Reflections on AI and season two

What can we learn from the OpenAI saga? What role might AI play in the 2024 election? What’s the deal with the New York Times suing OpenAI? How will AI evolve our sense of human purpose? Reid and Aria reflect on season two of Possible and answer questions like these from a variety of sources: Listeners, Pi, ChatGPT, and each other. Read the transcript of this episode here. For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all of the episodes, visit www.possible.fm/podcast. Topics: 00:48 - Reflecting on the season 03:51 - Reid and Aria’s favorite new AI developments 06:30 - Segment: OpenAI 06:34 - What can we learn from the OpenAI saga? 10:58 - Does the nonprofit model make sense for OpenAI and beyond? 13:46 - Why was OpenAI able to get miles ahead? 16:36 - How will the lawsuits against OpenAI play out? 21:06 - Segment: Inflection 21:09 - How and why was Pi created? 24:25 - How can we create more empathy and humanity with AI? 27:45 - What are Aria’s favorite applications for AI? 29:53 - Segment: Ethical AI 29:54 - How will AI impact our social interactions? 34:09 - How do we prepare people in the workplace for AI? 37:53 - Segment: Election and governance 37:54 - What role will AI play in the election? 43:12 - Is the government equipped to regulate AI? 46:47 - What role should AI play in national security? 49:18 - Segment: Technology and the future 49:19 - What is the latest in AI hardware? 51:49 - How will AI change our sense of purpose? The award-winning Possible podcast is back with a new season 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. This season, hosts Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger are speaking with a new set of ambitious builders and deep thinkers about everything 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. Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network and hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Edie Allard, Sara Schleede, and Paloma Moreno Jiménez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor. Special thanks to Katie Sanders, Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, and Ben Relles. And a big thanks to MacLean Fitzgerald and Little Monster Media Company.

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

• 0:05Reid Hoffman?

  Hi, I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 0:07Aria Finger?

  And I'm Aria Finger.

• 0:08Reid Hoffman?

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

• 0:13Aria Finger?

  We're speaking with visionaries in many fields, from art to geopolitics and from healthcare to education.

• 0:21Reid Hoffman?

  These conversations showcase another kind of guest, whether it's Inflection's Pi or OpenAI's ChatGPT, each episode, we use AI to enhance and advance our discussion.

• 0:33Aria Finger?

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

• 0:40Reid Hoffman?

  This is possible.

• 0:48Aria Finger?

  Reid, I'm so excited to be here. This is the wrap up episode of season two. So one of the things that I loved about season two is that although we had all new guests, all new topics, there were so many themes that sort of cut through things we were talking about in season one and the AI arc. When we spoke to Mustafa, he was talking about Pi and personal intelligence. And then we spoke to Maya, and she was talking about socially assistive robots and how those can help potentially kids with autism. And then we brought in Anne Marie Slaughter this past season, and she talked about the care economy. And I feel like everything she talked about hearkened back to those advances in AI that are really going to be pro-humanity, beneficial to humanity, and sort of bring the

• 1:32Aria Finger?

  humanity into everything we're doing.

• 1:35Reid Hoffman?

  You know, we obviously select guests to have at least comfort with technology, because obviously we have some amazing technologists like Mustafa for covering things like Pi. But we also had folks like Kerry Washington and other folks who who are still very positive on humanity and the kind of possibilities to whom technology is not their starting point. And that kind of blend of saying, hey, this this question about how do we create a great future, obviously, can be done and helped with technology, but it's also done through leadership, through care, through spreading a sense of possibility and hope in stories we tell. In addition to all of the technology things, was the

• 2:19Reid Hoffman?

  broader humanity of it.

• 2:21Aria Finger?

  So I'm so excited about season three. And one of the things that we have in store, we'd been talking about for a long time, which is a live episode. But the other thing that I think actually having Carrie and Catherine, sort of two of the last episodes of the season, because with both of them, obviously, Carrie Washington does so much to get out the vote and is so sort of politically active and an activist. And Catherine was talking about truth and democracy and how do we keep our democracy alive, is that, you know, in 2024, this is an election year for the United States and also billions of people around the world. And this is not a political podcast, per se, but it is something that we cannot ignore. When we're talking about humanity and the future of the future of the human race, we're thinking about democracy, we're thinking of the future

• 3:05Aria Finger?

  governance structures for both the US and externally. And so I'm really interested in how sort of democracy and the election will play sort of key roles in what's happening in technology in the coming year. And I'm positive that we will reflect those themes in this podcast.

• 3:22Reid Hoffman?

  You know, so among the things that we're doing, tackling questions that come from our listeners, from AI assistants, you know, PyChad, GPT, and from each other, one of Possible's producers, Edie, will join us to share listener questions. And, you know, the discussion will range is the normal thing from, you know, technology, humanity, and AI. But, you know, we're not going to spoil everything. I think we should get into it.

• 3:51Aria Finger?

  We'll get to listener questions shortly. But first, let's each answer one that we had for each other. So Reid, I would love to hear from you. What new AI developments are you most excited about? And what's the most extraordinary example that you've seen or heard of AI used to elevate humanity this year?

• 4:09Reid Hoffman?

  I'd say one of the things that's really coming that people don't realize is how much raw medical capability will be coming out of this. And it's not just, hey, it could help you with a medical assistant. But like drug discovery and and mapping the biological substrate genetics and protein, you know, because obviously we have Bakerfold and Alpha Fold and so forth. And all this stuff will cause a renaissance in medicine. You know, just as we had a huge step forward with penicillin, a huge step forward with the germ theory of disease. This will be another huge step forward that can potentially benefit all of humanity.

• 4:49Reid Hoffman?

  And I think that's one of the things that I see coming and in development with AI that is, you know, among the things that are most exciting. And so, Aria, you know, I'll also volley the question back over to you. What would your answer be?

• 5:05Aria Finger?

  So I'll 100% agree with you and I'll go a little more specific. So I have been interested in neuroscience and brain chemistry forever. I remember reading Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and remember voraciously reading everything he had to say, and I thought it was so fascinating. And then this summer, I stumbled across, there was that article in Nature, and I actually believe our friend Sean White showed this to us first, about the woman who had been in an accident 20 years ago and she hadn't been able to speak. And because of the use of AI, Eddie Chang, in his in his lab and his research team, were able to sort of map her brain using AI so that she could think about what she wanted

• 5:50Aria Finger?

  to say. And then because they had some of her voice pre-accident, she, this woman was able to speak for the first time in 20 years. And I mean, it brings tears to my eyes, the idea that like we are just like at such the beginning, we're in the first inning, and we're already having these unbelievable dramatic discoveries that now don't have to be anomalies, that we can now sort of roll them out for all of humanity. So just 100% agree, the medical field is what we're going to see so much, and I think specifically sort of neuroscience and brain chemistry and speech, because that's what AI does. It allows you to use speech and language in a new and different way is just extraordinary.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Producer Edie jumping in. This one's for Reid. You were a board member of OpenAI from 2019 to early 2023. A number of our listeners are curious for your perspective on, you know, the roller coaster developments between the leadership and board of OpenAI last month. Anything we can learn from that whole saga?

• 6:54Reid Hoffman?

  Well, we could spend the entire episode, given how important this is with kind of key learnings. But I would say it's one of the things of kind of how board of directors governance works. And it's the different lens of kind of like, as a word, the importance of humanity. Because there isn't anything that you can do to particularly change the structure of boards and directors to avoid errors like the OpenAI one. It's kind of one of the places where expertise matters. You know, knowing how to be a good board member, what are the questions asked? Because among other things, part of what happens here is in life and in these organizations, there's a bunch of fast moving, you know, kind of fender scrapes and risks taking

• 7:39Reid Hoffman?

  and zones for misunderstanding and so forth. And, you know, I've had that across a whole number of companies that I've been on the board of. And you have to have the right kind of skills and perspectives as a board member in order to know how to sort them out. And when is this something that you tolerate? When is, you know, it's like, well, that's part of moving fast and doing stuff. When is this something that you work on internally? When is this something you make a drastic move because of? You know, I think that the short answer of this was, you know, I think the board made a number of mistakes, which is, you know, I think fairly obvious now, you know, after the whole process.

• 8:21Reid Hoffman?

  Sam was trying to be so attentive to the AI safety folks that as opposed to kind of staffing a board with people who like, okay, I understand. Board of Director dynamics really well. He was staffing with AI safety in mind. And he wanted to be really clear about the fact that he wasn't in solo control. He was trying to be really careful about AI safety, all of which were well intentioned. But he kind of, we kind of devolved to a place where the board was not well skilled in what to be doing as a board, right? And so when they kind of encountered this thing of like, well, we've got this, this episode that has caused us to lose confidence.

• 9:03Reid Hoffman?

  They kind of acted like, you know, people who didn't really understand boards and kind of what are the things to do. And so when they were challenged by other people about, well, you say you've lost confidence in Sam, but by the way, from an outsider perspective, either I should have confidence in Sam or I should have confidence in you. So why should I have confidence in you versus Sam? And they couldn't answer that question, right? And that's one of actually the central things that a competent board of directors would know is to say, look, if I'm going to make this kind of decision, I have to be preserving trust across a wide variety of constituents. My employees, most centrally among them, but of course also shareholders and society and all the rest. And there isn't just a presumption because I'm sitting on the board that I, everyone should just have confidence in me.

• 9:48Reid Hoffman?

  And so I think what you saw, like with the employee, you know, this literally, I've never seen anything like it, even in an organization of like 20 or 30 people, where like 700 people, a huge percentage of the organization, write and say, fire yourselves and reinstate sheet the CEO or I quit and I go to work for Microsoft. You also saw that on, you know, they appointed Mira Maroti as the interim CEO. And within the same day that they appointed her, she's like, well, you guys aren't doing this the right way. I'm not, I'm not your interim CEO. I don't think you're doing this the right way. You're like, you, you've lost confidence from the person you appointed as interim CEO in hours, right? And so that kind of, all of that highlights a whole bunch of mechanical mistakes and

• 10:31Reid Hoffman?

  other kinds of things that the board of directors did. And, and I think that the importance of board directors and the importance of the competence and the skills of it, in addition to well meaning, being smart, having high integrity and all the rest, all of which, by the way, I think the former board of OpenAI has, but failed on execution and competence about how to know what to do.

• 10:58Reid Hoffman?

  So look, one of the things that was broadly commented on was there's this weirdness of it was a 501(c)(3) overall, this kind of commercial entity. I didn't think that was the issue. As I just said, I think it was principally around board of directors and competence. But Aria, you ran a major nonprofit. Do you have a perspective on OpenAI's structure? Or more generally, about nonprofit, private, private sector? And how each of these might collaboratively or selectively be involved in development of AI?

• 11:30Aria Finger?

  Of course. In the mountain of hot takes that came out after the OpenAI weekend, I feel like there were so many that were like, "The problem here is the nonprofit structure." And I fundamentally disagree. You talked about specific board members and how we should act as a board and our fiduciary duty and all of that. But I actually see the nonprofit structure in this case as a strength. Because OpenAI was started for the benefit of humanity. And I remember talking to you several times when you were on the board and you said, "Listen, I'm on the board of a 501(c)(3). My job is not to maximize dollars. My job is to maximize the potential for humanity. In doing so, we might need to raise or create vast sums of money for the training data, etc.

• 12:14Aria Finger?

  But the ultimate goal is the benefit to humanity." And I think it's really interesting, if you actually look at the major AI companies, if you look at Inflection, Anthropic, and now Grok, they're all public benefit corporations. And what people don't talk about is we actually all owe a debt of gratitude to B-Lab and the B Corp movement, because they're the folks who wrote the public benefit corporation statutes and fought tooth and nail to get it into Delaware, where obviously most C Corps are registered. And so, we now have a lot of options that if you don't just want to be about a financial return, you can do what OpenAI did and say, "Okay, we'll be an NGO, but obviously, we also need to take investment capital because of the large sums that we need to run these models."

• 12:59Aria Finger?

  Or you can go the Inflection route, the Anthropic route, etc. And say, "We're going to be a public benefit corporation." And say that, of course, Return to shareholder fiduciary duty is important, but we're also taking into account the environment, humanity, diversity, et cetera. And so I actually think that many structures can work. You just want to make sure that the incentives are aligned and the incentives here to stop and pause and ask the question, are we doing the right thing? Is a good one. Staging like a 2pm Friday coup, I'd say is a bad outcome, but like the stop and asking questions, I think is perfectly fine. And so I think the, you know, the dragging on nonprofits didn't need to happen as I, you know, defend my sector.

• 13:40Reid Hoffman?

  One of your sectors.

• 13:41Aria Finger?

  One of my sectors. My old, my old sector, my previous sector, one of my children.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  We have another question on the OpenAI thread, coming from one of our listeners, Danilo T. They asked, why was OpenAI able to get miles ahead of its competitors in 2023? And Reed, maybe you can take this one.

• 14:00Reid Hoffman?

  Well, it's a great question. And it wasn't just in 2023. It was actually much earlier. And this is part of the classic kind of startup journey and why startups create new, amazing, scale companies that transform industries. Because there's a focused idea that they take a risk on. They assemble a group of people who are completely focused on that, who are moving very fast. And they generally move much faster than larger scale organizations that have to deal with internal politics and competing priorities and, and a bunch of other stuff. And if they, their bet plays out to be right, right, then you end up with something that has a whole bunch of momentum is, you know, to one of my earlier

• 14:43Reid Hoffman?

  books, is blitzscaling into size and, and impact. And what OpenAI noticed is they said, well, not just is AI going to be really important, but we have, you know, back then, we have a team of like, you know, 30 people and then, you know, grew to 50 and so forth. And it's like, okay, unlike Google, unlike other places, we're going to have to be totally ruthlessly focused on what do we think the key ideas and not do all the other ideas. They looked at a couple of different things and they were doing experiments of work, but they realized that actually in fact, what are called large language models now. It's kind of through this Attention Transformer paper, Applying Scale,

• 15:25Reid Hoffman?

  using that kind of scale approach of this very generalized learning technique, applied to, you know, kind of the domain of language and the domain of of human knowledge, was the thing that could create a whole bunch of magic much faster than the other approaches, and they completely focused on it. And as that focus, they started showing, you know, the progress. And this is part of how I knew that this was went from a speculative idea to someone was going to work is they got, okay, G P D two, kind of entertaining. G P D three mildly functional, but a lot better than G P D two. And then looking at this going, oh, when we get, we look at the trajectory from G P D two to G P D three, and think that same trajectory to four,

• 16:10Reid Hoffman?

  now we're going to have something that's going to be completely amazing. It was that ability to take that early risk, do that focus, move with speed and intensity, and then keep doubling down on those bets as a way of doing it. And so as other people say, hey, we now see what you're doing. They've already got, you know, a deal in place with Microsoft, a compute infrastructure, a team working around it as they play through that theory.

• 16:36Aria Finger?

  So one of the things that we've seen a lot recently is that there's all these lawsuits and people are asking the questions about A I and copyright. You know, we talked about this with Sarah Z earlier in the season about A I and copyright and specifically, you know, creative expression and artistic works. But the New York Times and other renowned authors like George R R Martin have actually sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. And, you know, I think the question is, is this fair use? Are they just using this as training data or are they actually, you know, sort of taking that and spitting out in some instances, you know, exact passages from these books? And so I would love to hear from you, like, how do you see this playing out? Maybe what do you think the outcome of the lawsuit will be? What should the outcome of the lawsuit would be? I would love to, I would love to hear your thoughts.

• 17:21Reid Hoffman?

  First, to make it tangible to people about why there's a very legitimate case of fair use from OpenAI and Microsoft. Other people say, "Well, it's training. It's like you're just reading it," right? And you just say, "No, you can't read it." It's like, "Well, no. If I buy a copy of Game of Thrones, I can read it. I can hand it to my friend Arya. She can then read the copy that I hand to her." And reading it is precisely what's allowed. It's part of what fair use is. And when you look at what copyright is, is like, "Well, I'm not allowed to like, take a chapter and, and put it in my own work and sell my own work now," right? But like, the training is essentially analogous to reading. And

• 18:02Reid Hoffman?

  reading is fine if you have legitimate access to, to the content. Now then they say, "Well, okay, our real issue is that you're reproducing. And so maybe you're going to reproduce, say, for example, a New York Times article that, you know, then someone gets the New York Times article free and the damage you're doing is you're producing, you're giving someone the New York Times article free where they'd normally buy it." Well, from my quick read of the, kind of the complaint, the only way they can get these things to actually fully reproduce their copyrighted materials is by preloading a lot of it into it, right? So like, "Oh, here is half of the New York Times article. Can you generate the other half?" And it's like, "Well, if I'm preloading it in, I've

• 18:44Reid Hoffman?

  already, as a reader, I already have access to it. I already have it." Well, like, you know, all it is, is this artifact of, "Can I generate the other half?" as opposed to doing it. Now, one of the things I find particularly entertaining about the New York Times complaint is they, on one hand, complain about the fact that you could generate this, which they do by preloading in so much of the article that the completion just works and it's unclear that there's any damage there. But also, they then say, "And it generates speculative articles that are not New York Times thing and attributes them to the New York Times." And you're like, "So, the fact that it reproduces and it doesn't really do that fully, fully accurately, you're almost like contradicting yourself in your own complaint because you're kind of looking around for, you know, what seems to be the,

• 19:28Reid Hoffman?

  'we just want to be paid.'" This is one of those weird things where I think it's unlikely that OpenAI and so forth is actually going to get a fair shake in the press where they... Their point of view is going to be reasonably well represented, like say in the New York Times and so forth, because it's showing where the New York Times has its own interest as a, as an economic engine saying, well, since you've read some of our materials and produced something valuable, we think you should pay us. And it's like, well, I read a book and I produce something valuable. That doesn't necessarily mean I pay you, right? And maybe, you know, the right thing is to, to, to figure out a different scheme, but that's the baseline about where it starts.

• 20:13Aria Finger?

  Specifically following on that, you know, we talked in the Catherine Marr episode about like she suggested, is there a mutually beneficial offering of training data for a nominal fee? Like, is that the way forward? Cause I, I believe OpenAI and other models have said they're not going to crawl the New York Times anymore. Obviously it was trained on it, but sort of going forward, that won't happen anymore. Do you think the fee is the solution? Or you actually don't even think that's necessary?

• 20:36Reid Hoffman?

  Look, I think it's perfectly good. I think Wikipedia has a good model on this because even though they're, that it's all public, you can all read it, you can train on it without it and which they allow, but they can also get to an economic arrangement where they can help you with the data and everything else. And they, you know, add in some very light features to it that help you with that and you pay them for it. And I think that's a great suggestion by Catherine and something doable. And I think anyone can do that. And I think, you know, I think multiple people training models will be willing to do that with the New York Times and others.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Reid, another question for you. You're the co-founder of Inflection AI, which wants to create a personal AI for everyone. I'm personally a power user of its flagship product, Pi, which is this supportive, smart AI. And we'll actually hear from Pi later in the show. My favorite voice, voice number four. For those who may not know, can you just tell us a bit about how Pi got started? And a bit about your co-founders Mustafa Salehman and Karen Simonian?

• 21:36Reid Hoffman?

  Mustafa and Karen and I kind of all, you know, kind of said, well, There's obviously going to be all of these things that are going to be happening in the future. AI is going to transform industries, companies, but also the ability for individuals to have really quality lives. What are some of the really interesting things that can be built now that would be an important part of that transformation that would have, you know, kind of a decades-long impact? And one of the things we realized was, primary authorship of this is Mustafa, but you know, Karen and I both in discussion, was everyone's going to have a personal intelligence. Everyone's going to have a, a kind of an assistant that

• 22:21Reid Hoffman?

  kind of covers everything from, hey, I've got these seven things in my fridge, what can I make for dinner? To, my blender's broken, is there anything I can do to fix it? To, you know, I had this odd conversation with my brother or sister, and I kind of want to unpack it, to, you know, here's what I'm thinking about doing when I'm, you know, at work, or engagement I'm doing, and who is my personal intelligence who helps me navigate with it? Not the company's, but mine, that's working with me on that. And we realized that that space is a primary, you know, kind of trusted agent that is yours, that orients that way. And hence, that's kind of how the, the concept of Pi got created, and, you

• 23:06Reid Hoffman?

  know, the support of smart AIs, like, look, it's, it's, it's not meant to be like, you've said, wow, you know, I'm a person full of hate, and I want something that, that hates with me. It's like, no, no, that's not what we do. Right? Our thing is, you know, that it's kind and collaborative. And then people say, well, should it be like my best friend? And you're like, no, no, your best friend should be other humans. This should be, like when you ask Pi, you know, like, you're my best friend, it'll say something like, oh, well, I'm not really human, so I really, you know, like, my role is to be here as your, as your ally and companion, but let me help you, like, how you talk to your friends and all the rest, and, because you should have this, you should have best friends around you, you know, that would be a really great thing. And so it's, you know, it has parallels

• 23:51Reid Hoffman?

  to the Optimistic story of her, but is not meant to replace human beings in human beings' lives. And that was the idea. And it was like, that certainly should exist. And if it does exist, it'll have a massive positive impact on humanity. Let's go do the startup thing. Let's assemble a small team of, of a super amazing people. Not just Mustafa, but Karen himself is like one of the superstars who has built like just amazing things. There's other people in the company who are that way. Let's get the, the A plus team and start building this personal intelligence.

• 24:25Aria Finger?

  What interesting entry point into inflection is pie is actually a recent essay called super humane. And you end the essay by talking about how AI can help us become a better version of ourselves. And you say specifically, along with getting smarter and more productive, we could be getting nicer, healthier and more emotionally generous in our interactions, which I particularly loved. And I, and you said, I think the full potential of this is going to be a much bigger deal than most people realize. Can you say a little bit more about that, especially emotionally generous?

• 24:54Reid Hoffman?

  Yeah, and it's, it's a great question, obviously, specifically in the reflection or the, the panamera on pie. Because people tend to think, oh, it's like, you know, chat GPT will give me an instant Wikipedia answer, that kind of thing. Like an AI is a tool primarily for this kind of information space. And by the way, of course, it's really important to have, um, you know, the kind of good information and information assistant. It's part of the transformation of the internet and search and all the rest is brought. But part of it is, who do we become as people? Who do we become as human beings? What do we aspire to in terms of becoming better human beings?

• 25:36Reid Hoffman?

  And in part, for all of us, that journey is the people around us. So if you experience, you know, empathy and compassion, you have a higher likelihood of wanting to evince it, of learning about it, of doing it better. It's a skill as it's both nature and nurture in these things. Because of the Hollywood stories, you know, Ex Machina and, and Terminator and so on.

• 26:02Reid Hoffman?

  Even to some degree, the strangeness around the drama of her, everyone goes, oh, AI doesn't, AI is anti-human, right? Like, it's the, it's a technology distortion. It's like, no, no, actually, in fact, it has an enormous capability, if we build it the right way, integrate it in our lives the right way, to help us become even more human. And human in the ways that we aspire to. You know, it's like, you know, how do you think about our human aspirations? It's like the, but the shadow of the inhuman. It's like, we are more human when we are compassionate, when we are kind, when we are wise, when we are listening, when we are, you know, in dialogue with the effort to try to help our fellow humans become their best possible selves.

• 26:47Reid Hoffman?

  And that part of it is completely unreported in any of the press dialogue, the vast majority of the dialogue around this, and is central to what Mustafa Karan and I are trying to do with Pi. And it is totally there. This is not like, like, this shouldn't be controversial. Once you put your eyes on it, you go, I can see it. And that's a really good thing.

• 27:11Aria Finger?

  Reid, I think that's so true. And again, it just feels like when, sometimes when people talk about the negatives of AI, they're like, well, okay, I guess we're all computers. We're just gonna be sitting in front of screens all day. And the great thing about so many of the guests on Possible, whether it's Anne Marie or Maya in the AI arc from last summer, it's like, no, no, no, this is all about creating more empathy and creating more humanity. And I think that, that sort of dichotomy is something we need to do away with, because AI can actually deepen human connection and make us more human. So I love that you mentioned that.

• 27:45Reid Hoffman?

  That actually leads me to my, you know, kind of a follow-up question for you, Aria. You've now tried out a number of AI chatbots, Pi, ChatGPT, Conmigo, as well as Talk2, you know, we've got a number of AI experts here on Possible. What do you believe are some of the most exciting applications of, you know, ONTAP, present and patient, conversational AI tools like Pi? Which industries, people do you think can most benefit?

• 28:10Aria Finger?

  So I think it's sort of impossible not to acknowledge the therapist, the coach, the educator. If anyone listening hasn't listened to the Sol Khan episode about Konmigo, you hear me just marvel at how amazing AI is going to be as an educational chatbot. But I actually think one place that is really critical is actually for government services and actually just for low income people in general. People often talk about how it's expensive to be poor and it's both expensive from a money perspective, but even more so, it's expensive from a time perspective. And I actually, I had the pleasure of jumping on a call with Phaedra and her team at Promise last week.

• 28:52Aria Finger?

  And we were just sort of bouncing ideas around about all the ways that AI could help her team and what they could do. And the idea that an AI chatbot can save you hours of filling out forms. It's like you've just written your social security number 100 times, whether that was for SNAP benefits or to get your kid into public school or whatever. And these things seem sort of less wow, maybe than some of the other AI breakthroughs. But I think if you can save a low income parent five hours a week, oh my gosh, you could spend that time with your kids. You could spend that time working. You could spend that time going for a run. I mean, the sort of magic of introducing humanity back into your life.

• 29:32Aria Finger?

  So I do think for, for low income folks, a chatbot that helps you interact with those services, and actually for all of us, forget it, but again, because it's especially difficult to be poor in America. I'm just really excited and, and you know, one to watch Phaedra and her team at Promise. What are the, the next AI iterations they come out with?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  I think that the line of conversation that you guys have had so far is a great transition into a pocket of listener question that we've been getting. You know, the line and interactions between humans and machines, it's getting closer and closer. So a lot of our listeners had questions about the ethical development and deployment of AI. We had two questions that were rather similar that were combining into one question. One of these questions was from Krishikesh K and the other was from Greg B. Essentially it is, you know, how do you strike a balance between AI advancements and preserving human connection? You know, what happens when people's main social relationships are with AI?

• 30:37Reid Hoffman?

  You know, obviously, the earlier answer is one of the good things for designing these things is to try to design them with a theory of what's the best kind of elevation for people? And so it's like, no, don't not, don't talk to your friends, talk to me, not that design, but the design of, oh, you should spend time with your friends, you should talk to them, and here's how you can have productive conversations, and here's how you might deepen your friendship and so forth, as a general design principle, thing we covered before. The next level down is that too often, these conversations are kind of one size fit all, it's like, it should only be X. And obviously, for a lot of human beings, the right thing is to say, how do I connect with other human beings? You know, either, even if I'm an introvert, you know, most introverts also value their social connections,

• 31:22Reid Hoffman?

  they just experience it differently, they just don't like cocktail parties, you know, for example, as a way of doing it, it kind of fills them with terror, but they still value their, you know, connections with human beings and interactions in various ways, it's just different patterns. And I think that breadth of pattern is one of the things to think about here, which is, you know, sometimes it will be important to have an AI that's almost an essentially like quasi counselor, quasi therapist that's having a conversation, that helps you with something that is this substantial role in your life for some people, and for others, you know, not so much. And, you know, if we look at kind of how human beings are constructed, you know, we are inherently social animals, you know, Aristotle, you know, we're citizens of the polis, that's where a kind of political

• 32:06Reid Hoffman?

  animal becomes. And, you know, we are very attuned, like, a lot of our neurology is watching other people's faces for kind of social clues and other kinds of things, because we're social animals. And I think that one of the things that is that is illusory is the whole Robinson Crusoe thing. It's like, no, actually, in fact, we're inherently social animals that express our individuality versus individual animals that get corralled into sociality. And I think that kind of design principle for, you know, but having that diversity of different circumstances and needs is, I think, really important. And

• 32:49Reid Hoffman?

  I don't think we'll ever have our main social relationships with AI. You know, one of the interesting speaking conversations with friends, I had a Conversation with Joey Edo about why the Japanese are more positive on AI generally. And it's partially because they have a this spiritual thing of Kami. And like, you know, you have a spirit of the tree, you have a spirit of the rock, you have a spirit of the shrine. And that that panoply of relations is actually one of the things that I think is is particularly human.

• 33:15Aria Finger?

  I'll add super quickly, I do think that we're kidding ourselves if we don't think there's going to be some situations where, you know, it gets worse for a person and they're and they're talking to AI instead of humans or whatever. And I think we should just be especially watchful when it comes to young people, when it comes to kids, when it comes to children. You know, just how we probably should have been a little more watchful about social media. Yes, we should be watchful about this. But I actually think that the most important thing like is of course fostering human interaction. But as you said, it's like, what is the, what is the starting point? If the person is going from zero interaction to interaction with an AI that eventually can lead them to more human interaction. That's a positive. We don't want to reduce human interaction, but I do think that AI can be used sort of as this middle ground,

• 33:59Aria Finger?

  you know, to get someone to a more positive place where they are ready for that social interaction, whatever it may be. So again, I think we just really need to think about the context because that'll be critically important.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Along this vein of approaching AI ethically, we got this one question on LinkedIn from the AI in Work and Skills Forum. They asked, how should companies prepare their employees on how AI will impact their jobs or the future of work?

• 34:26Reid Hoffman?

  Look, this is a really important question because if you think of AI as a steam engine of the mind, and it's going to have the same kind of transformation of industries, of the way the jobs happen at a much faster pace than even what the steam engine did. Because the steam engine obviously created manufacturing and factories, created transport with trains and, you know, boats and, you know, steamboats and so forth. There's all these ways of doing this. And this, this is this massive application of physical superpowers that got added in. And so, you know, now being a big, strong, you know, worker at the dock matters less because we have forklifts. And so this kind of transformation. And now we're going to have that steam engine of the mind.

• 35:09Reid Hoffman?

  And so you have to be in the tools for doing it. Because even though I think the outcome will still, it will still be really good for people. I think they're be able to do more interesting work. I think they'll be able to do a broader range of things. They'll be more productive, just like all the things with the steam engine and the physical. Now, mental, the transformation will still be challenging. So most tactically, I think one of the things is to start experimenting with it. Start using it and on real things. So don't just kind of show up and say, okay, I don't know how to write a sonnet. Write me a sonnet. I'm like, which is fine to do. So totally happy, more sonnets, great. Like, for example, you say, well, you know, what kinds of things could I use it for? It's like, well, okay.

• 35:50Reid Hoffman?

  One of the things that one of my friend's kids did that I thought was really interesting is she's really into organic chemistry. She goes and loads the scientific paper in and it says, explain it to me. I'm 15, right? Well, that is now a whole lens that's available to everybody. And so that just gives some of the things that it might do to be helpful to whoever you are as a worker. Processing information, doing stuff, obviously can help with kind of marketing and content generation. It can help with, you know, communications and collaboration. You know, one of the things that Microsoft Teams does now and is, you know, deployed to some customers is take notes.

• 36:36Reid Hoffman?

  You know, kind of record whose action item for who, bring in search results from the local information base to say, if you're talking about this, maybe you should also talk to Aria about this, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, as, as kind of, you know, kind of ways to do it. But it starts with just starting to use the tools some. Aria?

• 36:57Aria Finger?

  I think, you know, we, we talk a lot about in technological shifts about retraining. And I think that is like the space that we think about it. It's like you do a job and then you retrain and then you go to your next job. And we just need to say, nope, like, that's not how it goes. And just rethink the entire paradigm from government work programs to what each of us are doing. Because as you say often, Reid, like we, we really are going to have to be lifelong learners in this new world. And how can we support adults who need to be lifelong learners too, who?

• 37:30Aria Finger?

  Might not, whatever, have the capabilities or the skills or the practices or whatever, who need a little help. And so I'm so excited that AI, as you said, can be the help that all of us can have as we're just, you know, sort of embarking on this brave new world. Because I think the transition is going to be tough. You know, it's going to be continuous, but especially the next few years, you know, we want to make sure we get through it and everyone's intact on the other side.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  We should move on to talking about the 2024 election. You know, it's really a big year for AI, 2024, but also a big year for US politics with the upcoming presidential election. So going into the 2024 presidential election, what role do you think AI will play, should play, hopefully won't play? Aria, maybe we can start with you and then we'll go on to Reid.

• 38:23Aria Finger?

  I often say that I'm the most optimistic person I've ever met. And then I met Reid. And in thinking about the 2024 election, I have to say that AI and the election does make me a little nervous. I unfortunately think that even if AI didn't exist, so no matter what political side you are on, people are so entrenched in their own worldview. You know, you get a fact, you either reject it or accept it based on your previous worldview. You know, that's why we often say that facts don't matter because you reject a fact if it, you know, doesn't square with your worldview and you accept it if it does. So I'd say that we're in sort of tense times regardless. I am nervous that AI will only add to that sort of us in our corners, you in their corners. Oh,

• 39:06Aria Finger?

  I saw this deep fake. Well, it doesn't matter if it's a deep fake or not. I believe it anyway, because that's something he would do or she would do. So unfortunately, I'm worried about that. I can only hope that the AI tools that we have can also help us push back against that and that, you know, we all just think about our own humanity a little bit more. It seems that if we brought even a little bit of humanity into the political realm, we'd be, we'd be in a little better place. So a little less hopeful answer from me than usual.

• 39:36Reid Hoffman?

  Well, I know from your setup there, Arya, that you're hoping I'm going to be more optimistic than you on this. And actually, in fact, I don't think I'm going to be. So you keep your optimism crown. So in quick succession, I would say that the role that AI is certainly going to play is malicious actors like the Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, and some others will use AI as an amplification of things that they were already doing in the 2016 and 2020 elections, which is trying to shore Discord and chaos and disbelief in institutions, disbelief in media, disbelief in facts. You know, you get back to the, you know, the

• 40:14Reid Hoffman?

  alternative facts idiocy that we were having from, you know, some of the Trump presidency. And AI will be used that just as human beings, we use that too. And that will amplify that in various ways. And that's certainly going to happen. Right? And, you know, deep fakes is just one of the things that that is part of that. Now, ideally, you know, what we would see is AI being used as a as a helpful kind of truth barometer that, you know, kind of in rebuilding and institutions is, you know, kind of like, look, the AI is like, kind of like a search engine, and has been built with some deliberation to try to present to

• 40:58Reid Hoffman?

  you information that can help you analyze through this and won't just be confirmation bias, won't just be the, well, I have my AI agent that tells me that January 6th was, you know, some peaceful protesters who were maligned by the evil Democrats in institutions, ignoring the fact that they broke into the Capitol Hill building, ignoring the fact that there was all these kinds of communication about how they were hoping to try to kill Mike Pence, did kill some police officers, you know, etc. And you're like, okay, but I want to tell me what I want as a confirmation belief, or that, you know, that January 6th was secretly orchestrated to be violent by the people in the Trump administration versus

• 41:39Reid Hoffman?

  just encouraged as an insurrection. And you say, look, what we want is we want these things to be good truth tellers and truth assessors.

• 41:50Reid Hoffman?

  With revealing kind of how they're trained, like think about The Economist as a magazine. So, look, this is how we look at the world, this is how we think, and we're going to try to be as good truth tellers as we can, right? And I think that's part of where you want to see media being. And you want that combination of revealing that you're bringing up perspective, a certain set of questions, but you're also trying to be as good as truth tellers as you can for doing it. And I think that's what we'd want AI to be. And then we'd, if we're speaking about hope, we would hope that the platforms would be integrating that in, whether it's a browser, a social media platform, or anything else, for helping us ascertain that.

• 42:33Reid Hoffman?

  And you know, part of when you think about like, what role could AI play here that's very positive is to say, look, it should say, here's the case for, and here's the case against. And here is why I sort out to broadly the case for or broadly the case against. But then it's kind of like, okay, I can sort through that. And that's the kind of truth teller perspective that everyone should be adopting in civil discourse, in dialogue. More or less, I'm supportive of the organizations that do that, whether or not they are, you know, kind of more blue or more red on that. And I'm not supportive of the organizations that, or the media sources that don't.

• 43:12Aria Finger?

  As we talk about the upcoming election, and no thanks to you, I am not more optimistic now, my thought is about the US government. Is the US government equipped to effectively regulate AI at this time? Like, have you, you know, we were generally positive on President Biden's executive order on AI. There was a lot of great things in it. We didn't agree with everything. But is there, you know, some area that regulators should be paying particular attention to now, or something you would like them to do in sort of this follow-up time to the executive order?

• 43:44Reid Hoffman?

  The thing that the White House did in approaching this was really smart. They first called in a bunch of key players and asked for and pushed them to be aggressive on voluntary commitments, which included like watermarking AI content and doing red teaming. Then they use that plus a bunch of different dialogues to formulate an executive order with a firm legal basis and the Defense Production Act about where they can say, hey, you now, this has a kind of a rule of law kind of impact across a set of companies. And then to make that not just the voluntary commitments of the companies that have come in, but as but as kind of strengthening and broadening.

• 44:24Reid Hoffman?

  And I think that was a smart thing to do, and I think has had very positive impact. To some degree, I think a template for thinking about when new technology is being innovated, we don't really know where the ability to regulate will be, what the positives that we don't want to miss are, and what the negatives we really need to navigate are. And it's all, you know, in that poetic phrase, looking through a glass darkly, you know, kind of like running through the fog of uneven uneven ground at night, you know, as kinds of ways of doing it. And I thought that was a that was very smart and competent as a set of things for a whole set of players at the White House to be doing. Now, look, I think that the thing that always people are thinking about regulation is stop them from X.

• 45:07Reid Hoffman?

  The thing that I've been really advocating for is to say, well, look, we have this massive transformation coming. Let's try to make sure that we get it as broad based across our society and humanity as possible. Like, so, for example, today, we could release, you know, number of weeks, like weeks, not months, a medical assistant that could help anyone who doesn't have access to a GP or even with people who help people with access to GPs in the dialogue with a GP. Having that in everyone's hands is the thing that I would say is one of the ways a government would most benefit our communities, our societies.

• 45:48Reid Hoffman?

  So as opposed to the stop, don't, it's the let's get this provisioned so that we are helping children, families, everybody else in doing this. Because when you get to the, you know, eight plus billion people in the world, much less than a billion of them have access GPs, much less have real access to GPs. And let's, let's try to help everybody with that. And that even includes, you know, societies like the US. You know, one of the things that we'd want to say, and you know, when you have things like the NHS in the UK, you know, part of the problem is they have rationing and all the rest. And you could, you could make that much broader in terms of being helpful, even though like, you know, obviously in theory, in the UK, everyone has access to a GP.

• 46:33Reid Hoffman?

  You know, pragmatics or something different, and especially in the depth that you would want. So this kind of thing would be the kind of thing that I would be hoping governments, à la regulators, would be paying much more attention to.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  On this vein of governance, we have one more question from Pi, and I'll actually let Pi ask the question itself.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  What role should AI play in national security and defense? While AI can provide useful tools for intelligence gathering and analysis, it also raises concerns about autonomous weapons and surveillance technologies.

• 47:09Reid Hoffman?

  One of the things I think it's too easy to fall into is to think that the primary role for national security and defense is like the promulgation of violence. Whereas I think what most people don't understand in, you know, kind of well-ordered Western democracies or Western-style democracies, you know, because this includes India and other folks. Is that the militaries that are actually accountable to democracies, their actually primary mission is peace. Though what they're trying to do is like, how do we have less war? Like, if we have strength, it's to project strength so that bad autocracies don't create war as one instance. And so I do think that there is a role in technology generally,

• 47:53Reid Hoffman?

  being supportive of the national security and defense establishments in, you know, kind of well-ordered democracies. And I think AI can certainly do that. And by the way, you know, kind of my, you know, obviously, intelligence gathering and analysis is one part of that. I think part of what's been really happening, the Ukrainians and the defense of their society, in the kind of artillery bombardment that the Russians have been doing and the quasi-ethnic cleansing that they've been doing, is the drones. And what we're learning about drones and drone warfare has been part of what's been enabling their defense. And there's a whole bunch of AI stuff in that. And it's weapons. It's weapons to blow up tanks or blow up howitzers

• 48:37Reid Hoffman?

  or, you know, other kinds of things, those ways of doing that. And I think that is a really important part. And so it's not so much, should it be involved in weapons or not? Because obviously, intelligence is good. But it should be involved in weapons and ways that try to maximize the ability for democracies to live peacefully with everybody around them. And like, the only way that a democracy ends up attacking another democracy is usually democracy one collapses as a democracy. Having democracies be vigorous and have competent national security and defense apparatus is actually part of the thing that we should all want. And, you know, as part of what I give some of my public service to as well.

• 49:19Aria Finger?

  All right, Reed, I actually have another question from me. When we think about AI, so many people think about software and they think about interacting it through, you know, their smartphone or their computer. But there's so much hardware powering all of our use of Pi and ChatGPT and these AI tools. So can you talk to me about the state of GPUs, chips? Like, basically, what is the state of the hardware that AI companies need to run? And what does 2024 look like along this vector?

• 49:47Reid Hoffman?

  One of the things I've said about AI is that it's about scale compute. It's one of those things happening is it's the algorithms that enable scale and is part of what's happening and is part of the reason why the- Convolutional neural networks that kind of started from, you know, kind of the notion of how perception works actually ended up then applying the language and getting the scale and was part of the genius inspiration from OpenAI. What that means with scale compute is over the next couple of years, we're going to continue to have, you know, like infinite demand and limited supply for, you know, chips and compute in doing this, both in training these models, but also in serving the inference of them. We're going to be figuring out how to do it more and more cheaply in order to make it work.

• 50:32Reid Hoffman?

  How do you build models that could work specifically for certain things and run cheaply in doing them? And so the short answer on the hardware side is just as, as we've seen this year, next year and the year after, we're going to still see enormous, you know, jockeying for, you know, kind of where does the compute get deployed? Because there's so many different things like I, you know, I'm a personal recipient of, hey, wait, we could do this amazing scientific thing if we could just get this $10 million of compute. And you'd say, well, $10 million of compute, that sounds pretty easy. There's billions of dollars of compute. We should be able to do that. It's like, well, but actually, in fact, in the billions of dollars of compute, there

• 51:17Reid Hoffman?

  is hundreds of billions of dollars of demand in various ways. And so that's what we're going to be sorting through. And so, you know, part of where Microsoft, you know, in its partnership with OpenAI, saw the world coming early is they said, oh my gosh, we're going to need tons of compute. So we're going to start building it. We're going to start setting up the data centers. We're going to start getting the power contracts and power that goes with it. It's not just chips, it goes all the way down to the data centers and power as part of this. We're going to see the continued intensity of that as we go forward.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  We have a closing question from GPT-4, a very thoughtful question, which is, as AI takes on more roles traditionally associated with human purpose, how might this influence our collective and individual sense of meaning and purpose in life?

• 52:06Aria Finger?

  So it's funny, when I heard this question, I, it didn't, like, this question didn't even occur to me. I was like, why will it affect things at all? Like, why, why does this have to change? Like, where, where are we at that, that AI should affect this so deeply? And I think that if, you know, the purpose of life is to sort of make, make life okay for you and the people around you. And so sort of like at its core, your job to, you know, help out humanity, help out your family, help out your friends, you know, be kind, you know, do charitable acts, like, all of that stuff that to me is like very central to what we should all be putting out there in the world, doesn't, doesn't change for a minute.

• 52:48Aria Finger?

  And if AI can take away some of the stuff that doesn't add to that, then that's magical. So, so I actually see, I only see positives here, that like with AI taking away all the stuff that we don't want to do anyway, and just leaving us with the human connection and more time and more ability and to do the stuff that makes us truly human. Yeah, I can only see a positive future, but again, that's my dad's influence on me. So there you go.

• 53:16Reid Hoffman?

  And there is the awesome and canonical aria optimism, which I, you know, share. As you guys know, I gave the commencement speech at the Bologna Business School last September and talked about the fact that part of how we evolve as human beings is through technology. We evolve, you know, we, we get good vision through glasses. We, and that changes the whole nature of

• 53:48Reid Hoffman?

  Kind of human experience and kind of changes how we interact with, you know, inventing books, inventing, you know, transport, communications, podcasting. All of these things help evolve the sense of what it is to be human, what it is to be human together, you know, kind of collectively, and what kinds of possibilities we can aspire to, what kinds of future we see and we can work towards. And AI is just going to be another real amplifier of this because it's that evolution of, as opposed to Homo sapiens, we're Homo technae. We, we dance in symbiosis with our technology in various ways.

• 54:30Reid Hoffman?

  Just like, you know, think about the steam engine leading to a manufacturing floor that is a lot safer, you know, has human beings kind of, as opposed to having to do all the grunt, like, you know, reproduce the screw in this, screw in this, screw in this. You know, they can then be part of managing the process in terms of how they're operating. Well, the same thing in terms of, you know, steam engine of the mind. And where as a human being can add into it and help guide and direct and, you know, add in the, the extra special sauce that makes that particular cognitive task really work. And I think that's the kind of thing that I think we will see. And, and obviously one part of human meaning is the meaning we get from work. But it's also, you know, the question of like how we connect with each other,

• 55:15Reid Hoffman?

  how we talk to each other, what kinds of things we can do. And we'll figure out how to do culture creation, kind of events, philosophy, art. You know, there's lots and lots of things that I think we will be able to keep ourselves busy with. So I'm also very optimistic about what can be made here with meaning and purpose and humanity.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Hi, it's Sean, the showrunner for Possible. It's been a fun first few seasons making this show, and I'd like to acknowledge some key people who made Possible, well, possible. First, a massive thank you to Reid Hoffman and Arya Fingar, our co-hosts. They take their mics wherever they go and remain eager to talk to some of the brightest thinkers, builders, and leaders out there on AI, the future, and humanity. Much gratitude to our incredible guests, who helped paint a vision of the best possible future. Thank you to the ACE team at Wonder Media Network, including Edie Allard, Sarah Schleid, Michelle Dale, Arya Goodman, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Many thanks to Jenny Kaplan, our executive producer and editor, as well as Shira Atkins,

• 56:32Speaker 04

  her co-founder at Wonder. Special thanks to Katie Sanders, Saída Sapiéva, Ian Ellis, Greg Beato, Ben Relis, and Surya Yalamanchili. A big thanks to Little Monster Media Company and McLean Fitzgerald. Last but most, thank you to all of our listeners. We'll be back later in 2024 with more Possible.