The Future You Avoid Is Riskier Than the One You Face with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

0:00 I'm going down that rabbit hole. What science fiction do we need these days, Reed? So the thing that was really magical for me, but for us in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even to some degree the early 90s, was a notion that what we're creating with technology, what we're creating as the possible human future can be amazing.

0:26 Like this sense of the world could be much better for all human beings, not to say without big challenges and navigations and issues, but it could be. And you don't have to be as simplistic as like the Jetsons, but it's just kind of a sense of what does the path ahead look like? There are only a handful of entrepreneurs who it's safe to say that their companies change the way we do things.

0:55 Reid Hoffman is one of those entrepreneurs, and LinkedIn is one of those companies. There was a time when posting our resumes online would get us fired. Now, being on LinkedIn is just how we work. His mentality of giving power back to the people has permeated every aspect of Reid's life. Even his full embrace of AI and what it can do for humanity, which he writes about in his book Super Agency.

1:23 but it was our conversation about idealism, the need for it and what happened to it, that really inspired me. This is a bit of optimism. What did you want to be when you were a kid? Oh, that's interesting. There are different phases. Um, it was, um, I'd say the first thought was probably a science fiction author, um, because I was reading a lot of science fiction.

1:58 How old are you now? Approximately? Uh, I am like, my birthday was two days ago, so I'm 58 and two days. Oh, happy birthday. Thank you. And then I started realizing that you wanted to kind of, uh, contribute to making the world better. So then I had this kind of plan, and I think it's a very science fiction enhanced plan, that I and a group of friends would all get into positions by which we could influence the world to try to make it more peaceful, less warlike, more compassionate, you know, kind of key, what we think of as essential human virtues.

2:38 and then realized that, oh, and this will be a very weird thing that I've never ever said before on a public camera. My theory, now this is again a 12-year-old's theory, was like, oh, and the right way to do that will be to become the director of the CIA. And then when I was talking about that with my dad, he bought a book for me called The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies.

3:05 And I was reading through it, like, oh, oh, assassinations. Oh, like, I was like, okay, scratch that plan. And then after that, I didn't have a plan for a long time. I guess through universities, it was try to contribute to public intellectual discourse, which what I mean is, is who are we and who should we be as individuals and as groups?

3:29 And, you know, I thought maybe being an academic would be a path to that. So there was a, there was a number of years where I thought I'd become a philosophy professor. And then I realized that the, that the kind of the scholarship canon of the academic humanities was more about scholarship and less about the kind of the evolution of the human condition about the participation and the improvement of society.

3:55 I was like, okay, I don't want to do that. Yeah. Fortunately, I'd gone through Stanford. So I understood, what is this software entrepreneurship thing? That could be interesting. And that's, you know, how I ended up on my modern path. And the rest, as they say, is history. What I think is so interesting is I asked you, what did you want to be when you grew up?

4:14 Like when, what did you want to be when you were a little kid? And you said, my plan was. Yes. Those are not the same question. Like I wanted to be an astronaut. There was no plan for that. It was just the idea of it was so magical and fantastical. I don't think I have ever had a thing that it wasn't a plan, like all the way back to five.

4:42 Like, so like, that's the way I am. Like the way that read answers that question is that way, right? It's like, you say, okay, what do you want to be? You want to be an astronaut? Okay. What do you need to do in order to become an astronaut. Right. Like, okay, I need to understand physics. I need to have a certain kind of physical capability.

5:01 I need to be within certain kinds of programs in order to do it, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then that would start being like, like, you know, like, like at least components of thinking, if not action. The, the, but you, the one fantasy you had, I guess, was to be a science fiction author. Yep.

5:20 What was the reason you wanted to be a science fiction author? Well, it was participating in the dialogue. I mean, the thing that I loved about science fiction as a child. No five-year-old or 12-year-old says, I want to participate in the dialogue. Oh, yeah. No, no. Look, I may not have said that sentence, but that was what the intent was.

5:41 Mom, Dad, I would like to contribute to the discussion of the betterment of humankind through my works of science fiction. Yes. Look, to give you a sense, I'll tell you a funny anecdote from 12. so I was actually intensely into fantasy role playing games I started when I was 8 because my dad hired a babysitter who introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons and then was surprised by the next day when I was talking to him could you go out on dates more often like hire Michael the babysitter back like every night's good right and so when I got to 12 I was talking to some of my friends at school and one of them said hey there's this there's this fantasy role-playing game company called the chaosium which publishes a game called rune quest that is like the next

6:35 block over from my house and so i literally walked down there walked into the office and started trying to like get in the action because it was kind of like like how do i how do i participate in this making a fantasy role-playing games and doing stuff and i remember the really irritated look that the editor-in-chief was like, who the, like, it's our customers.

6:58 So we kind of can't kick them out brutally, but like, how the fuck do we get rid of this kid? And, and so what he did, and it was only years later when I realized what that look meant. It was like, at the time it was like, I'm here. And he, he handed me a, a scenario pack, which is kind of what they give to the person who's leading the game adventure the game master master do stuff he said we're working on this go look at this and then come back and i think he thought okay this kid will never come back because like i've given the kid work being the obsessive kid that i was this was i think friday afternoon i came back monday afternoon with the entire thing like redlined but like i'd worked through it i was like this part doesn't work you need a character here you know because

7:47 I just worked the entire weekend on this thing. Right. And I, no, I didn't know when I handed it to him, he's like, oh God, that didn't work. And then I started looking at it and went, I need to pay you for this because like, I want to use this. So I'm going to write you a check. And, and so it was my actually first ever job for payment, but it was that same kind of participate in the dialogue, be, be, be kind of part of what is being created.

8:16 And that was the, you know, that's the reason why, like, that is a science fiction author, which I may still, at some point, try to get some science fiction created. I don't know if I will ever write any myself, but I may try to organize a project to create some of the kind of science fiction I think we need these days.

8:35 Ooh, I was about to go to the next question. Some of the science fiction dot dot dot that we need these days. Okay, I'm going down that rabbit hole. What science fiction do we need these days, Reid? so the thing that was really magical for us for me but for us you know in the you know the 60s 70s 80s even to some degree the early 90s maybe even into the 90s was a notion that what we're creating with technology what we're creating as the possible human future yep can be amazing doesn't mean there aren't real issues you know terminator was made the 90s or then some things kind of navigate but like this the sense of the world could be much better for all human beings not to say without big challenges and navigations and issues but it could be

9:34 and you don't have to be as simplistic as like you know the jetsons um but it's just kind of a kind of a sense of what does the path ahead look like? And right now, when you look at the majority of science fiction, especially of the video format, movies and so forth, the vast majority of that is dystopic.

9:59 And the problem is you don't get a future that you want by avoiding the futures you don't want. It's a little bit like if I was planning on driving from San Francisco down to see you in LA, if I said, well, I first have to plan to avoid all possible traffic accidents, all possible potholes, all possible, I'll never get to LA.

10:20 I won't get there. I won't even get on the car to go. And so you have to have like, this is the future that we're trying to get to. And of course you go, hey, it's raining a lot. I should drive a little slower. You adjust, but you have to have that. And we need that in science fiction. We need that, that kind of sense of imagination of, of goodness.

10:42 And matter of fact, in 2019, cause I had been talking to the creative artists agency about this. Um, you know, some of my friends there, Richard Lovett and others said, asked me to come and, and give a talk at the end of their talent summary. And I basically was like, you know, it's up to you guys to start, stop harming our, the imagination of our human futures.

11:02 Yeah. And I get it that the most natural drama is man versus machine where the evil machine is basically almost you know it's beaten by the man but like you know it's man versus machine it's like look how we get to this entire modern life of all of the things that we love about modern life is that by the way through the creation of machines right okay two two thoughts come to mind two completely different paths i'm gonna go down one i'll come back and go down to the other okay two rabbit holes one is the whole discussion about AI right now, the science fiction, is the discussion of AI the imagining the future, what could be the idealism, some of the scariness as well, because it's dominating every conversation,

11:46 every conference, you know, for good reasons and annoying reasons. But is that the science fiction discourse of the day? Most of it. Most of it is because it's much easier to imagine how things go wrong than how they go right. But those that are investing in AI have no dystopian anything. It's all utopian.

12:20 And can we trust that their science fiction views of the future are the ones that should inspire us? Or should we be cynical given their conflicts of interest? Well, I would say call it 85% trust, 15% cynicism. So is the fact that the people at OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and Microsoft are all actually, in fact, people like you and I care about what happens with their friends and family, their communities, all the rest that cares about what happens in terms of the progress of the elevation of human welfare?

12:56 Absolutely, yes. um and so you know the kind of the simplistic you know what is kind of classic mostly lefty populist story which is oh because of profit they're gonna like ruin the whole human race i just it's literally deep misunderstandings in both human nature in the nature of corporations and how people work together in the nature of like for example even when you're a completely full-blooded capitalist you're like well actually in fact ruining humanity would be bad not just for me, but for my business.

13:26 So it's kind of like, it's this question on like the intense and so forth. Now, the reason why the 15% hold back is blind spots. And part of where it's useful for people who have, you know, concerns is to say, well, I think there's a blind spot here. And there's something you, we should do something about.

13:50 Now, the most often blind spot is, well, we're driving to LA and we don't know what the danger is ahead. So we should go five miles an hour. And you're like, well, that's not going to work because other people are not going to go five miles an hour, not other companies, not other countries, not other industries, et cetera, et cetera.

14:08 So you have to say, no, no, we're going to go at the kind of speed of traffic, but we're going to try to navigate it within going the speed of traffic. Okay. I'm going to put on my cynical hat here. So you talk about the misunderstanding of capitalism, that it's not good for business to destroy the planet or to destroy the market.

14:29 You're talking about Adam Smith capitalism, which is more long-term focused. It's what old-fashioned Goldman Sachs used to call long-term greed, right? And a strong argument can be made because of the way that capitalism has become more and more short-termist, more and more shareholder focused, not customer or employee focused, that we will do damage to the market because by the time it's damaged, I'm out of here.

15:09 And it just reminds me of Kodak, where Kodak in the 1970s invented the digital camera, suppressed the technology because they didn't want to cannibalize film sales and paper sales and chemical sales. And the thought of having to reinvent their company was like, ugh, and licensed their digital technology to Fuji and other Canon, other Japanese companies who sort of pioneered digital photography.

15:37 And then eventually digital photography takes over and basically bankrupts Kodak. And the executives who made those decisions, who had foresight, let's be honest, they knew the world was going to go digital. They weren't idiots. But at the end of the day, they bankrupted the company, but they were long gone and retired with their big fat bonuses for driving the stock price up for the 10 years that they were making money, making coin off of the license.

16:03 So is it maybe 50-50, not 85-15? Well, but it would be, can we, look, the worst part is actually the one that I most often use for where I think capitalism goes very wrong in human welfare is unfortunately the incentives in the medical industry, which is the incentives in the medical industry are we are all in chronic, desperate conditions and need to be paying for drugs and dialysis and everything else every week in order to sustain.

16:36 And I think that's the classic where the economic incentives kind of aligned to bad for society. The wrong thing. The wrong thing. Because by the way, the collapse of Kodak is exactly the kind of thing where bad board of directors, bad management causes a company to collapse. And by the way, that does create chaos for the workers of Kodak, for the company town in Kodak.

17:00 It destroyed Rochester. Exactly. So real issues. But the overall, the market actually still assumes and goes to places beyond those bad actors and the impact on society as a whole, humanity is not necessarily bad. I see what you mean. So they made bad decisions for the company. Yes. They didn't necessarily make bad decisions for society writ large, excluding the town in which they worked in.

17:29 Yes. But that's also the reason why I go 85-15 because even with this kind of market dynamic, Oh, that's interesting. there is still things go wrong. Medical is the one I most often use is the things that go wrong. There's others too. The one that's kind of the cause celeb for the last 10 years is the advertising model.

17:49 And actually I think the advertising model gets far too much grief because when you go to, it's almost like a version of patronizing. You go to the vast majority of human beings and you say, would you rather pay for this thing or have it for free with someone else buying it for you so they can advertise to you.

18:06 And most human beings go, yeah, I'd rather have it for free, please. And you go, well, you shouldn't want that. You're like, well, I mean, I think Tim Cook summed it up, right? If you don't pay for the product, you are the product. Yeah. Look, and even if you do that, that most people go, yeah, that's what I want.

18:21 Thank you very much. Don't be patronizing to me. Like, like, allow me to express my own preferences. Yeah. I was in Europe and they have different rules there and I logged onto Instagram and it offered me to pay for it and have no ads or have the ads. And as much as I hate the ad model, I know the system is listening to me.

18:43 I know it's tracking me. The thought of spending $79 a year to use Instagram, I was like, yeah, no. Yeah. See, look, and the most sympathetic I am to this point is to say, look, most, because there's enough people who don't want it, you have to kind of nudge them to force them to offer that as an option.

19:02 Yeah. Right. But by the way, of course, it's going to be premiumly priced, not because they just simply want to drive you to advertising. It's that the, well, look, actually, in fact, we're optimizing our entire business operations or hiring an ad for us and all the rest of the stuff. And if you're going to say, we're going to cut off part of our product from all that, that's going to be an expensive subunit.

19:25 So let's charge for the subunit. So anyway, this is all a digression into the patterns in capitalism. The thing that I think is important, look, if there was no, you know, earlier this year, as you know, I published a book, Super Agency, to try to make the optimistic case for AI. And obviously, it's like the most optimistic book for AI that's out there, especially written by- Dare I say, science fiction.

19:52 Yeah. Well, a lens, a more pragmatic science fiction. Yes. And now, if there was no criticism, I would have put more criticism in it. Because it's not that I'm absent the criticism. It's just that the dialogue is so much like, AI is coming for your jobs and for your lives. And it's like, okay like that's science fiction right and it doesn't mean there aren't huge transformations but the way that we're talking about ai part of what's trying to remind people is is the same way people talked about the printing press right so well but this time is different it's like well each time is indeed different and this time might be different it has a lot of differences yeah but don't take the trivial of i can think of something to go wrong and therefore because

20:40 This is like, for example, a classic thing that is discussed in this, and I'll get back to the how much do we trust the companies, but classic thing is precautionary principle, which is, well, if something serious can go wrong, we should actually, in fact, try to totally minimize it. And if you're like, well, okay, you could die driving to LA.

21:01 And if you say, well, I'm never going to get in the car until I know that I couldn't die driving to LA, then you're never going to get in the car. Right. Right. So you have to have precautionary principles. But there's there's there's acceptable risks. Yes. You know, you're not going to get in a car without brakes.

21:17 Yes. A hundred percent. We have our cars inspected for a reason. Yes. And we want pilots to walk around the plane before we take off for a reason. You know, we understand that most accidents are pilot error, for example. But there's an acceptable level of risk. Yes. And by the way, this is part of the reason why, you know, the earlier Biden executive order was something I supported and was doing, because it's kind of like, hey, have red teams, be investigating the risk, be doing stuff like it.

21:43 That's good stuff to do. The companies actually are still all doing that because they went, yes, this is a good idea to do. We will do that. And so that's the reason why it's kind of like 85% positive. And there's one other thing. So here's, I have a question. I'd love to get your opinion about this, which is, and you talked about how technology throughout history is disruptive and scary, and it does absolutely change the way our lives work.

22:10 And I think we have to accept that depending on the technology, but some of those technologies change our brain. They change how we work. The Iliad was handed down through oral history. It's like, son, it's time I tell you the story of the Iliad. I'm like, you memorized 800 pages? It's like, no, no, my dad told me and now I'm going to tell you.

22:34 And like, and then when the printing press came out, the brain literally was like, I don't need to remember stuff anymore. And it just stopped remembering stuff. I remember just in my lifetime, I used to have a mind like a steel trap for phone numbers. You told me your phone number. I knew everybody's phone number, lists of phone numbers.

22:52 And then I was one of the first people to get a Casio digital diary with 2K of memory. and I put all the phone numbers out of my head into the technology because I like technology, to this day, I know my phone number and my sister's phone number and I can't remember anybody's phone number because my brain was like, you don't need it.

23:11 I'm going to turn that function off or the calculator. We just stopped being good at math, right? I think most of us are okay letting go of some of our talents and gifts and outsourcing it to technology. The question I'm asking is what facilities, what faculties are we going to lose because we're outsourcing to the AI?

23:33 And my fear is that it's not just our memories, maybe that's acceptable, but rather there's going to be a decline in human skills and other really important things like ability to cope with stress and other things because we outsourced it to the machine. That's what I'm asking, which is what faculties are we going to lose because of the technology?

23:54 Well, the faculties are definitely going to change, but let me give you an example that I've been telling a bunch of the, you know, educators, university people, because it's a very common thing to say, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're at the day of the, you know, the GBD five launch.

24:09 I'm not going to write an essay. I'm just gonna have GPD five, write the essay and I'm going to submit it. And I'm not going to have to think or suffer or, you know, stare at a blank page in order to do that. Right. Actually, in fact, I actually think the, the, the, our capabilities for training human beings is going to go way up because what's going to happen is examination is all going to happen by AI.

24:30 And the examination will be like oral exams for PhDs, right? Like, like we all learn going through college, you know, to say, Hey, I can predict the three to five questions that are likely to be on the exam. I'll prepare for those. I prepare just enough to be able to answer those within a three hour period and get a good grade.

24:48 And that's my competence level. Now, what we're going to have in small N years, this might be three, two, could be five, where literally the cost of examination is zero. And literally, you can start taking the examination whenever you want. You could take it on day two of the class and take it on day 17 as well, and 23, and however you learn.

25:11 And part of the reason why we reserve oral exams for PhDs is because it's the one that you have to, if you're really going to do it, you have to prep the whole area. Like you have to be A to Z on it. And so what I think is actually going to happen is we're going to be able to calibrate what we set as a human society for which skills do we want?

25:34 How do we want those examined? And how are people prepared? So I I actually, I'm not a idiocracy believer here. I'm a, no, no, this is a question of our choice about how we set this up. And actually, in fact, it's going to get a lot more rigorous. I think you make a very good point with regards to school.

25:55 Yeah. But let's now leave school. And the AI is writing the press release for me. It's writing the blog entry for me. It's writing my article for the newspaper. It's writing my book for me, you know, and very competently, I might add. When I was in school, I had to do the studying to demonstrate to the test that I knew it.

26:18 But in the in once I go get a job, I'm not getting tested anymore. They only want me to do a good thing, like write, write a piece. And that's it. That's my job to keep writing press releases or whatever. So where is the learning? Where is the struggle? Where is the ability to hone your craft if you're actually never doing your craft?

26:40 Well, what I think, as opposed to the, like, if you compare person A and person B competing, and today's environment is, you know, person A and person B sit down on a blank page and have to craft what looks like a press release. Right. You know, a press statement. And you go from scratch. That's no longer the...

26:59 That's no longer a thing. The thing. But then the question is, well, what does it look like? Because person A and person B are still going to be competing in our universe. And maybe it's which way does it prompt the AI better, recognize the strategic game of the nature, do things that are better evocations for the competitive game of press releases.

27:25 I don't know if the construction is a fair construction, right? Because school, it was me versus test. Yes. You're talking about not, we're not always in competition. You know, we're in competition sometimes for promotion, we're in competition sometimes for the job, but sometimes I'm the guy. I'm the guy doing the thing.

27:45 I'm the guy. There's no competition. So what do you do when there's no, because the competition is in a sense a test, a measurement. Well, but our whole society is based on competition. There's competition for the job. There's competition for between companies, between products. There's competition for the promotion.

28:04 That doesn't mean that necessarily each one is a directly easily measured one. But like, for example, you know, you don't go out, walk down Main Street town and say, hey, Sarah, Bob, you're my PR press release writer. You know, come on, come do this because there's competition for the job. Right. And even though you say, well, but there's some jobs there's less competition for, like maybe, you know, greeter at a restaurant, it still has to be on time, friendly, et cetera, et cetera, as ways of doing this.

28:33 And by the way, of course, the whole landscape of jobs. So what you're suggesting is the metrics will be different. So the quality of the press release is no longer the thing by which I'm judging you as a PR person. Now I'm judging, are you showing up on time? Are you a good team player? Did you get the data points from the client right?

28:51 Did you know what the strategy was? Did you know what the strategy is? So you're arguing that it's still there, but the standards are different. Exactly. Just like, for example, to take your Iliad, the standards no longer – do you remember the 800 pages? But those things are still there. Even if I have to do the work myself, I still have to be on time.

29:10 I still have to understand the strategy. Where I'm struggling, where I'm trying to wrap my head around this, right? And I swear I have an open mind to this. I'm not trying to force any, I don't have a particular bias, which is, and I've talked about this publicly before, which is I know that I am smarter, a better problem solver, a better critical thinker, not because I have a book, but because I wrote a book, right?

29:42 The awful slog of writing a book made me better at the things that I like to be good at, you know, critical thinking and the like, pattern recognition. And I could have asked the machine to write the book for me, and it would have done a fairly decent job, but the outcome might have been excellent, but the process was missing.

30:07 And you are as smart as you are, not simply because you were born smart, but when you built your company, you built it, and you went through the hell of building it and the struggles and the setbacks, and you stuck with it and the grit, which contributed to all of your intelligence, wisdom and perspective today.

30:31 and you wouldn't be as smart as you are now or have the perspective you have now had you not gone through the shit yeah and what i'm what i'm saying is there will be similar kind of struggle and evolution yeah right because yeah and the the struggle changes i mean look at like accounting you know um 60 years ago 70 years ago accounting was very heavily like i write down all the numbers in the books i do all the advertising you know the the addition and all the rest yeah measure all that then when like spreadsheets came along people said oh my god accountants they're all going to be out to work they're all going to like they're no longer going to do this well now accounting is strategic it's like no no i trust the the the computer system will the math

31:13 is fine the math will do all that no you know if something doesn't look like i'll go where does this why does this look wrong like what what is leading this usually it's a data error yeah um and what you're doing is you're applying a different kind of thinking to it. Right. And, and I don't think that new different kind of thinking is necessarily bad.

31:33 I also don't think it's necessarily always better. I think it's a transformation. I do think that, for example, you know, the fact that we now, you know, this is like, again, like the calculator example, very few are your phone number example. Very few of us, like if you said, we're going to compete in a speed long division competition.

31:53 I'd be sitting there going, okay, fuck, remember how to do this? Can't bring out my smartphone for this one. And so, you know, there are some losses, but with those losses come other gains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the intensity of the competitive moment of how we, and the reason I started with school is because school is how we kind of do the basic provisioning for entering into the competitive moments.

32:22 The way that we do that is, I think, kind of up to us. And I, by the way, I have confidence. Like the reason I don't like go and write a lot about that and do that, I have confidence that we will over time work that out. Like that, and over time is not like a long time. I mean, net, net, net what you're saying.

32:37 And I think accurately so is we don't know. Yep. A hundred percent. But what we do know is that nature pours imbalance in a vacuum. and it'll find equilibrium. And just as, you know, technologists love to say, you know, 20 years ago, 80% of the jobs today didn't exist. Well, so too, you know, all the people talking about all the job loss, yes, that will happen, or at least some degree of it will.

33:04 However, 80% of the jobs 20 years from now don't exist now that we can't even imagine. It was only a couple years ago that people said, the future is prompting and you're going to take, you're going to be a professional prompter. Well, that lasted like six months because it turned out it didn't matter how good your promise was, the machine got smarter.

33:20 So we're already getting the predictions wrong about what the future of employment looks like. And this is the thing. This is part of the reason I wrote Super Agency. Most people go, you can't predict the future. Oh, my God, terror, terror, terror. Because it's a little bit like if you said, hey, you're going to get in the airplane and you're not going to predict if it can land.

33:37 You don't know if you can land. I'm not going to get in the airplane. Right. Of course. But the thing is, is this is what our whole life is. We just blind ourselves the most of it. That's the reason I use the drive to LA. It's like, can you guarantee that I can get to LA completely safely? Absolutely not.

33:56 Zero. Right. But it's like, OK, reasonable enough. And then the whole discussion becomes, OK, well, what's the level of risk? Now, if I thought the level of risk was we're handing every five year old a trigger with an atom bomb, it'd be like, OK, that's a very bad idea. Right. Don't do that. And like, for example, if someone said, hey, I'm going to take the AI system today and I'm going to run the like the the nuclear defense system with it.

34:25 You're like, yeah, don't do that. There have been bad movies about that. You know, Terminator, War Games. Don't do that. But that doesn't mean don't build AI. That doesn't mean, you know, like, you know, for example, like Siddhartha Mukherjee and I are doing is like, how can we accelerate the cure of cancer?

34:40 Oh, this reminded me of the note that I wanted to say earlier, just so people hear it. My optimism is not just a blind faith or a reasoned faith in the future. We have a line of sight to creating a medical assistant that's as good or better than current GPs available to everyone who can access a smartphone on the planet that runs for less than $5 an hour.

35:06 yeah the quality of human life elevation for that is immeasurable it is so large that it just it's life-changing so there are prizes that are worth paying playing for here that are actually really important and they're not just like abstractions about like oh good we'll we'll be able to code a lot better okay this is the perfect segue to go back to the second rabbit hole that i was going to go down about the changing nature of science fiction, as you articulated, which it was very, very optimistic, and it became dystopian at some point.

35:42 Why was science fiction so optimistic for so many years? And where are we getting the optimistic views of the future now, if not from science fiction? I think it was optimistic because people allowed themselves to simply be amazed by what technology can create. And I actually do think that some remembrance of that simple amazement is a very good thing.

36:13 I mean, like, for example, one of the things that I say about, you know, ChatGPT and Copilot and Gemini and Claude is, if you're encountering any serious decision in your life, you should always consult for a second opinion. It's a little different about a first opinion to be a little bit more careful.

36:31 But I've literally had like a friend of mine was at a hospital with his cousin, where he was uncertain about what that hospital was telling the cousin, consulted GPT-4 and GPT-4 said, go to another hospital, got to the other hospital. And the people at hospital said, it's good thing you're here because two hours later you'd be dead right and and fix it because the first hospital's like i'll take some antibiotics you're fine and it's like um and that second opinion is a hugely valuable thing um and so i think that's where we kind of are already and that that's the simple amazement the oh my gosh these really amazing things can happen and by the way how do we evolve as human beings we're homo techni more than homo sapiens we evolve through technology not just

37:17 things like this podcast or the glasses that you and I are wearing or, you know, these kinds of things. But, you know, the books and all the rest, there's all kind of evolution through technology. So that's what I think is a thing that we kind of shifted off of. Now, in terms of the optimism today, I think that it's much harder because it's a little harder to state that simple optimism without getting a lot of critique.

37:52 And like people say, well, it's very nice and good for you to say, as a technologist inventing this, that's going to change the world. What about all the people who are inventing the technology and just have to go along with it? And you go, well, whether or not I do it or not, the technology is going to change and it's going to go through it.

38:07 So I'm in it because I'm trying to shape it in a way that would be best for them and best for kind of our children and grandchildren and future generations and future societies and all the rest. But I do understand that kind of agency question, part of the reason why I called it super agency. But so it means that, like, for example, I get tons and tons of critique, but I'm not, I call it an intellectually honest optimist, which by the way, I am, but like, I'm a commercial, I'm an investor, you know, I'm a, I'm a technologist, et cetera, because it, that's the kind of critique you run into.

38:46 And so I don't really know where the sources of optimism come. And that's part of the reason, like, you know, in my normal life right now, I would be more focused on like building the cancer drug cures than writing the book super agency. But I think that voice needs to be heard. I would be completely delighted when it's other people.

39:07 And I do track the other, you know, the other, you know, kind of really great leading AI voices like Ethan Mollick and other people and try to support them and help them in terms of what they're doing. Cause it's, it's, it's really important. Can I share a theory as to why I think we had more optimism in our science fiction then and what happened to it?

39:25 I think it's, I think it's the cold war I think because one of the, you know, great, Great competitions exist on three tensions, I'll call them, I guess. There's an existential tension, life or death. There's an economic tension. Are we going to make money and be able to provide for ourselves, our economy, our families?

39:44 And the third one is the philosophical one, that we have a philosophy, an ideology that we believe in, and we belong to this ideology, and it gives us a sense of camaraderie and patriotism, but it also connects us, right? And I would argue that our science fiction, in part, was a reflection of our ideology that was competing against, at the time, Soviet-style communism.

40:14 And so if you look at all our utopian versus dystopian science fiction, it was we all get along, we live in peace, there's prosperity, like we're accepting, we're including of people who are alien to us, literally in many cases. And there were conflicts along the way, but we want to include everybody else.

40:34 And this was an exaggerated and tangible depiction of our values to remind us what we stand for as we stand in great competition against the thing that would challenge that idealism or that ideology. And idealism is the reflection of the ideology. And then with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we still had the economic competition versus everybody else.

40:59 We still have the existential competition. We still would like to live in peace, and we still have enemies. But I would argue that the ideological thing kind of just went away. And I think America in particular kind of forgot what it stood for because there was nothing challenging it. There was nothing standing in opposition.

41:19 And so I think our science fiction became dystopian because now it was us versus ourselves. It was no longer us versus somebody else. And if you look at where we've ended up, it is largely us versus ourselves right now. The great competition in the United States against the United States is the United States.

41:38 I think that an opposing ideology in the world, an ideology that is different to ours, would breed the need for people to tell stories of if we follow our ideologies, this is what the world will look like to remind us that we stand for something great, something good, something worth fighting for, something worth dying for.

42:02 And I think that's the reason our science fiction became dark. Yeah, because it was more of a left to ourselves, the internal, like we are the thing versus, no, no, our ideology is this is a golden future that we're fighting for versus yours. Versus an external force that would stand in our way. And, you know, from too many years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there was no balance of power.

42:33 So there was nothing to tell us that we were wrong, other than somebody, like we fought, we now have factions inside our country telling ourselves that we are wrong. Where back in the day, we still fought like cats and dogs. We still had Republicans and Democrats. We had all of that nonsense. But at the end of the day, the external existential threat was worse than the internal one.

42:54 Where today, the external existential threat is either misunderstood, not perceived, not recognized, or seen as less threatening than whatever's inside the country. And that's kind of how empires collapse, isn't it? Usually acts of suicide, not homicide or whatever the side is of superpowers. Long decay.

43:22 Superpower side. Yes. And we've seen it, Roman Empire, we've seen it, the British Empire. Yeah, they're all kind of the same. So I guess what I'm positing, which is should folks like you and me not preach? Should we not be preaching? I mean, I guess you and I already do. I guess I already asked and answered, which is we are attempting to preach an idealistic vision of the future.

43:51 You know, I work very hard to make my message available to anyone who wants to believe in it, regardless of somebody's politics, because I believe it's available to anyone who is a human being to live in the vision of the world that I imagine. and my work though may not maybe not science fiction is definitely idealistic and so is it not the responsibility of to your point to to to those movie to those filmmakers should should should we not start preaching again an idealized future that's worth striving for i guess again what's a rhetorical question duh well i think that's a moral requirement of good leadership.

44:35 It's part of the reason why I talked to the various, you know, very smart, very well meaning critics. And I also say, and here is the positive version, the elevation of humanity. And by the way, one of the subtle things of it is we would like to in human condition, I think diminish how much is our condition is beating up the evil people.

44:57 It's like, no, how do we, how do we elevate like if like to some degree if you're a good person it's it's how do we elevate people versus how to like like like it's just the ordering one or two how do we elevate people how do we prevent the bad people yeah if you're a good person that's the order if you're a bad person in part it's the other order yeah right it's the you still you still need to be able to know what you i think idealism is ethereal it's hard to see it's hard to imagine an enemy is tangible and it's much easier to know what you stand for if you can see what you stand against and even you know jobs back in the day and i'm curious what you did at linkedin but you know jobs he still had big blue and he still had you know microsoft and he he still articulated

45:42 an enemy that was standing in a in the way of of of his idealism but the idealism came first yes and so i'm curious what was you know when when when as as you were building linkedin like who Who was standing in the way? What was the grand enemy standing in the way of the idealism that you promoted? Well, it probably were two things.

46:05 One was kind of a social norm that was bad for society and bad for individuals, which was no one should have a CV posted on public posted online. This is like it was like, you know, you're you're disloyal to your organization. and so therefore you know you shouldn't do that and i was like no actually in fact that's better for the individuals opportunity that's better for society maximizing the opportunity of individuals and the creation of of their best work and it's a little bit more challenging for organizations because you can't just hold on to your people because no one knows who they are that was part of the reason why they wanted that you know that that that myth of if your cv is online maybe you

46:50 don't get the promotion or bonus or you know maybe we fire you etc i mean literally very early days on linkedin it was like oh shit i want to be on linkedin because maybe i'll get fired for being on linkedin it's like and you know um various some companies like tried to ban people from being on linkedin or so there's that and then there's the old industry um you know the various you know like monster.com and everything else for kind of job listings versus the way the world should be which is when you have an opportunity you should be reaching out to people yeah that that you have and people can reach out to you too but it should be both directions for for kind of figuring that out and you know it's funny if if with this conversation if i were to phone my younger self

47:34 and doing it i probably would have probably would have been better to phrase it more as a grand as a grand enemy versus just an idealistic vision, which is more of what I was doing, because it probably would have been more motivating to the cohesive collection of the group in order to do what we do. This is the problem with enemies and negativity, right?

47:55 Which is it's incredibly powerful. You can rally people incredibly well. And I think that's part of the problem, which is you can rally people with negativity, but to what end? Yes. And it's a short-lived, it could be 20 years, But the point is that it's got a finite end to it. Whereas having the idealism and viewing the enemy as simply the thing standing in the way of our ideals, which is why, to Jobs' credit, it was IBM, then it wasn't IBM, then it was Microsoft, and then it wasn't Microsoft.

48:27 He kept replacing the thing that was standing in the way, but it was never about IBM or Microsoft to begin with. It was always about the vision. And so your idealism was ethereal, But if you were able to, because it's quite a populist message, which is power to the people, right? Which is how dare the corporation stand in the way of my opportunity, you know?

48:52 And ironically, by allowing me opportunity and giving me some agency, there's that word again, the corporation will actually benefit because I'm sometimes proudly saying where I work. or now business can be done because I wanted to just reach out to you to work with you, not because I'm trying to poach you.

49:12 Yes, exactly. And it actually has benefited the corporation in a magical twist of irony as it always turns out to be that way. Exactly. Can I ask you a question that I don't understand? I mean, I kind of have a theory, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Why is it, and maybe this is not true, but I think it's true.

49:33 when a male entrepreneur has some sort of liquidity event company goes public he sells the company whatever and comes into generational wealth if you ask them what do you do now they say i'm an investor right and so now i know they give to philanthropy i know they do philanthropic works but they define themselves as investors which i find funny because you've just made more money than you'll need ever.

49:58 And now your goal is to make more money. And like, oh, you've got a fund now. Oh, wonderful. Whereas when you talk to females who have some sort of liquidity event where they have now generational wealth and you ask them, what do you do? They say, I'm a philanthropist. And of course they do investing, but they define themselves first as philanthropists.

50:19 Why can't all people who sell a company or go public and come into more money than they'll ever need, Why can't every single one of them define themselves as philanthropists first? Well, they certainly can. It's probably. Why don't they? Yes. Why don't they? Like, it's not a pattern that I've observed perhaps as clearly as you.

50:45 I could be wrong. Yeah. It's an initial observation. Yeah. But, you know, what I, my hypothesis would be in that is that what's the fitness function by which you're awarded status by people around you, which is part of the kind of competitive game. And men, it's money. Yeah. And for women, it's more like, do you care about society and community?

51:12 You're a good person. You're a good person. So like, like that would be my hypothesis. I think that's right and what I would hope is that everybody thinks of themselves as becoming a philanthropist because I think that the and it isn't just if you made a bunch of money and now have more money than you know what you can possibly do with in human life and by the way the reason why people continue to make money is for all kinds of reasons.

51:48 Some of it's, you know, that's what they know how to do. Some of it's competitive. Some of it's that's what they think the meaning of their life is. Some of it's like, hey, I know how to behave philanthropically with that money. But I think it goes back to our conversation about idealism and the future, which is, because I think it's an articulation of values, right?

52:10 The value that we are espousing, or at least embraced by men more than women, which is money is the metric. And even if you have already, quote unquote, won, you want everybody to know that you're still trying to make more. I wonder if this was the 1950s, if that would be the same, or is it this modern version of our values that's become a little bit distorted and a little bit more materialistic?

52:39 I don't know the answer. I'm just curious. Well, I don't know either, although one of my high school history teachers' favorite expressions, which I really have come to embrace, is things aren't like they used to be and never were. And so, you know, it's kind of a, be a little cautious about the mythos.

53:01 Right, because we like to idealize the past. Yes. Romanticize it. Yes. Now, but my earlier question is like, for example, when I was thinking about how your question applies to me, and I would say, like, I would say I probably would have started with the word investor. But the reason I would have started with the word investor is probably not because I'm looking to, you know, kind of occupy that social status niche as much.

53:30 You're quite different. Yeah. As much as like the philanthropy I do, I think of as investing, like investing in kind of humankind, investing in human potential. Sure. And a lot of the same mechanisms, like does it have a scalable economic model? You know, that kind of stuff still applies. But it's a giving mentality versus a taking mentality.

53:52 Yeah. But even like, for example, like part of having been successful as an entrepreneur and successful as an investor, I'm now no longer interested in investing and putting a lot of time into things that like I put in a dollar and I make $10 and it's only the $10. I'll do it if it tripped across it because I know what to do with the $10 in terms of philanthropic investment.

54:14 But I look at like what kinds of things actually make the world the more the way it should be. It's like, for example, the Airbnb was the first investment that I pitched to Greylock. And part of it was like, actually, in fact, this unlocks the world as it should be. Right. This is that that that's what's essential about this.

54:35 And of course, it's a great economic investment. Yeah, but that's part of it. And by the way, again, it's kind of a little de rigueur to kind of think about capitalism as bad amongst, you know, kind of call it educated, you know, highly educated liberal circles. And it's like, no, no, actually, in fact, you know, to your earlier thing about Adam Smith, it's not just Adam Smith as the wealth of nations.

55:00 It's Adam Smith as the theory of moral sentiments. And that's actually extremely important to understand about what's going on here. And if you don't, if you're not sophisticated about that, your critique is, you know, useless. Yeah. You're, you're different than your peers. Like you're different than a lot of other sort of founder, you know, unicorn founders.

55:22 And I don't think you're a part of the longevity obsession. Are you? No. I mean, of course we'd all like to live a few years. You don't like to live long, happy lives, but you don't fit that same profile. It's one of the things that I really like about you, which is you are much more yourself. You're very comfortable in who you are.

55:47 Look, it gets back to that science fiction, right? It's like, what are we trying to do? What is the path of humanity? And how do we contribute? Can you just share one specific story of something that you were involved in that at some point throughout your career, it doesn't even matter if it was commercially successful or not.

56:01 I'm just real curious. one thing that you were involved in that you absolutely loved being a part of this thing, this project, this event. And if everything in your life was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. Oh, interesting. I like diversity, which is a problem with that, the answering your question, because multiple different things is a good thing.

56:23 So just one thing again and again. One specific thing that you were a part of, it doesn't matter about its commercial viability for commercial exercises. But like, when you look back and you think about that experience, you're like, oh, amazing. You know, it's probably unlocking things where people have...

56:40 Tell me a specific one, a specific one. No, no, I'm just the pattern of it. It's like, part of the reason I'm answering it, taking me a few, like, you know, some, a minute or two to kind of, is there's many of them. And it's kind of like, the one is kind of a challenging question. Pick one of those. Yeah.

56:56 Well, so, you know, part of the thing that I love about, actually I'll use being an investor, is that you are giving someone the shot to do that life's work that makes them, that is something epic. I get it, but give me something specific. Maybe it was something that happened during the early days of LinkedIn.

57:30 It can be absolutely anything, but when you look back, something specific. I hear you about the investing, but something specific that I can relive with you. Yeah. So, well, look, it's a little micro element, but it's a very micro on this. Go for it. For that thing. It will start with the basis of one of my frustrations with LinkedIn.

57:55 Yeah. So my basis of frustration with LinkedIn is the vast majority of people approach being connected to other people on LinkedIn as kind of, oh, this is how I navigate. This is for me. um years back i was having a conversation with a friend and serial entrepreneur paul english and we were sitting around very early days in linkedin six years in or seven years in and he's the first person who on an unaided basis reflected to me what i think of linkedin and what i was trying which is like when i connect with someone on linkedin it's because i i am giving them a gift of how can I potentially help you by connecting with you with other people in my network, right?

58:39 Like it's, it's making it easier for me to help you in our journey through life and work together. And, and Paul was the first person outside of LinkedIn who said, Oh, I love LinkedIn because of this. Right. And I was like, yes. And, you know, and since then there've been five more, But, you know, like that was a, you see what I'm trying to create for making us more collaborative, cooperative, you know, like life is a team sport.

59:13 It's how I help other people, how I give it as a gift. You see that, and that was, you know, maybe that was a version of feeling seen. Yeah. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory, something specific I can relive with you. Not like we went to my grandparents every weekend. One specific event that I can relive with you.

59:30 Well, okay. This one seems a little funny. But as a seven-year-old beating my grandfather in chess. Right. Say more. Well, so my grandfather. You think of one particular instance. Well, it was the first time. Okay. So the first time you beat your grandfather in chess. Tell me about it. Well, so he was playing chess with me.

59:51 And it was like each time, you know, from like five to seven. Right. Like, you know, he'd win, he'd win, he'd win. I was trying to figure out how could he be doing this? Like, why can't I do this? And then it helped me start figuring out what, how the world worked and what was going on and what the pieces were and, and, and that kind of thing.

1:00:14 And that was the, it was kind of the epiphany of suddenly seeing, ah, this is how this works. It wasn't so much like, aha, I beat grandpa, as much as it was like, ah, I can now see the world as it is. I can see more about what's going on and I can navigate it and participate in it. Those are obviously not the words I would have used as a seven-year-old.

1:00:40 No, no, no, of course. As a seven-year-old, it's like, ha, I beat your grandpa. Yes, exactly. I get that. the, I mean, this whole conversation, everything you talk about, it's about that undying, that is striving to understand how it works for the benefit of others. Yeah. And inclusive of myself. I don't think of others as not including myself.

1:01:06 A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's a selfish selflessness all at once. Yes. Yeah, totally. And, you know, you talk about sort of the plan about adding to the discourse, which is, you know, I'm going to write this stuff so that people can understand how the world works so that people can take it in for the benefit.

1:01:25 And even the LinkedIn realization, which is here's how human beings should work. And if you do it this way as an act of giving rather than an act of taking, we all win. And the original philosophy of LinkedIn, which is if you allow people to display where they work and put their CVs up on the world, no, no, no.

1:01:44 This is how the world should work. And even your AI discussion, which is this unbelievable striving to understand how the world actually works for the benefit of everybody. And you, and even the way you describe your investing, you know, which is if I can figure out how something works, you said, it's not how much can I get from it?

1:02:05 That's, that's sometimes the, the, the sort of the, the lucky strike extra, but rather if we get this right, how much will you get from this? And I don't mean financially. Yeah. Well, and also the person's life work is not just for them. That's one of the things that your life work is not just for you.

1:02:22 Life work is not just for them. Yes. It's for us. And that's my rub, the people who define themselves as investors versus philanthropists, which is whether just going on the definition of the words, which is my life's pursuit is now for accumulation for myself versus my life's pursuit is to figure out how to way to give it all away or at least make it so that others benefit more than me because I've had my luck.

1:02:51 It's a mindset rather than an activity because all philanthropists invest and all investors give away money, I hope. But it's the hierarchy, it's the order. And you talked about that hierarchy and that order in other circumstances. The order matters. Yes. And I think this is one of my favorite things about you, which is why I think you're so different from almost all the founder leaders who sort of occupy that unicorn space, which is you are unabashedly in it for others.

1:03:22 Yeah. And there's a few others, you know, Bill Gates, Reed Hastings. There's a few others, but yes. Yeah. I'm not saying you're unique, but you are, but it, but it's a small group where you are unabashedly. Yeah. It's the unabashed. Well, it's the way we should be. It's the way we should be. And that is, shouldn't be the work of science fiction.

1:03:46 It should be real, real. It should be science fact, just fact, fact. Fact, yes. You know, but I am so glad you exist. I'm so glad you're putting your visions in the world. And I really hope that the world that you imagine is the world that we build. Well, that's part of the reason why, you know, I do this work, you do that work.

1:04:07 And what's we're hoping for. So good. Thanks for coming on. What a joy. Always a joy. I look forward to the next one. I look forward to a meal in person too. I know we have to do that. I forgot. We like to ask every one of our guests, just curious, if you have some sort of life hack, some sort of shortcut, some sort of thing that you figured out that helps you be more effective, efficient, or productive as a person.

1:04:32 Well, I mean, here's very apropos our current conversation and current moment is anytime I'm working on a new problem or kind of a new thought, part of what I do is I think about what's the position of human expertise that would most inform what I'm doing. And then I prompt AI model of your choice with this position of human expertise.

1:05:04 Give me, you know, analyze this problem for me or give me a solution or something else. And it accelerates how you kind of go through this. And I do this just, you know, kind of constantly. And like, for example, you know, one of the ones I'm planning on doing recently is, you know, a friend of mine was kind of trying to say I should take eonograms, you know, and personality types more seriously.

1:05:27 And I'm going to go throw out a set of prompts and ideas into probably GPT-5 now and say, and learn this and see, do I think this is a useful pattern for understanding how we, you know, we kind of work together, we travel together, we live together, et cetera. And, you know, and that's the hack. I mean, it's a good use of the tech.

1:05:53 Yeah. Reid, such a pleasure, truly such a pleasure Thank you so much Likewise, I look forward to the next A Bit of Optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team Lindsay Garbinius and Devin Johnson If I was able to give you any kind of insight or some inspiration or made you smile please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work or want to advance a dream, maybe I can help.

1:06:25 Simply go to simonsenic.com. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.