacy that I fully buy and that I'm fully invested in. And the trade offs are so clear, right? And the trade offs in like, are so obvious from the company's perspective, they're so obvious from the user's perspective, and they're so hard and they're so complex and they're constantly changing with each new device. I was at an amazing lunch just a few hours ago and we were talking with, it was like half journalists, half venture capitalists. And we were talking about Facebook's, you

• 40:29Speaker 00

  know, Ray-Ban glasses, Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, which, you know, obviously huge utility, both to the individual and huge utility to the company, because there's not a lot of like, eye height image data of the world that can be used to train robots, right? And so if you're trying to figure out how to train the next generation of robots that can help humans, the data from the Ray-Bans would be amazing. And the venture capitalists were like, yeah, you know, and those Ray-Bans, maybe just turn on that frickin' white light, man, and just like, have the eyeglasses on, you get so much, be so much more useful, people wouldn't be weirded out by you, you get so much more data. And the journalists were like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, and both sides have like, real value in what they're saying. And so I find the privacy debate one that there surely

• 41:12Speaker 00

  is a really interesting philosophy of privacy that one could hold on to, a set of principles, and apply them to each new debate, but I have yet to, yet to encounter that.

• 41:20Aria Finger?

  Uh, so Reid, I'm not asking you to predict the future. Would you share with the group your philosophy on like, how, how far out can we look right now on, on what's gonna happen? What do you think is viable?

• 41:32Reid Hoffman?

  Um, well, it's different in different things. The most often place that question is asked. Today is AI, and I think the maximum visibility that anyone rational can tell you is two years, and I think that's pushing it.

• 41:48Aria Finger?

  Pretty wild. In three years, we have sort of no idea what the world is going to look like. And anyone who's saying that they know five years, 10 years out are probably wrong.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  But what's also amazing is like, this all started 18 months ago, when SUD came out and like, not that much has changed about like, most of how we live our lives. Like, certain things are cool. But you know, I like did a bunch of research and like Anthropic today was like really helpful and like sorting through some stuff. But like, you know, 18 months and it's been amazing if you're an investor in Nvidia, but otherwise like your life probably isn't that different.

• 42:20Aria Finger?

  Well, that also just might continue to happen. I was talking to someone about this the other day. It's like 1900 to 1950, you got like indoor plumbing and electricity and cars and women didn't have to like carry water, like 85 gallons of water every day. Like, the the built environment like changed completely and your days changed. So knowing that we cannot predict the future, Reid, what is the thing that we haven't talked about? Maybe that's not talked about enough that you're excited about with AI? Like, what's one area, whether it's in two years or 10, that you're like, this could be really exciting?

• 42:54Reid Hoffman?

  I think that the impact of AI on our lives will be faster than the the speed at which smartphones.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  I agree, actually.

• 43:04Reid Hoffman?

  Yes, because because obviously it builds upon smartphones, right? It creates an amplification. So yes, not two years, but I don't even think smartphones with a two year timeframe. I think smartphones are kind of like a five year timeframe, you know, ish.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Oh, I agree. I think it's going to be totally transformative. I think it's going to turn things upside down, inside out. It's going to change all kinds of stuff. I'm just in the question of the two year timeframe. Like, it's going a little, if you had asked me a year and a half ago, when will there be like dramatic changes? I'd be like, my God, you know, like, I can't possibly see 18 months and a day. But now we're 18 months and a day, and I probably could have foreseen this. But yes, it will definitely, I'm with you that it's gonna happen.

• 43:40Reid Hoffman?

  Yes. The other thing is, so the minimum of what we're seeing with these, because the revolution we're in for the AI side is scale compute, scale data, scale teams. And we're changing the compute paragraph done from what we program to what it learns from all of that. And it's that learning characteristic that raise that creates some amazing cognitive capabilities and amplifications. Now, so if you roughly say that anything that we do with language will be have between a 50% and a 50x improvement over in a tool for doing that in five-ish years.

• 44:22Reid Hoffman?

  That kind of compounds across all of these things. But then to answer your question is, we generally speaking have too narrow of a view of language in terms of what are these amplifications of language? And so, for example, there's, you know, a language of, of, you know, kind of enzymes, proteins, drugs for, you know, human ailments. This amplification of these kinds of language problems into drug discovery, you know, there's a couple of companies and a couple of people who focus on that. You know, my view would be is within two years, there will be at least one major new

• 45:07Reid Hoffman?

  drug discovered by AI. And within five years, that'd be five of them plus, right? So that kind of thing will be, I think, one of the things that is when you begin to think about this language amplification more broadly than just, you know, I give this speech in Perugian English and then a couple of hours later, I have Read AI deliver it and it was kind of amusing to see myself speaking French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, etc. Like my voice, I am inept at languages. So it was interesting to see, to see that. But not just that kind of conception of language, not just reasoning, not just analysis,

• 45:52Reid Hoffman?

  not just writing, not just comprehension, not just summary. But actually, these other places in the world where languages are. So like, for example, another project that I helped an amazing team stand up by being the kind of first donor is Earth Species Project, which is recording dolphins and whales and crows and so forth, to see if we can get translation and conversation, understanding going there. And that's another thing where like, it's language is much more just in the languages that we speak and operating in.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Do you think, do you think that, all right, so three years from now, you and I are setting up a meeting. If you and I talk in person, we're still going to speak English to each other. Will our agents speak English? Or will they have they created a new, more efficient language? Like presumably, if Spanish is more efficient, just in general, like uses fewer letters and takes less time, over time, our agents will speak Spanish. But like, presumably, they could recreate an entirely new, more efficient language and save a bunch of time, right? Won't that happen? Or will they speak English? Or will they speak whale?

• 46:54Reid Hoffman?

  It'll start by speaking English. Part of the comfort that we will get is because we can then listen to and audit the English. We'll be nervous. We'll have to build a fairly strong trust to say, this is a communication in a language that we don't really necessarily fully understand that is going between them. We'll have to make sure that we understand that. I think that will get created. I don't think it'll be three years, because I don't think we'll have the trust for it in three years.

• 47:20Aria Finger?

  If you guys haven't checked out Earth Species Project, so literally within two years, they are going to be able to have conversations with whales, like conversations with dolphins. And they already know somewhat of what they're saying, because they'll have them say something, and then they'll attack a boat. They'll hear them say something, and then they'll, you know, deep dive under the water. Like, I don't even care about animals, and it's wild. So definitely check out Earth Species Project.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Wow. And they're gonna be writing letters on climate change, like getting Congress to act.

• 47:58Aria Finger?

  We are going to move to rapid fire. This is what we do at the end of every podcast and I am actually going to turn it over to Reid for the first question. These are all for you, Nick.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Wait.

• 48:08Aria Finger?

  So get ready.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Reid's asking me.

• 48:09Aria Finger?

  Yes, Reid's asking you.

• 48:11Reid Hoffman?

  So is there a movie, song, or book that fills you with optimism for the future?

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Totally. I just read Fei-Fei Li's book, reading her story, having faith that she's building these products, made me extremely excited about the future and what she's doing.

• 48:23Aria Finger?

  What is a question that you wish people would ask you more often?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  How can I extend the Atlantic subscription to five years?

• 48:34Reid Hoffman?

  Where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry that inspires you?

• 48:42Speaker 00

  I've been really excited by the commitment in AI, this multilingual process that you were talking about, in order to add in languages from around the world, which is something where I think that there wasn't so much progress in the beginning and now there's a whole bunch. And I think that's one thing that will be great for the world economy and lots of other things. Right? So like adding Wolof, right? Or adding, you know, Ga. It's great.

• 49:03Aria Finger?

  Awesome. Final question. Can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible to achieve if everything breaks humanity's way in the next 15 years? And what's the first step to get there?

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Well, so, okay. I mean, everything breaks humanity. I'll leave it this thought. So I think, you know, I told you about that list of questions I have. And the one that I think about the most, and I think maybe one of the most important, is will AI make the world less equal or more equal? Right? And you can argue it both ways, right? And you can get very smart people who will argue both ways. And there's data suggesting that actually it's going to make the world more equal. But there's the last 20 years, which are just going to make the world less equal. I think that there's a, if things break our way, the world will become a much more equal place, which would actually make democracy work better, which would make society work better. And I think there's a real chance that AI does that.

• 49:55Reid Hoffman?

  Possible is produced by Wondra Media Network. It's hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Sarah Shleid, Adrian Bain, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.

• 50:14Aria Finger?

  Special thanks to Soraya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alice, Greg Beato, Parth Patel, and Ben Relis. And a big thanks to Lorene Powell Jobs and our friends at Emerson Collective, Mariana Salem, Melissa Trujillo, Jeff Ensall, and Kaffiyah Ahmed, along with Madeline Gore, Vincent Lucero, Francesca Billington, Oresti Sinopoulos, Alex Monroe, Jim Ta, and Little Monster Media Company.