‘Cultural Heroin’ and the Road to the Election

25:30And that obviously, you know, legitimately causes a bunch of concern. You know, I obviously, you know, if you kind of asked me, you know, which am I more concerned about, a bad debate with senior moments or a lying felon who doesn't care about the country? I have a clear point of view about which one is more disqualifying for being president. But it's obviously, you know, I don't mean to paper over the concerns because, you know, I think probably everybody would prefer people who are 20 years younger contending for the presidency. It's just a question of do you express your age through slowness but kindness and care or demented lying?

26:13So a lot of this comes down to, I mean, we'll know this will either happen or not happen, I think, in the next couple of weeks, just logistically. I mean, time is on both Biden and Trump's side now that if Biden, for whatever reason, doesn't succumb to the pressure or, I mean, at some point it becomes logistically infeasible to replace him, right? And I think his view right now or his perception is right now the path to presidency would be, I'm not him, meaning Trump. The thing that I think would force them out, and I'm curious if you believe this is true, is if there was a dramatic reduction in donor money.

26:48And you're a whale. You're at a rare altitude, both in terms of your own personal giving, but also the people you know. I'm when what I bucket the fundraising into whales such as yourself Porpoises such as myself. They give tens of thousands, but not millions And then the small, you know small money donors, uh, that call them minnows, but a lot of minnows can make up, you know Formidable force, but what I see is the porpoises are in full revolt The people I speak to are not only Signing letters to try and ask to get them to step down but starting to try and think about the next wave of candidates and commit money to supporting them.

27:31What is happening among the whales in terms of their giving? Are they holding back? Are they taking a wait-and-see attitude? Are they rallying around the president? What's going on at your altitude? I would say that they're just like the porpoises. And, you know, I'd actually rather be, you know, in the bestiary. I'd rather be, you know, you porpoises and dolphins. You'd rather be flipper? Yes, exactly. But I would say that it's the same, you know, amongst the whales. There's a deep concern about if you're showing fatigue now, and it's four months of a very grueling path, you know, what does that look like?

28:11And does that give Americans, you know, not the right sense of what the vigor of, you know, I care about kind of everyday Americans and I care about, you know, people other than myself. You know, what does that present like? And I'd say that the whales are also, wait and see is probably too passive, but very concerned with what the forward path looks like. And so therefore, our, you know, I'd say donations have slowed down a lot from that. Now, on the other hand, of course, you know, one of the things that was very interesting to me about kind of looking at the post-debate was how much grassroots went way up.

28:54And it may be, you know, a function of, you know, seeing Biden as he is, a very decent man who cares about other people. You know, so I always worry a little bit about, you know, what the perspectives are and make sure that you can see, you know, what is the everyday American or the youth perspectives and not just, you know, kind of from where I sit. But to put a fine point on, you're one of the deepest voices in the Democratic Party right now. People listen to you, Reid. Where are you today? Do you feel the best course of action would be to mature battle tests and support and rally around another candidate or for us to stop this and rally around Biden?

29:36Well, I would like to see Biden show the vigor of campaigning that he is going to need to see. It's not just like the ABC interview, but maybe call it the ABC interview every day. If we see that, then I think we should be, you know, rallying around Biden and stopping this discussion. If we don't see that, if this is just the, you know, look, you know, he's dedicated his entire life to public service. This is everything he's done and it's contributing massively. But if it was like, look, I can only imagine what running at his age is like. It was like, look, I'm too tired for this. Then it's like, then I think we should, you know, kind of open up the field.

30:19But you do still think it's a possibility that he can demonstrate that type of vigor in a short enough time to give people an option that it's not a run out the clock strategy that you think that they're... No, I would oppose a run out the clock strategy. My voice, and as much as my voice matters in any of this stuff, is come be vigorous now. You wrote a pretty powerful piece. I think I read it in The Economist talking about that Silicon Valley business leaders who are endorsing Trump because they believe he is better for business. What is the sentiment you've been hearing and how exactly, why do you think Trump is bad for business?

30:56So what I think, I think that people kind of say, oh, it's obvious that Trump's better for business because he's a business person, he lowers regulation, he's lower taxes, all the classic things that, you know, people say, hey, that's good for business. But what they miss is what's fundamentally critical for business is kind of a stable society, a rule of law society, you know, kind of open markets and good relationships with other countries for, you know, kind of products and services. And in all of that, Trump is essentially a disaster. And so part of the reason I wrote this piece for business people was to say, don't, you know, kind of think, oh, 1 % or 2 % differences in tax rates matter.

31:44Don't think that, look, and I actually appreciate it. It's one of the things that people say, are you objective about Trump? And it's like, yeah, actually, I think one of the things that he did well was to say, hey, if you want a new regulation, remove an old regulation. I think that's a good refactoring of regulation stance, but don't think that's what's most important for business. What's actually, in fact, important for business is kind of rule of law and stability, and Trump basically attacks all of that. And I kind of came of professional age in the valley, but I don't feel as if I'm in touch with it because I've been gone so long.

32:19And I've always, and this might be a reductive analysis, but I find there's this frightening vein or ideology in the Valley of kind of this techno-libertarian notion that government is bad and that if we could just let smarter people run the company, defer to the markets, and specifically if the markets could kind of defer to the technology leaders, that we'd all be better off. And I find it very disconcerting given that I don't think these individuals recognize how blessed they are by some of the underpinnings of M Blessings, rule of law, an incredible business ecosystem. Am I being dramatic here?

33:02Is there sort of a concerning vein of this sort of techno-libertarian within the valley? No, I don't think you're being dramatic. I basically completely agree. It's one of the reasons why, you know, kind of I argue for the value of government, the value of better government. There's never great government. There's always inefficiencies there. But the difference between, you know, call it B and B plus can actually make a very big difference. And I think the libertarian thing, which, by the way, comes from in some places, comes from places that are not terrible, which is like, hey, we can build amazing new companies.

33:40amazing new technologies, those can make a very big difference. I agree with all of that very strongly. But the notion that it's like, oh, government is bad or gets in the way, it's like, well, actually, in fact, if you look at everything that our Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, you know, can create comes from many different platforms that government has enabled. It isn't just rule of law. It isn't just a peace society. It isn't just a, you know, kind of university system and technology system and funding of these technologies that than, you know, get created in the companies. But it's the very kind of the system that we can deploy our products and services and hire talent and offer, you know, kind of stock, you know, for sale.

34:23And all of that's within a government-regulated environment. So I frequently argue vociferously with, you know, what I refer to as techno-libertarians. So let's switch to AI. Where are you most bearish and bullish when it comes to use cases and applications? Let's see. So on the bearish side, what I would say is that there's a couple of things. One is it's hard to know exactly where to be bearish over time because I think Ethan Mullick and Co-Intelligence said something that's a good maxim, which is the worst AI you're ever going to use is the AI you're using today. And there's a bunch of things that are kind of being developed.

35:06Now, I think people being overly Pollyannish about, oh, you know, AI is going to solve fusion for us in three years is, I think, you know, a mistake in various ways. In the positive sense, I think that it's funny, even with all the hype, I think it's to some degree understated relative to if you think about the fact we are language creatures and that everything we do is in language and you have, at minimum a language amplifier. So you say, well, I have a steel manufacturing company. What's AI going to do for me? It's like, well, but you have sales, you have manufacturing, you have financial analysis, you have meetings, you have decisions, all of which there's going to be essentially co-pilots for.

35:50And so I'm very bullish across all of this productivity. That doesn't mean that it doesn't come without challenges in terms of how jobs change and you know, all the rest. But I think that the amplification here is really big. And what's more, it doesn't even get to like, you know, the two kind of cases that I usually use is I have a line of sight to having a tutor and a medical assistant on every smartphone that, you know, is kind of there for every human being who has access to a smartphone, which is, you know, amazing human elevation. But I also think it gets interesting in terms of, you know, what does it mean for, you know, drug discovery or other kinds of places where the deeper uses of language and predict the next token can actually apply to things that make a huge difference for the quality of human life.

36:43So overly, very, very bullish, bearish on Pollyanna short-term claims. One of the concerns I have, and I think a decent number of people share, is that technologies either go to existing players or new players. And it feels with AI that while there's some new brands, it feels as if the majority of the spoils are going to not only existing players, but a small number of existing players. You were a co-founder in Inflection, which got, my understanding is got sold to OpenAI. You're on the board of Microsoft. Amazon's an investor in Anthropoc. It all feels very incestuous. Are you at all worried about the concentration or increased concentration of wealth and power to even a smaller circle of companies and individuals and what is probably the next big technology?

37:37Well, there's multiple questions there, so I'm going to kind of unpack them a little bit. One, Inflection is still a going company. I had a board meeting a couple weeks ago. So it did a business deal with Microsoft, which involved a license, and Mustafa Salim went over to build agents for them because we pivoted away from agents to B2B stuff. And so there'll be a bunch of stuff analysis. That's just a small thing. Well, I actually think the actual truth of the matter is the rewards, everyone's investing pretty heavily, but the rewards haven't really started showing up yet. I'm not concerned by that.

38:12Some people don't say, well, hey, you're doing all this investment. Why isn't the rewards showing up this quarter? And the answer is actually, in fact, the most interesting things are the things that compound over 10 years versus, you know, something makes a difference. And, you know, you invest this year and your profit margin goes up next year. So I don't think the wards actually have been divided up that much yet. Now, what is showing is that one part of the revolution that we're in here is a scale compute revolution. and the ability to drive scale compute is mostly not very much of a startup game.

38:52There's a reason why, or if it is a startup game like OpenAI, it's adjacent to large companies. So you've got OpenAI, which is adjacent to Microsoft. You've got Anthropic, which is adjacent to Amazon, et cetera, as essentially what's driving them. And that does mean that there is some limitation. That doesn't mean that that's a necessarily critical problem because there's all kinds of places where you say, well, I would like to create a startup of a desktop search company, and you can't really do that. What you want for the vulnerability of these companies to be taken is with new technologies, new platforms, new other kinds of things as ways of doing it, not necessarily by going at their strengths.

39:38Now, that being said, I think the deepest, most implicit part of your question is, is there startup opportunity here that can build new pillars of strength that are not being subsumed to a smaller number of companies? And I think the answer is absolutely yes. I think that startups not only can use a ton of the different models that are being built, but also, you know, they're going to have the opportunities to build, you know, pretty amazing companies because we have multiple large language models that are competing with each other. Like if it was just one large language model, that would be a concern because then you kind of say, hey, we're going to try to grab all the economics ourself.

40:17But you not only have Google and Microsoft and OpenAI competing with each other, but you have multiple other folks trying to come into the entry there. and you can look at what Anthropic and Amazon are doing. And so I think there's a lot of startup opportunity and I'm putting my money where my mouth is as an investor at Greylock and personally and starting inflection and all of this. So I actually think that that, you know, the very last point, and I think this is probably the deepest point that you and I have some interesting zones or one of the deep points, I don't know if it's the deepest, of conflict in is that I actually think we're, you know, call it, five to seven large tech companies heading to 15, not five to seven heading to three.

41:00You think that this is going to create, that will birth new giants here and that the ecosystem will actually, it's not going to be one apex predator killing everybody or you don't think it's going to be consolidation. You think that it'll spawn new giants? Exactly. Do you think there's a bit of a bubble? I don't, it's hard to argue that AI isn't going to have a seminal impact on business and the economy and society. Do you think we might be in a bit of a bubble as it relates to valuations? Well, it's definitely, which we always get in new technology waves, which is people go, we know there's going to be a huge impact.

41:35They're betting on tons of companies. And so it creates a valuation increase across a lot of companies. And then in retrospect, you go, well, that was clearly a bubble because a number of those companies, that valuation increase was incorrect. But on the other hand, part of how the market functions is to say, hey, we know we're all kind of putting our bets on which ones are going to be the enduring big ones, which are going to be the new big ones, and which ones are not going to hit the wave. And so I think to some degree, there's a significant number of companies which will show in retrospect have their valuations bid up in ways that I disagree with.

42:17I didn't buy, right? I don't do shorts. I just don't think I build things for long, but I kind of don't buy those valuations. On the other hand, of course, the whole game is, well, which ones actually have copped this? And this will be the next technological wave that's bigger than, you know, the internet, mobile, cloud computing, because it It compounds all of them. It amplifies them to the next level. People have outlined a bunch of potential dangers from AI, whether it's sentient or concentration or self-healing weapons or, you know, it being used as for mis - and disinformation. What risks do you think are under-hyped, if any, and which ones are over-hyped?

43:01so i think the ones that are under hyped are and tend to get masked by a number of things is you know this is you know with my uh book impromptu i basically said this is amplification intelligence uh is way of looking at versus artificial intelligence and kind of human amplification and bad actors being amplified so whether it's cyber criminals terrorists rogue states you know It's one of the things that has me very concerned about what these things are like in the cyberspace realm, to use a dated term. We have a bunch of equivalent of open warfare going on across the Internet in hacking and in security where governments aren't really doing much about that.

43:52And, you know, what can AI do to amplify that, I think, is, and I mean governments collectively, as in kind of, you know, international treaties that are being written and enforced. And so I think that's the underhyped and the area that I'm most focused on. I think the overhyped one is kind of versions of the super intelligent robots are coming for us. Because I think it's the humans with the robots that are much more concerning immediately than the super intelligent robots. And I'll give you a small example. Last year, I was asked to sign this 22-word statement that a bunch of people I love and trust and admire signed, which is, you know, AI is an existential risk along with climate change, pandemic, etc.

44:40And the reason I didn't is because AI is also the only one of this list that has massive things in the positive buckets. How to solve pandemic, how to be looking for asteroids, how to be computing energy grids to try to reduce carbon footprints and energy chains. And so I actually think the whole existential risk, superintelligence, it's not an absolute zero percent. But if you ask me to say, is superintelligence risk of AI more likely, or a Terminator, or is the Earth being hit by an asteroid more likely, I'm not sure which one I would put as more likely. If you were to advise, hopefully, the Biden or a blue administration around AI, do you think that they're headed in the right direction in terms of, I mean, so far there really hasn't been regulation.

45:35There's been sort of like this regulation manifesto of like, this is what we might do. What would your advice be around government involvement or regulation or lack thereof with respect of AI? Well, I think the Biden administration has done a really good process, which is first bring the companies in, sweat them for voluntary commitments, work really hard, push them very hard on that, see what set of things is possibly doable. Then put that into an executive order within a frame, be focused and limited, like, OK, what happens with high compute models and so forth, rather than trying to solve every imagined problem?

46:11Because, you know, for example, if someone comes to you and say, okay, I want an approval for a two-ton death machine that someone can get drunk and run over a kid with, they'd say, well, here's 100 things you should fix. And one or two of them, seatbelts, you know, airbags should be on the list. But then there's 100 other things. So you only really get there by working your way through it. So I think the administration, you know, has done a good process on this. And I do think that our tool set for navigating both great opportunity and human elevation and preventing the challenges gets stronger as we're building stuff.

46:51And so I think we want to be very focused and limited until we actually are really blocking the real harms. We'll be right back.

47:11We'll be right back. On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

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48:36You're an investor, and a couple of the things you've invested in are you funded E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit against President Trump, and now you're helping finance Smartmatic's case. I'm just curious. It feels like it's a new wave of investing. I don't know if you pioneered it or Peter Thiel did, but it's a very interesting means of, I call it investing. I don't know what the term would be, but walk us through your thought process for why you decided to do it and talk a little bit about the Smartmatic case and why you've decided to get behind it. It feels a little strange, and I wish, you know, I didn't feel the need to be doing what I was doing here, but it's very much rule of law and high-functioning democracy.

49:22And, you know, part of the thing here is to say, look, we should always be resolved to as strong a rule of law system as possible. Now, part of that's, by the way, for example, every single scholarly and any source of integrity says the 2020 election was fair, right? It was fair. It doesn't mean it was perfect, but it was fair to the standards of every other election in modern history. And so then you get to, okay, well, people who attack that are trying to degrade our democracy, degrade our trust and belief in rule of law. And by the way, that trust is part of how it functions. And so supporting the rule of law is the thing that has been, I'd say, fundamental across my, you know, democracy investing, but also in terms of saying, hey, let's have the legal system work.

50:19Because one of the things that you, as you saw with, for example, the Dominion suit against Fox is unlike when you're kind of litigating just a freedom of speech political thing, people can lie through their teeth and have no consequences. when you're lying through your teeth and saying, hey, the 2020 election was stolen and, you know, your texts show that you're lying through your teeth and that that's the influence that you as a news media organization are having upon the culture, beliefs, etc. of society. in a commercial case, you're allowed to be held accountable by a jury, by a system of law, by depositions and inquiry, by showing what your actual communications are to each other about how you're lying with this.

51:11And I think that's part of what's really important. And so people say, wow, but that's, you know, I've heard declare that's lawfare. And it's like, look, The whole point about our legal system and having 12 jurors, like, for example, the 12 jurors who convicted Donald Trump unanimously of 34 felonies on doing hush money payments and covering it up for political purposes for sleeping with a porn star, both the prosecutor attorneys and the defense attorneys helped select the journey. there were probably several Trump voting jurists amongst that, you know, enormous thing. And one of them even said that they get a lot of their news from Truth Social.

51:55And that's a jury system. And so the rule of law in a jury system is the thing that I'm very much supportive of. And investing might be the right term, but it's really investing for truth, right? And the jury system is a proxy for getting the truth. I apologize for hopping around here, but I wrote down a series of questions I wanted your thoughts on. I'm just really curious to get your thoughts on what you, or your general impressions and what you think can and should be done regarding some of the activities we've had on some of our elite universities. And if you think the government or the federal government should be playing a more active role, if this is something that is a signal of something deeper and more mendacious or more troubling in the U.S., but I'm curious what Reid Hoffman's thoughts were when you saw what was going on on our campuses.

52:51Well, I've been concerned about it for a number of years, and, you know, that same techno-libertarian group, you know, yells about wokeism very loudly. And I, by the way, agree. I think that the point of a university is to be intellectually challenged. It's, you know, part of, you know, what I loved about my, you know, undergraduate at Stanford where, you know, Peter Thiel and I would argue a tremendous amount and so forth. And I think that a lot of that lack of kind of rigor and thinking is a problem. Like, for example, the most idiotic thing that I think I've heard, you know, said out of someone on the campus is, you know, from the river to the sea, I'm anti-genocide.

53:37And you're like, from the river to the sea is a genocidal comment. You may not be informed enough to know, like understand that there is, there's kind of genocide and abuse in lots of different vectors here. And it's very complicated. And that, you know, like defending the fact that we have centuries, not just World War II of, you know, genocide, you know, masking and anti-Semitism, and a lot of the way that various Arab influences, including the Iranian sponsorship of the Hamas attack, is based on genocidal impulses, you know, like, be a little bit more educated and informed and sophisticated in your compassion.

54:27So as we wrap up here, and you've been generous with your time, Reid, you've checked a lot of boxes you it sounds like you have a really a really positive relationship with your spouse you're obviously hugely successful uh professionally and economically you're have a lot of influence on a national stage like what boxes are left for you if you think in 10 or 20 years there's a few things a few boxes i'd like to check either in indelible link things you've already done but you want to do more of or new boxes what are those things Well, I mean, I, you know, every major public interest technology thing in Silicon Valley I've been somehow associated with, usually, you know, like it's, you know, Board of Kiva, Board of Mozilla, etc.

55:14Because I'm trying to figure out how we build technology, scale technology for society is an irrelevant thing. Also, you know, helping the folks who stood up the USDS and US Digital Service and, you know, CTO office. So I think technology for humanity and society continues to be a very strong interest. And how do we do that? And by the way, I'm not anti-corporation. I just want to get broader than, right, as a way of doing it. I also think that the notions of, you know, kind of like, you know, once upon a time I was thinking about, you know, kind of questions around philosophy and kind of how do we know who we are as human beings and as society and who we should be.

55:54And like, for example, a question on artificial intelligence is how does it change our epistemology? I mean, I think, you know, a lot of our epistemology has been driven by the printing press and books and kind of sharing information that way. what kind of new knowledge artifacts will, you know, AIs be and engender? And what does that mean for what it is to be human and kind of philosophy? And those would be some gestures at some stuff that I'm, you know, continuing to work on. But, you know, part of, I think, what it can be amazing about life is, you know, discovering something, you know, that is, ah, you know, it's this thing that I should be doing.

56:41And so staying active in order to find those. And final question, Reed, a lot of young men listen to this podcast, and I know you don't have kids, but you've been married for 20 years. What advice would you have to young men who are recently married about being a good partner? You know, I think it's to be serious about it, to think every week, every month, how could I be a better partner, have conversations and explicit conversations with it. You know, sometimes people find that very awkward, but you kind of go, hey, we have, call it, you know, a date night a month where we talk about, like, how could we be better with each other in the relationship and allow, you know, like, yeah, this didn't kind of work that well, or this could be better and so forth.

57:24And to bring that thing, just like you get better at everything else that involves care, intent, skills, and bring that. That's great. Reid Hoffman is an accomplished entrepreneur, investor, and strategist. He's been at Greylock, where he focuses on early-stage investing since 2009. Reid is also the co-author of Blitzscaling and several New York Times bestselling books, including The Startup of You and The Alliance and Masters of Scale. He also hosts the podcast Masters of Scale. His two main priorities these days are, one, using AI to benefit humanity, and two, protecting U.S. democracy. He joins us from his home in the great state of Washington.

58:05Reed, you are an outstanding voice for the tech community and a really wonderful role model for young tech business leaders. I very much appreciate you and appreciate your time today. Well, likewise, and thank you. I love what you're doing and, you know, whatever I can do to help. Thanks very much, Reed.

58:33Algebra of happiness, there's so many conspiracy theories where people are trying to draw so many hollow or somewhat specious conclusions or lessons learned from the attempted assassination of President Trump. And the thing that immediately struck me was that there's this graphic showing that if he had just rotated his head two inches clockwise versus two inches counterclockwise, the bullet would have penetrated a skull in his brain and he'd be dead. I mean, this is just your life, wherever you are right now, is a series of small, random happenings, fractions and inches that determine where you are today.

59:12and what I would suggest to you and I'm trying to do is just take stock of all the wonderful things in your life whether it's you have some people in your life that love you and more importantly let you love them whether you live in a democracy whether you have opportunity to kind of pursue what you want to do whether you have you know you have rights you have some economic security whatever it might be your blessings recognize that your blessings a lot them are your fault and are a function of a series of fractions and inches and things that you may not even registered at the time around how lucky you are.

59:47And at the same time, when things go poorly, recognize it's a series of small things that are small happenings that were outside of your control and to forgive yourself. I've thought literally up until recently, up until my kind of forties and fifties, that all of the good things in my life were 90 % me and 10 % the market. And all of the bad things that happened to me were 10 % me and 90 % the market. And the reality is it's probably somewhere around 51 % things outside of your control and 49 % you. And what's the learning here? When things are going really well, be humble. And when things aren't going well, forgive yourself.

1:00:28This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening of the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.