Reid Riffs on AI translations, Apple Intelligence, and OpenAI’s Critterz

0:29I'm Reid Hoffman. actually near and dear to my heart because I am an avid Apple AirPods user. I have the AirPods Pro 2 and I have not yet tried the AirPods Pro 3. And so just last week, they announced the Pro 3, which was like a next gen earbud and does live translation, all powered by Apple intelligence. Some people might say that's an oxymoron. Apple hasn't exactly been leading the charge with their AI integration to their products. But so this is going to translate instantly between five languages, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. And then they have plans to expand to Italian, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese before the end of the year.

1:07So my question for you is this rollout of sort of pretty incredible groundbreaking AI into products that we're using every day, is this the gold standard for how AI should be launched to consumers? Well, I don't, it's certainly not the gold standard because it might be a gold standard in terms of bringing in AI in just kind of the natural way that you're going through your life. Now, you could almost see it potentially being a little bit like, you know, like when you're watching those really bad dub films where someone's lips move for like 10 seconds and then the audio is yes. And you're like, okay, clearly there's some mismatch between these.

1:53And let's hope that's not what it's ending up as. But obviously all of the folks in AI have known that this kind of instantaneous translation has been line of sight. And so it'll be awesome if Apple is bringing it. And I do think that the notion for a number of uses of AI products are to integrate them into the natural flow. It's kind of like, you know, oxygen and water and to some degree, even electricity just kind of flows in the background and the environment that you're operating in. And I think that will be kind of important to do. Now, ultimately, you know, if you look at all of the largest scale tech companies, you know, Apple is by far the one that's most behind on AI.

2:42And so, you know, how much they'll be able to bring their design sensibilities and the ability to actually have, you know, AI be Apple intelligence is still, you know, we haven't seen any of it yet. So this would be an awesome, you know, kind of first step. And so if this is successful, as cutting edge as they say, where do you think the biggest impacts for this live translation are going to be sort of across society? Look, I think it's obvious that there'll be one part, which is this notion of information and communication, right? Because actually, in fact, I think most people don't realize how much we live in different bubbles.

3:24Now, part of the reason why a lot of people don't realize that is because most of the bubbles are oriented on English. So, for example, the text-sophisticated people in China and Japan and France and Germany and Poland and Italy all understand that they have to do English in some way. And so they make that effort. And so we benefit from that blind spot. But there's obviously tons of very interesting things happening in these other languages. So I think the media ecosystem and understanding and kind of mutual understanding will be a very good kind of sociological part. But I think that, you know, in terms of businesses, you know, I think there's a general kind of, you know, I think there's a kind of a help in making all business operate that will be very good.

4:19Obviously, travel business will be important. Obviously, global businesses with supply chains and so forth will be important. Obviously, media businesses. Actually, I mean, you already see this a little bit in the like the echoes of the streaming. you know i think that you know like entertainment i think will get you know kind of strongly um amplified and so i think those are all the kinds of places where you know language can make a greater acceleration fluidity you know of impact and ability to do to do stuff and obviously you know part of this is is as you get to you know the obvious one on tourism is actually i already know people who've experienced, you know, like cab drivers in Morocco using chat GBT as their translation so that, hey, whatever language you speak, even though I only, you know, speak Arabic here in Morocco, I can still drive you anywhere.

5:13Right. Absolutely. And I think you're totally right in terms of the blind spot when we speak English and sort of the business community speaks English. But just because you speak English doesn't mean that's the way you want your content. So I wanted to switch gears actually to purely entertainment. OpenAI is bringing their AI tools to Hollywood. They have announced that they're creating an animated feature film called Critters. It's going to premiere next year at Cannes in 2026. And this film is going to be largely, but not 100 % AI generated. So they're going to use GPT-5 for scripting. They're going to use advanced image generation for all the animation.

5:53it's going to take nine months to create, which is about a third of the time that animated movies typically take. And it's going to cost under$30 million. So even though they'll still have voice actors, and I think some of the writers from Paddington 3, this is the first feature film that's largely AI driven. So when this comes out in 2026, do you think it's going to be sort of, people are going to be able to judge it as just like, oh, this is the latest animated movie. What do we think? Or is this going to be a referendum on if AI can compete in the creative world? Well, I think the answer to your question is both, because I think that the very first question will be is how good is it as a film?

6:34Because it is a such a test point of, you know, kind of AI filmmaking, you know, like if it's a great film, it'll be like this is one of the reasons why human creators need to be protected. This is a disaster, you know, kind of coming, et cetera, et cetera. It's really important to do. Oh, my God, the copyright stuff. It's important that people will be paid. That will be there. Now, if it's bad, it'll be the and this is why AI slop and this is the danger of AI slop coming in. So people will kind of occupy their political position, whether it's good or bad, and use it as a referendum, whether it's good or bad.

7:11but I think it will be the quality of the film will essentially come into it and you know what for me part of what I will be looking at is is a little bit like on the on kind of the threads of super agency which is you know well what are the things that if we nudge or shape in various ways this helps create more of the positive human future and those will be the kinds of things that I think is actually the more interesting discourse that I'll be trying to look at and help shape whatever is post-critures is like, well, what does this mean for what are we learning for how do we nudge for what is better for how we become better as individuals and as groups and as societies and as a species in humanity?

8:00I think that will be, in terms of the test case, that's the analysis that we should be running. Well, but on that note, I mean, I like animated films as much as the next gal. I think Moana has a lot of bangers. But, you know, the promise of AI was we're going to cure cancer. We're going to have education for everyone. Like, are you surprised that OpenAI is spending their time on animated films? Well, I'm quite certain that whatever group and people are spending time at this and OpenAI are not the people who are working on the fundamental model for the things that would help with, you know, like Manasai, curing cancer and other kinds of things.

8:38The fact that they're spending time on it is actually, in fact, I think not necessarily, like, I think it's a group that's a large company. But I also, by the way, think that part of, and this is one of the things that, you know, I've thought for, you know, maybe a decade even, which is part of how tech companies should be thinking about their marketing, their communications, is essentially various forms of content generation that help express, you know, kind of what is their tech movement, their tech mission, the way that they're trying to improve humanity to the world. And obviously this could be like in the context of business, could be through things through LinkedIn.

9:17But I think that kind of as a strategy, as opposed to, you know, call it the classic one of buy ads in the Superbowl, nothing wrong with buying ads in the Superbowl, but it's thinking like, oh, I'm going to buy 30 second spots. It's that's actually less the thing as your technology, you know, gets completely 100 % spread through society, through mobile and Internet and everything else. And the platforms you're doing, you should be. So, like, for example, it's been completely not surprising to me that a number of different tech companies have been doing their own kind of video studio kind of businesses when they're doing videos, you know, as instances.

9:56And actually, that is, in a sense, to say, well, you know, is that a good business? It's like, well, look, that might be a better way of them, you know, engaging in marketing, including marketing spend, but marketing spend that may even be generating some revenue that actually, in fact, elaborates their platforms in various ways. And I think that that's true for every major scale tech business. So do I think OpenAI should be doing this? Yes. Do I think open AI is doing it so far from what little I can see from the outside? Intelligently, yes. And I'm quite certain it's not slowing down any of their major efforts at the things that are how do we increase our capabilities?

10:36Well, so we got to talk to Stephen Colbert last week, which no surprise, he was a delight. But he talked about the food system as an analogy for AI. And he was talking about sort of Michael Pollan's term of nutritionism, where, you know, forget whole foods and organic foods and how food is normal. Like we are processing foods and like shoving in vitamins and trying to sort of create a perfect food. But are we actually losing an essence here? We think it has all the vitamins in it, but it's losing something that we don't know about. And are we doing the same thing for AI? It's trained on human data.

11:11It learns from human feedback, reinforcement learning, but sort of we're losing some essential humanness when we do that. And so I would ask you, do you agree? What do you think? AI is a powerful tool, but are we losing some essential humanness when we try to sort of copy from what they're learning about what we read and write? Well, you know, also to echo, you know, Stephen Colbert, awesome. It's always a delight to talk with him. I think he, in addition to obviously being funny and insightful, is smart and interesting on these things. And so it was totally great. And, you know, the kind of the food metaphor is a good lens and thinking about it.

11:53Now, the challenge with this is, is that this exact discourse of every technological transformation in the history of homo techni is always that there is something being lost, right? So, with a calculator, it's mathematical abilities, you know, with a printing press, it's memory, you know, et cetera. Isn't there something essential? You know, oh, now you're typing it? You know, isn't there something essential for handwriting? And by the way, there is something being lost. It's not that this is the mistake is like to say, oh, no, it's just, you know, on every single dimension is better. No, no, of course, something is being lost.

12:26Like if you had to really engage your memory in certain ways, there's positive attributes that come out of the fact that you have to have a deep engagement of memory. There's a positive attribute if you can't instantly summon an AI agent to ask you a question, but you have to cast your mind back and try to think about it and think about whether or not you're right or not. Of course, there's some positive attributes there. The question is, is on balance. And so if you use the food analogy, you go, hey, look, is on balance this new diet, you know, better than the old diet? And you have to look at kind of the attributes of it.

13:03And so, for example, I think there are so many things that are just so clearly massively better with AI. Like, for example, a medical assistant that's in your pocket that you can answer questions. The very natural instinct of a lot of these chatbot companies is to try to say, no, no, spend all your time with your phone talking to only the chatbot and stop talking to human beings. That would be a massive negative amplification of loneliness epidemic and other things. I think there's a lot of reasons for us to be needing to engage and confront with other human beings in friendship and in learning and all the rest.

13:41And so I think that nudging to keep engaging with human beings, which AI could, by the way, be super positive on, right, in terms of how it operates, you know, that kind of thing is like, oh, those are those micronutrients of another human being. Those are important to maintain and keep and to amplify. And AI can actually even help with the implication of that. And that's how we should be nudging towards it. Well, so on a related note, we talked to Stephen a lot about sort of humanity and creative flourishing. And about two years ago, you gave a speech at the Bologna Business School, and it was about how AI could usher in sort of a new renaissance of beauty, humanity, creativity.

14:24So it's been about two years. Where do you think you've seen sort of that new renaissance emerge over the last two years with AI? Part of the reason I gave this speech in Bologna was because, you know, one of the things that there's a very often made comparison between Silicon Valley and the Italian Renaissance. There's a bunch of places where that's deep and interesting. It actually, by the way, the deep and interesting aligns to trade routes that funded the Renaissance. And there's the Internet as a trade route that funds, you know, Silicon Valley. There's a bunch of engagement with science and technology as an outcome of it.

14:57There's a bunch of good things. But one of the things, obviously, that Silicon Valley tends to lack is art. and his kind of culture and that kind of humanism. And it was partially to say, hey, this is an important thing and as much as we can to add it back in. That's obviously one of many reasons why I was a prominent funder of co-founders, the musical in our terms of doing this could try to bring that in in terms of discourse and experience. And I think that that's the thing that we're still kind of, as it were doing the clarion call for. And I think it's still important to do. And I don't think we've seen too much of that in the last couple of years, but, you know, this can be over time.

15:37Now, one of the places where I think that the kind of notion of, you know, how do we think about what is the place of, you know, kind of human beings in the world and, you know, kind of in the grander cosmos? Because like one of the, again, the more subtle things about the Renaissance was a shift from the Middle Ages where everything was this great ladder to God to saying, hey, let's study human physiology. Let's study the human place. It's part of what enabled the thinking of actually, in fact, you know, we are on a planet that orbits a sun that there's a lot of other suns that are all going in different directions versus we're in the actual the actual center of the universe and everything else orbits around us.

16:26and um and so that return to kind of humanism and thinking about humans as kind of the center of action and it's one of the mistakes that can be made in technology because it's like no no actually in fact it's the robot that's at the center of the action it's a technology at the center of the action and actually in fact that's part of the reason why you know in super agency and impromptu and other places i've been describing it as homo techne because no no the human being is at the center of the action. Now we're constituted and we move through the world with technology. I mean, literally, of course, it's not just meant to be a metaphor.

17:00And I think that is important in the notion of doing so with grace, doing so with kind of amplifying, you know, kind of who we aspire to be, you know, humanism as aspiration is, I think, the thing that we as technologists and we as technology industry should be, you know, continuing to focus on and focus on a lot more than we are. Well, I love that you brought up co-founders, the musical, because for those of you who don't know, it's an amazing musical by Bo Lewis that came out in the Bay Area a few months ago. And it's both a celebration of technology as well as a critique of some of the things that are going on in Silicon Valley.

17:37And, you know, your co-author, Greg Beato, who we know really well, just came out with an incredible series called Robots, which could never have happened before AI because Greg can't sing and didn't know how to make movies and didn't. And now he's just using AI, creating this entire, essentially I called it an animated music video of something that, again, is both a celebration of AI, but also a critique and a tongue in cheek calling them robots. And so again, you can critique and celebrate at the same time, which I think is so important. Yep. And just to reemphasize what you said, is that part of what Greg is doing is showing the thesis of super agency that he and I wrote because it's like, look, here is now a superpower that we have to be able to express ourselves in what is otherwise a challenging thing of music and music videos and other kinds of things.

18:33And of course, doing it with humor. Absolutely. Reid, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

19:08editor. Special thanks to Surya Yalimanchili, Sayida Sepieva, Ian Alice, Greg Beato, Parth Patil, and Ben Rallis.