What Are the Tech Billionaires Really Like? (Your Radical Questions with Reid Hoffman)

0:00Amol Rajan:Hello, welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your magnificent questions to one of our guests. You can engage very, very directly with them through me, and I will really pursue answers on your behalf. What a chance, what an opportunity for you to connect with the amazing people we have in this studio. And our guest today, our guest on Thursday's episode, is a man who has lived many lives. He was one of the founders of PayPal. There are too many companies to mention. I think the main thing you might know is that he was a co-founder and really the big brains behind LinkedIn, which now has 1.3 billion users.

0:30Amol Rajan:He's an entrepreneur, an author of many, many books, including Blitzscaling, Super Agency, The Start of You. Those are just the three that I've read. He's an AI pioneer, investor and billionaire, and he is Reid Hoffman. Reid, good to see you. Great to see you. Fantastic to have you with us. Our first question is from Michael. Hi, Reid. It's Michael here. So my question is, much of the public conversation rightly focuses on 16, 24-year-olds who are out of work. But there is a quieter wave of redundancies affecting people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, especially across the tech and creative industries.

1:05Amol Rajan:And I see this on my LinkedIn feed day after day after day. Platforms like LinkedIn were once seen as engines of opportunity, luring people in with materialized opportunity. Yet many now describe them as crowded, low quality connections, opaque hiring and roles that don't seem to materialize, creating real mental, financial and emotional injury. From your perspective, do leaders in the tech ecosystem fully understand the scale of this problem? And what responsibility, if any, should companies like LinkedIn take in addressing it? Thank you so much. Michael, that's such an interesting question. Is this sort of accusation there that LinkedIn is promoting jobs that aren't really the jobs they're pretending to be?

1:47Amol Rajan:Or is the problem that the underlying economy has seen a kind of material deterioration in the quality of jobs? Well, so it would be the first that I've heard that LinkedIn has had some kind of direct responsibility for this. So I have zero information and any other question on that vector. So I'll take it as the second question versus the first, which is in these kinds of economic disruption and transformation, companies get a little bit more opaque. They may post fewer job listings. They may make them more general. They may kind of really slow, like say, well, previously we were hiring 20 interns.

2:24Now we're not hiring 20. Maybe we're hiring two or five or something else. And so this is what I would say to everyone. And I think this kind of pragmatic thing is very important. Like LinkedIn isn't just going and searching a set of job listings, right? The point of finding economic opportunities, economic opportunities always tied to a person. So the question is, go find people who may help you find that economic opportunity. So it might be your friend from college. It might be friends of some family member. It may be former colleagues. It may be people that you had met in an internship. But going and talking to people to find opportunity is the way to do it.

3:06It isn't just a, oh, I find a web form of a job opportunity and I apply for it. The whole point of LinkedIn is for you to be able to connect to the people who might give you that stunning opportunity. And that's been true since we launched in 2003 to now, you know, because we launched with like 13 people on the system to now, you know, 1.3 billion people on the system. That's what you're trying to do and it's how you use it. So I think it's still there, still very usable, especially in times of disruption.

3:40Amol Rajan:So Michael's second question where he talks about from your perspective, do leaders in the tech ecosystem fully understand the scale of this problem? More broadly, what's your sort of assessment of whether or not the top, top companies are kind of ethically driven? I mean, obviously, there's great variety. But do the leaders that you know, and you know them all individually, the Sundar Bichai's and the Mark Zuckerberg's and the Sam Altman's, the Elon Musk's, are they going to what extent do you feel that they are kind of ethically motivated? Well, I think many of them are much more ethically motivated than the press discussion would have you believe.

4:12Really? Give an example. So last few months, six months, Sam Altman has been being beaten up a lot.

4:21Amol Rajan:He's currently in court with Elon Musk, as we speak, I think. Yes, exactly. And yet, Sam, 10 years ago, looking at what's happening, maybe it was eight years ago, but it's in the eight to 10-year timeframe, said, we're going to have a lot of economic disruption from AI. So started funding direct experiments in what we call UBI, universal basic income, like funding it and seeing how it'd work in Oakland and spending money on it. So like actually, in fact, not just talking like, oh, it's for the improvement of society, but like doing things to try to learn and do things that he didn't have to spend his time or money on in order to do.

4:59Amol Rajan:Because you were there at the beginning of OpenAI. You were there right at the beginning, along with Elon Musk. What's Sam Altman like? So look, Sam, like many of these super ambitious people, is driven, extremely competitive, wants to win. You don't make these major companies without being that kind of person. And some people find that kind of person uncomfortable. And are there mistakes that Sam has made in his past? Sure, absolutely. People make mistakes. But Sam is actually, in fact, really committed to what does this mean for humanity, right? And now you say, well, but it's his version of humanity.

5:37Well, yeah, people who are spending a bunch of time building companies, like LinkedIn is to some degree my vision for LinkedIn in terms of what it's doing. You're driving to that, but he is engaging in conversation. He is challenging. He is doing things. Now, there's other people who I think only pay lip service, don't really do things. It's only about themselves, et cetera. But like Sam is an instance of, for all the complexities around what's going on with open AI, he is committed for like the broader society.

6:09Amol Rajan:And do people, I genuinely don't know the answer to this question. Do people who work for him say we had some of the best years of our life? Where does Sam Altman fit on that and Elon Musk in a similar way? Do people think, yes, he's mission driven, he's nuts, but I believe in his mission and I'm going to have some of the best years of my life? So even though Elon and Bill conflict a lot too, partially because, you know, and by the way, I think Bill dedicates himself much more than Elon to the general betterment of society, curing diseases. Philanthropy. You know, philanthropy. Like the Gates Foundation is one of the great goods in human history.

6:45And like his goal is let's try to cure malaria. And polio. And polio, yes. They've made great success. Yes, like massive human welfare goods. Now, but the parallel is to accomplish something great, Microsoft, SpaceX, everyone's working here seven days a week. Like, you know, you've got, you know, statements from Elon, I'm sleeping here. Everyone else should be working here and working around the clock too, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a similar kind of drive people very hard to go. But by the way, working there is a choice. It's like, do you want to work there or not? You can work other places, as an example.

7:26And so I think Bill's answer is a very good one. Now, SAM is, I think, similarly intense overall, but not similarly intense on the, like, you know, like I'm showing up Saturday, you know, morning, and I'm walking around the parking lot, you know, taking note of whose license plates are here and so forth. That's more of a, you know, young Bill and a current Elon technique.

7:48Amol Rajan:So can I ask you something? When you're thinking about investing in people, investing in companies, you obviously look at metrics and data. You think about the market it could go into. How much, if you're really honest, how much do you think are these people going to look after those who work with them? The reason I ask you that is because one of the narratives that came out of Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk was that people were kind of expendable to him. And you've known Elon for three decades. You've had recent sort of very public contretemps. Is there a feeling that kind of if you're not mission critical, he'll move on?

8:20Amol Rajan:And does that affect, and if you're not of use to his mission, then he's not so kind of concerned about you. Is there a feeling that, do you consider that when you're thinking about whether or not that's a company where you'd honestly say to people, I recommend you go and work there? Well, I have had over decades conversations with people, you know, potentially going and working at Tesla or SpaceX and whatnot. What would you say to them? Well, what I say to them is Elon's frame of the universe, this is like a computer game metaphor, is he's the player character and everyone else is the non-player character.

8:51So they're all just assets to how he's playing. And he's got amazing missions, right? Like reinvigorate space industry, maybe get to Mars, try to do something with the moon, bring electric vehicles into the mainstream and driving things. Those are amazing missions.

9:09Amol Rajan:Didn't he say to you when he wanted money for SpaceX, I'm going to send a turtle to Mars? Yes, that was the very first pitch. Was that the first conversation you had with him or no? The first conversation on SpaceX. He says... I'm going to be the most important person in history because I have sent a turtle to Mars, which is not quite a typical business pitch. But so those are literally moonshot, Mars shot missions. But you're working in an environment where, to him, you're just a thing to help with a mission. Some people that really works for, other people doesn't. It's a choice. Our next question is from Joe Seddon.

9:50Amol Rajan:I just want to say I know who Joe Seddon is. Joe Seddon came on this show. Joe Seddon is a remarkable young man, grew up in York. He's an exemplar of social mobility. He went as an undergraduate to Oxford, and he set up a platform, a tech platform called Zero Gravity, that helps thousands and thousands of young people find mentors and sort of rise up the scale of opportunity. And he's also a very smart thinker about politics. And this is Joe Seddon. Hey, Reid, it's Joe Seddon here, previous guest on Radical. My question for you is, I think there's a quiet contradiction at the heart of contemporary centre-left politics across the globe that almost no one wants to confront.

10:29Amol Rajan:The political coalition that elected Biden in 2020 and Starmer in 2024, and indeed most centre-left governments of the last decade, runs through university graduates and knowledge workers, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, journalists and technologists like you. Now the centre-left lost its industrial working class base in the 20th century and rebuilt itself around these groups. But AI is about to now do for that new base what globalization did to the old one, except on a timescale of years, not decades. So my question for you is, what happens to center-left politics when its base loses economic security?

11:09Amol Rajan:And is anyone in the Democratic Party actually planning for this? So great, super smart question. There are people working on it. Gina Rolando, former Secretary of Commerce under the Biden administration. She was in charge of some of the AI policy with NIST and all the rest, realized this and is now working on what do you do for AI and kind of economic transformation? And it's going to, because she dedicates herself to public service, not only when she's in office. She's given a tech talk for those who want to look it up. It's Raimondo, R-A-I-M-O-N-D-O. Yep. And so there are people who realize it.

11:46Now, I think most of the Democratic Party in, you know, call it 80 % plus, doesn't focus on this very important point, which is ultimately, they know there's a transformation coming. But the question on the transformation is not like, how do you stop that transformation coming? It's how do you bring your constituency into the new economic base? That's what you do. So for example, you have Bernie Sanders who says, oh, I have an answer. Let's ban data centers, right? Which is like an idiot view on multiple levels. Like, you know, like - Has he said that? Yes, right? And it's introduced, trying to introduce it as legislation in the US.

12:29We're gonna have a federal ban on building new data centers, right? Which is kind of like the, hey, we're gonna send everyone, you know, non-electric looms so that they can do their own clothing weaving and so forth. It's, you know, it's a parallel kind of stupidity. And so, because by the way, of course, you can build data centers in many places, including Canada and Mexico and other kinds of things. The real question is local communities should have a choice of bringing in data centers themselves. They should negotiate for what helps their community. And you say, well, but there's not that many jobs in the data centers.

13:04Like, well, data center doesn't take up that much land. So the fact that it's bringing some jobs in is good, but negotiate for good things, like negotiate for extra power and negotiate for some economic investment, negotiate for other kinds of things in order to make your local community work. That's how you play this.

13:20Amol Rajan:Wouldn't Sanders say that he's argued for a temporary ban, a pause, rather than a kind of blanket ban? Yeah, moratorium, right? But like kind of unspecific. And by the way, that's the, oh, well, let's delay doing this while the purchase orders are rolling in to spend the money to build data centers. Let's have other communities benefit from that versus ours. The second part of Joe's question is, is anyone in the Democratic Party actually planning for this? Well, that's the reason I mentioned Gina Raimondo. Of course. I've had conversations with Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Chuck Schumer, etc. So there are people who are thinking about it.

14:00Now, a lot of the problem, you know, next level of depth to Joe's question is, what the center left needs to be doing is saying, all right, here is the technological wave that's coming. It is coming. There's nothing you can do to say, don't have it come or have it come a lot more slowly than it is. It's a global phenomena, right? You know, China's doing it. You know, the US is doing it. Other places are doing it. So you have to say, how do we navigate that wave to the benefit of our society? And so its question is, how do we make that turn into economic prosperity for us? That's the question that needs to be asked.

14:41And that is what I'm saying is only a few people are asking the question the right way, whether it's here or the US, anywhere across the relationship across the pond. And we need more of them doing it.

14:56Amol Rajan:This is from John, who's emailed us. Thank you, John. He says, read, like practically every other invention in human history, AI can be used for good purposes and for bad ones. The important issue seems to be whether we can make sure that the bad guys don't control it. The AI experts keep telling me about all the wonderful advances that can be made in human health. Why don't we talk about how the bad guys could use it? Just on human health, for those who want to look it up, let me say, Reid is a huge investor in influence on something called Manas AI, M-A-N-A-S-A-I. I think you've got Siddhartha Mukherjee, haven't you, is there, who is often talked of as the holy grail in science would be a vaccine for cancer.

15:35Amol Rajan:AI is potentially going to get us there. So this is a subject you've not only thought about a lot, but put your money behind. Do we talk enough about how the bad guys could use it, particularly, for instance, with something like Mythos, which is this recent release from Anthropic? What happens when, I'm not saying all Chinese people are bad, but what happens when China and the CCP get hold of their Mythos? So this is the primary reason that I kind of have a lightweight pro-regulatory approach to AI is to try to avoid bad, you know, either criminals or rogue states using this in ways that are bad for societies and humanity.

16:12Cyber attack is one. Bioterrorism is another one. And it's one of the reasons why a lightweight regulatory framework focused on that, not we're going to try to have an industrial policy where we tell you exactly what to build or not to build, which, by the way, doesn't work in the world of software. But rather, here's the big challenges we need to make sure doesn't happen. And I think that's a combination of what you build, which in the AI industry we talk about as the alignment issues, like what it's capable of doing, and then the use issues and misuse. And so I think both of those are very important.

16:46And I think that the question is, we have to say is, okay, how do we know that we are providing the good players much more than the bad players. You won't be able to provide the bad players to zero. There's already open source models from China. There's already ways that people could be using the open source models in order to be doing cyber attacks and other kinds of things. It's one of the challenges with the open weight models for how this operates. But we do talk a lot about the bad actors and we do try to do things to limit their ability to do damage.

17:25Amol Rajan:Final question, appropriately enough, is from Rebecca and it came on a platform called LinkedIn. And she said, is Reid optimistic for the future for the many, not the few? I am for the reasons that we said at the beginning, which is the same thing of where like your Uber driver has the same iPhone that Tim Cook does. Everyone has access to this AI. Everyone has access to ChatGPT, CoPilot, Claw, Gemini, et cetera. If you have access to the Internet, if you have access to the phone, you have access. You can start using it and start differentially kind of getting benefit to your life. start using it.

18:06Start engaging with it. Doesn't mean it's perfect. Doesn't mean it doesn't have errors, but start engaging because that's the thing by which the future will be shaped. Reid Hoffman, it's such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

18:17Amol Rajan:It's been a real honor. We'll be back at the same time next week. Thank you for your time.