Best of the Pod: How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman

[00:00] I think there's many times when you're encountering an external circumstance, if you approach it as this is taking my agency, you're essentially throwing yourself under the wheels, right? Whereas you go, oh, here's how I can use this to transform my agency, to extend and enhance my agency in various ways, then it becomes much better. One of the core parts that I read in that is you talk about agency as a sense, internal kind of like aesthetic experience of agency. [00:30] realizing that old catechism that's pretty good, which is the strength to change the things I can, the tolerance to live with the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference. I came to love that catechism later because I had early got to that sense of that's how you should navigate the world. Wow, how'd you do that? Maybe it's like, [00:49] playing a lot of board games. I mean, it's kind of like, like, it's kind of a sense of, hey, these things are under your control and these things are not under your control. You have a couple of like specific ways of thinking about that, that I think are really interesting. So I want to make this really concrete though. Maybe I'm a product manager, I'm a designer or whatever. How does this change how I think about an orient to AI over the next couple of years, arm me with some more practical concrete ways to instantiate this compass in how I approach my life.

[01:19] you [01:28] Reid, welcome to the show. [01:30] It's great to be here and great to be doing this in person. Yeah, I love that. It makes it a much different experience just to be face-to-face. We're actually very close to each other. Yes, exactly. Well, and actually even philosophically. Yeah, definitely. So I'm excited to have you for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones is you have a new book coming out. By the time this is out, it may be out. It's called Super Agency. I read it. I actually really liked it. It's part of my, like professionally I have to say that, but also I really... But it happens to be true. [02:00] It happens to be true. And the reason I like it is, um, I think it's, it, you're, you're writing it in response to, um, the, I, you know, there's a prevalent fear of AI and maybe AGI as socially. Um, and I think you're, uh, you're examining this moment and saying, if we want to understand what to do in this moment and how things might play out, a good way to do that is to look at history [02:30] Like, um... [02:32] about how we reacted and whether we were wrong or not. And you go much further than that in the book, but I want to start there because I love that history angle because I think we forget how many of the things that we're familiar with now used to be really, really scary. I wonder if you could go into some of those so we can understand it a little more. Well, it goes all the way back to the written word with Socrates, although there are some

[03:02] challenges. So why don't we start with the printing press? And when the printing press was introduced, a lot of the public dialogue was very similar to the dialogue we have around artificial intelligence. This will lead to the collapse of our trust in human cognition. It'll lead to widespread misinformation. It will lead to the collapse of the solidity of our [03:32] what people are going to do with this technology that could really erode things. And on one hand, here, many centuries later... [03:42] We are obviously deeply indebted to the printing press. We can't have science without printing press because you can't get to that spread of information. You can't have widespread literacy and education. You can't have the progress of knowledge, middle class institutions, universities, et cetera, all of which – well, universities existed before the printing press, but getting to the many universities of vigorous and strength required the printing press. [04:12] Now, that being said, the other thing to track with the printing press is there was nearly a center of religious war. So we as human beings, when we get these new technologies, the transition periods of what we get in can be very challenging. But to some degree, that's an opportunity, not just a notion of fear, because it's like the world is what we make it. So let's make this transition much better than the earlier transitions.

[04:42] One of the overriding points in your book is, [04:47] So these kinds of transitions, we have some amount of control over them, but we don't have total control. So, and, and we can get more into like all the nuances of what that means, but I'm curious about, um, do you think we can prevent, you know, like, let's say, uh, we went back to the printing press days. [05:17] or is that sort of inevitable? Well, I think it depends on where your society and culture is at the time. It's unclear that even if Martin Luther had said, let's do this gradually and have a set of discussions that the reigning... [05:38] Catholic Church would have [05:40] tolerated that and allowed it. I think he did. I think he was trying to go within the system for a long time before he did the door-pounding thing. Exactly. So it's unclear. But one of the things we hope in... [05:52] Having built great global institutions post-World War II, having learned from what they – [05:59] the mass amount of tragedy is when you get in that kind of amount of conflict. Yeah. [06:04] And by the way, of course, we have various technologies, not the least of which is printed books, to remind us of our histories and to learn it, that maybe we can do this one much better. Yeah.

[06:16] And that's part of the reason why, as you know from having read Super Agency, it's part of the reason for doing the book, for doing podcasts and other things to say, hey, if we actually steer the right way, we can minimize the transition difficulties. I don't think there'll be zero transition. I think that's pipe dream and no one should have that expectation. [06:46] than we have done in earlier transitions and get to the amazing benefits that is always the other side of these massive new technology leaps. [07:16] advancements. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that. [07:19] So, you know, part of kind of our fundamental concept of our place in the world and our [07:27] you know, dignity, our meaning, et cetera, comes down to a notion of agency. And it's both agency as individuals and agency as groups and agency as societies. And so most often, and, you know, back to like the earlier referred printing press, what people experience the new technology as is reducing the agency for, you know, kind of, you know,

[07:50] key people who are leaders in society, you know, heads of institution, participants in institutions, the institutions themselves, and... [08:00] And so they react because they go, oh, this is going to be a change in agency, therefore reduction, and therefore reduction. [08:07] bad, therefore destructive society. And the actual problem [08:11] path that happens is, yes, agency changes. So some things that you had agency in before, you no longer have agency in. But when you begin to look at agency, it's not just a set of external factors, it's internal factors, it's how do you approach it. And so for example, [08:28] Like, let's use a very modern example that people can think about. So... [08:32] Is it a loss of agency to being driven in Uber or a gain in agency to being driven in Uber? And obviously, if you're like, oh, my God, my hands aren't on the steering wheel. And who knows what this random human being is doing and da-da-da-da-da. Then you're like, oh, my God, it's enormous loss of agency. [08:50] And yet, of course, [08:51] You know, hundreds of millions of people are doing it because they realize it's a gain of agency. It's I can not have a car and get somewhere. I can have gone, ooh, I drunk too much. I'm going to get home this way much more safely, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's a question of how we approach it and how we experience and how we choose our own agency. That doesn't mean it's completely separate from external effects, but it's a combination of that internal and external where it's really appropriate.

[09:21] as we first encounter technology. Like I remember arguing at Davos with people about our smartphones, these kind of humanity reducing, you know, kind of like almost like cybernetic control of human beings. Never argue with people at Davos. That's mistake number one. [09:46] You're making me think about Princess Bride. Your first mistake. [09:51] And then, obviously, part of the reason why we have billions of people with them is because actually, in fact, it's a massive increase in agency. And matter of fact, it quickly gets to kind of the thesis of the book of super agency is what happens when – [10:07] millions of people [10:08] get all elevated in their agency with a new technology, and then all of a sudden... [10:13] We collectively get super agency, both as individuals and as societies. [10:18] Yeah, I think one of the core parts that I read in that that I want to pull out is you talk about agency, but then you talk about it as a sense, which I read as like an internal kind of like aesthetic experience of agency, which I think most people when they think about agency, like it's all external. [10:48] they reflect almost like a lack of faith in our ability to change and adapt and then also lack of understanding of like how that aesthetic sense arises and how you can bring it to any experience to some degree like the the history of literature is like about people in like pretty dire circumstances feeling like they have some agency which is not to say that external conditions don't matter but a lot of it is internally driven I'm curious like how you got there like what influenced

[11:18] this. [11:19] Well, some of it may be philosophical background and highlighting the aesthetic is also very interesting. I think maybe when I was writing, I was also thinking of like Dan Dennett's intentional stance. Like it's a stance that we have towards the world, like a mental stance, a worldview. And obviously there's an aesthetic stance too. So I think that's a great highlight. [11:43] I think part of it is that it's like using the Uber example and using the smartphone example. I think that there's many times where [11:54] When you're encountering an external circumstance, including, of course, technologies, if you approach it as this is taking my agency, then you are essentially throwing yourself under the wheels. Whereas you go, oh, here's how I can use this to transform my agency, to extend and enhance my agency in various ways. Then it becomes much better. So, for example, think about just driving down the highway. [12:24] I'm in this car, I have an ability to slow down, speed up, drive, etc. Well, there's a lot of other cars on the road too. If you say, oh my God, my agency is taken away because these other cars are slowing down or potential hazards, etc., etc., well, then you're never going to get on the road, right? Yeah, and I think that points to agency is to some degree, it's a way of looking at the world and where you put your attention.

[12:54] cards, of course, that that sense of agency is going to go down. If you push your attention somewhere else, that sense of agency is going to go up. And again, it's not it's not only your attention, like there are external things, but like, to some degree, there's there's some sense of control. And I'm curious, for you, how, how do you notice your personal sense of agency fluctuating day to day and in your life? Like, have there been period? Have you always felt this connection with a sense of agency? Have there been periods where you haven't? And like, how has that played out for you? [13:23] Great question. [13:25] You know, it's interesting because I think one of the things I picked up from fairly early in my childhood was – [13:31] realizing that kind of that old catechism that's pretty good, which is, you know, something like the strength to change the things I can, the tolerance to live with the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference. Yeah, it's like the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer thing. Yes, exactly. And I think it comes from a Christian Catholic catechism. [13:54] And I paraphrase that. Did you grow up Catholic? No, no, no, no. It wasn't so much that as much as I'd adopted that. I came to love that catechism later because I had early got to that sense of that's how you should navigate the world. Wow, how'd you do that? I think it just, maybe it's like, [14:13] playing a lot of board games. I mean, it's just kind of like, like it's kind of a sense of, Hey, I, [14:18] These things are under you can control and you can affect them and then you can affect that outcome and these things are not under your control and

[14:27] overly like [14:29] Tearing your hair out about the things that are out of your control is not helpful to you or to anyone else. So you go like the fact that there's suffering in the world. If you go, oh, my God, there's suffering in the world, then of course you're going to get crushed. There's going to be suffering in the world. You should, of course, always feel for people suffering. But the fact that there is like children dying around the world today, it's really, really sad. [14:59] of it today. It's an ongoing process. And so there's things out of your control and then there's things in your control. And of course, [15:06] That's where... [15:07] your ability to navigate it. And so it's kind of like whether it's... [15:14] Maybe it's kind of simple like who you're friends with when you're in school and you go, oh, do you have friends that you treasure and then that's really great and maybe there's other people that you wanted to be friends with weren't as interested in you. That's fine too. But kind of navigating that within the kind of child circumstances I think where I started and then – [15:36] From there, I think that became kind of how I approached each new challenge that I was getting. And part of how I think I got a sense of good strategy in life and strategy for me, strategy for what I did in school, strategy for what I did with companies, strategy for what I do with investing, all came from this kind of...

[16:01] Like figure out what the nature of the game is and what are the things that were within your ability to change and then accepting the things that you can't while – [16:14] uh, [16:14] like changing some really interesting thing. And so, and it sounds like, um, [16:19] that came from board games. What board games are we talking about? [16:22] Well, so a whole set. Some, and there's less board games, Dungeons and Dragons. I was doing that, which there seems to have been some resurgence on, which is cool. But also what probably most people don't track these days, these Avalon Hill board games I did a bunch of. And then a variety of others. And one of the things about it being multiple is that you're learning all of them. And actually one of the things that people frequently say, I did play chess and I did play Go. [16:52] attracted to those games because part of the thing with when you're playing like the Avalon Hill board games or also like Starfleet Battles was another one I did, by having some randomness with dice rolls, it actually more closely approximated the kinds of circumstances we encounter in life. Because life is not like chess. Life is not like go. It is not deterministic that [17:22] and epistemic uncertainty sometimes that you have to play into. And both Go and Chess have no epistemic uncertainty. [17:31] And adopting your strategies to those were really important. I think those are the initial mindsets. That makes sense. I think there's a meme in tech right now about being high agency, like high agency people, which I think is great. It's good to be high agency. But I think we tend to think of agency as always good. And generally, I think it's good to have agency.

[18:01] If you think of yourself as high agency and have a high internal locus of control for things that are totally out of your control, it's actually a pretty miserable way to live. And it definitely doesn't make you more effective. And so I think what you're saying is there's a certain range of things within which you want to be high agency and have an internal locus of control. [18:31] control and those are some of the most recognizing your lack of control. And those are some of the most meaningful experiences that people have like transcendent experiences. Um, curious what, what that sparks in you. [18:43] Well, I mean, I think the obvious ones are in friendship, romantic relationships, and other things is part of what you're doing is essentially giving yourself over to not being in complete control of how a relationship's... [19:01] playing. And those are obviously some of the places where as we learn and become, you know, kind of, [19:09] wiser, more compassionate, more evolved, more [19:13] people. That's actually, in fact, I think one of the really central things. It's also, by the way, sometimes people encounter that playing in team sports of various sorts. There's team sports themselves. There's also, of course, team sports within companies in terms of how a company's operating. The shared controls, the shared agency becomes, I think, a

[19:39] really key. And obviously, some people find that within a religious experience, too. How has that worked for you as an investor, obviously? Because you're investing in companies, you care about the outcome deeply, but also you don't want to be too in control in a lot of ways. There's a lot of trade-offs to control there. How has that worked for you? Well, I think one of the things that [20:00] So start with something kind of enormously simple, [20:05] pragmatic heuristic. One of the things, questions that I ask myself on an investment is, would I do this investment and walk away and say, call me in five years? Because, um, [20:18] Mm-hmm. [20:19] almost like call it 98% of good investments, you will accurately have that sense. Not to say you wouldn't try to help and work with them, because part of it is you think as an investor, I can spend... [20:33] Maybe if I'm [20:34] spending a lot of time on investment, I might be able to spend four hours a week on the investment. Because as an investor, I have a portfolio of investments, I've got other things I'm doing. [20:44] The person I'm investing in, she or he, is... [20:48] you know, the CEO, the founders, you know, how they may all play out, they're in this presumably 80-plus hours a week, maybe 100-plus hours a week. And so if they're not capable of carrying the game themselves – [21:05] it's almost for sure you've made a bad investment. Now, sometimes the exception is where you go, oh, what I really need to do is help them get this one deal or help them hire this one person or help them with this one strategy element, and then everything else will be fine. Then that's okay, and I will sometimes do that investment. But one of the mistakes that investors frequently make

[21:27] is they go, well, you know, they'll tell themselves that they're more important than they are in the kind of the judgment, and then they'll get too much involved in it, and they'll actually be messing it up. Yeah. Because – Iatrogenic investing. Yes. Because truly, if you think your four hours is more important than the person's 80 to 100 hours, like – [21:53] you probably invested in the wrong person. Yeah, yeah. Or you have a massive ego problem. Yes. Yes, or both. Probably. This episode is brought to you by Adio, the AI-native CRM built for the next era of companies. With Adio, setup takes minutes. [22:11] Connect your email and calendar and it instantly builds a CRM that mirrors your business, with every contact enriched and organized from the start. From there, Adio's AI goes to work. It gives you real-time intelligence during calls. [22:24] It prospects leads with research agents. And it automates your team's most complex workflows. Industry leaders like Union Square Ventures, Flatfile, and Modal are already building the future of customer relationships on Adio. Go to adio.com slash every and get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash every. [22:44] And now, back to the show. Yeah, so... [22:48] I think one of the things that came to me as... [22:54] like as part of this book is your is your tracking agency is this like psychological experience it and intentional stance and aesthetic stance and that one of the things that seems to affect

[23:06] our sense of agency is how we approach uncertainty. And the more we kind of grind against uncertainty to try to like, um, [23:15] eliminate it uh the the lower our agency is because you can't eliminate it um [23:20] and the more you like you work with uncertainty um and have that sort of stance of like surfing through it um the better things go and that's the appropriate stance for like dealing with new technologies and the thing that of course for me like the thing that i'm thinking about is well i think our default stance in the west to uncertainty is to try to eliminate it and you can like read that in the history of philosophy um which is like um you know uh socrates and plato to descartes [23:50] as episteme. And it's the same thing in science, right? Like you want to boil things down into fundamental laws so you can predict things in advance, laws that are explicit. Religion, I think, is also in a lot of ways about dealing with uncertainty by trying to eliminate it. Maybe the world of the senses is totally uncertain, but there is a world to come that is like totally certain and is definitely going to happen and will be amazing. And not to denigrate any of [24:20] useful in certain circumstances. But in particular, [24:25] When it comes to technology, that way of thinking about things can lead to trouble. I'm curious if you have the same reading or how you would respond to that.

[24:55] as human beings... [24:57] try to [24:59] Um... [25:00] to delude ourselves to over degrees of certainty. Like we don't, for example, realize that every time we drive somewhere on the highway, we are taking a certain amount of risk. We're taking a risk about our own competence. We're taking a risk on our vehicle. We're taking a risk on weather conditions. We're taking a risk on other folks. And of course, once again, just like agency, if you would dwell on all that, maybe you'd never get into a car, but then you would never go anywhere. Right? And never be able to benefit from significant portions of modern society. [25:30] is to think about... [25:33] How do we live in a heuristics of managing uncertainty and managing various forms of uncertainty? Like there's a form of uncertainty about, well, how does the world actually play out? There's uncertainty about our epistemology and how we know the world. And then there's uncertainty about how the system comes together. [25:52] you know, it's one of the things that's really central to entrepreneurship because any entrepreneur who persuades themselves that they're guaranteed success in what they're doing is massively diluting themselves. Right. Which maybe sometimes is necessary to work really hard in order to do something. But, you know, there's always like encountering and navigating a world of risk is actually, in fact, very important. And... [26:18] And so I think... [26:20] Now, I think part of – and actually, I think that it's a true line of where frequently philosophy – kind of like the Western philosophy, actually. We should probably isolate this too.

[26:33] frequently is overly trying to get to, like human nature is X. Like frequently they'll say, human nature is selfishness. And you're like, well... [26:42] There's a lot of different ways in which human beings are self-oriented, but there's a diversity of them. And sometimes you say, well, when this person's really committed to their family or really committed to their society, well, that's just the way they're expressing their selfishness. Well, but that's not exactly what you mean by the word selfish. So there's a whole bunch of different self-orientation on that that spread differently. [27:06] is actually really important. And the same thing is true for understanding uncertainty well, which, of course, is part of the reason why we're still struggling to resolve, you know, Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. And, you know, Einstein himself was... [27:22] Quantum mechanics can't be right because God does not play dice with the universe. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really another example of how aesthetic sensibilities guide what we see and guide our decision-making in supposedly really rational, truth-oriented endeavors. And that's why I think I'm sort of keying on this aesthetic sense because I think when we talk about dealing with uncertainty... [27:47] there's a way in which you can try to eliminate it, you can try to manage it, which is sort of still like... [27:54] We'd rather we weren't uncertain. And then there's a way of playing with uncertainty. And you use a phrase like bloomers, using that to flourish, which I think in a lot of ways, that is a way to look at life. And I think that perspective, going back to the aesthetic sense, is often embodied in entrepreneurs and artists who are often guided by an aesthetic sense.

[28:18] And I think those two outlooks where you're like, yeah, I want to face the blank page or I want to change how people see the world or how the world works, even though I know it's highly uncertain, seems to me somewhat core to working with technology well. I completely agree. And actually one of the things that's interesting about the – [28:41] the arc that you're highlighting in your, call it, philosophical aesthetic reading of Superagency, is the actual ties between my first book, The Startup Review, and this. Because The Startup Review, in part, was trying to give advice you give entrepreneurs, but to individuals for their lives. [29:01] Like multiple of the chapters are navigating environments of uncertainty because that's what entrepreneurs must do and must do it properly. [29:10] intelligently. And preserve their sense of agency while doing it. Yes, exactly. And so it's an interesting, I hadn't quite realized between book one and book six that there was kind of an arc from it. And I do think that part of the thing in surfing is a very good metaphor. [29:27] is to say, how do you embrace uncertainty in a way that you're taking agency and that you are leveraging it to having a better life, to working better, to making decisions better, to... [29:43] creating better, right? In terms of the, the, the artist side and, and well, many things, but artists especially. And, uh, and then leveraging that to a feature, not a bug. Yeah, totally. I think, um, the, the, the, the wave metaphor is, is really, is really interesting to me because you can like try to like stand in front of a wave and stop it. Um, or you can surf it and the surfing, like you're, you're working with a dynamic context.

[30:13] you're not totally in control, but like you are in control within that sphere, which is sort of what you're, what you're going for. Which, which I think gets to your point about the way our stance toward uncertainty is what, what guides whether or not we feel agency. And you have a couple of like specific ways of thinking about that, that I think are really interesting. So like [30:36] Um, one of the, um, one of the dichotomies you, you bring up is like some people try to make like a real, like a blueprint or like a, like a plan or like a specific theory about the future. Um, [30:48] And then, um, [30:50] but you use the metaphor of a compass, or you say, cognitive GPS, or another term, which I don't think is in the book, but I think is really related, it's wayfinding, so it's like, you have a sense of the direction you're going, but you're pretty open to the details, I'd love for you to talk about that. [31:09] Um... [31:10] Yeah. [31:11] Exactly right. And part of the thing, whether or not... [31:14] Almost everything, if you're making too concrete of a plan, and like your earlier, we were kind of talking a little bit about Sun Tzu and no battle plan, survives contact with the enemy, plans that are rigid break fast and uselessly. And so you can make... [31:32] flexible plans, but one of the most easy ways to make a flexible plan is to have, you know, kind of a compass and the compass might be like, for example, like, well, I need to hike from here to here and there might be multiple trails and sometimes one of them washed out and everything else. Well, that's,

[31:51] You can get from there to there with, and maybe there's no trails, if you have compass, map, information as a way of doing it. And you're adjusting your plan as you go and as you discover what the terrain and the conditions look like. And it's a good metaphor for also a wide variety of things because as you think about, for example, well, we're making decisions about what jobs we might take, what careers we might take, where we might go on a holiday, what we might be doing Friday night. [32:21] All of those are informational space questions. And again, a compass is a good way to do that. And so you think about what is an AI chatbot helping you with? It's almost like it's a compass helping you with these informational decisions, hence informational GPS. And it's resilient because if you suddenly discover... [32:42] something really changes. The world isn't as you expected. The world changed. You change. Like, you're like, well, I thought I was in the mood for watching a movie, but I'd actually really just like to have a quiet conversation with my friend. Well, oh, hey, there's a cafe down the street. Let's go. We discovered that from, you know, the compass. And part of [33:05] you know, what we're in writing the book, as you know, we described as the techno humanist compass. And the reason is, [33:12] too often when people think about technology, they think about the thing that is new and therefore not really fully adjusted into us. So they go, oh, AI, that's technology. Whereas...

[33:22] Our cars aren't technology, our phones aren't technology, our laptops aren't technology, our glasses aren't technology. Our books aren't technology. They're all technology. Yeah. [33:32] And what happens is we get familiar enough with them that we naturally include them in our existence, include them in our agency. They build up like a patina of culture. Exactly. In our psychology, yeah. And that's what we want to be doing with this in order to embrace it. And that's why giving metaphors and it being... [33:54] techno, but also humanist in the compass. [33:58] One of the things that the compass makes me think of is like a counter argument would be like, isn't that a little wishy washy? Like one of the big one of the other big memes or viewpoints in tech is like you got to be first principles thinking on some of this stuff. You got to go back to first principle. And so you're not going to like just change your mind based on like the latest, like where the wind is blowing. Right. So how do you how do you square those two? [34:22] well to some degree I think a techno humanist [34:26] Compass can be amongst a first principle, right? Because the question on principles are, what are the set of kind of [34:35] uh, navigational truths that you're using to, uh, [34:41] make decisions to incorporate information and change – [34:47] Belief states, action states, et cetera. And using a compass as a means of a metaphor versus, for example, a...

[34:58] Saying, well, we only can be in one route. I think the first principles thing is a very good thing that I myself and I think you as well... [35:07] embrace from a viewpoint of clarity of thinking about things. But like, like as a metaphor, um, when the earliest, uh, GPS navigation systems for cars played out, I had the entertaining observation between the German and the Japanese systems. I drove a German one, which when I left the path was like, return to the path, return to the path, return to the path. And the Japanese one was like, oh, you want to go a different way. Here's your new set of directions for, for what you're doing. [35:37] think the question is, is if you said first principle is only being Germanic, then you're going to have problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, it's so funny cause I was telling you before we started recording that I've, I was reading war and peace over, over Christmas. And, uh, that's literally exactly how Tolstoy talks about how German generals do strategy. So I'm glad it made it all the way into their GPS system. All the way into their modern GPS system. Although I think they've now since learned some from the Japanese ones and they're both like, Oh, when you didn't [36:07] We're not turning there. We're going to recalculate a new path. [36:10] I want to make this really concrete, though. Because let's say, so we can talk about Compos what we want. How do we fill that out for a person who's like, okay, maybe I work in tech. Maybe I'm an engineer. Maybe I'm a product manager. I'm a designer or whatever. And I'm seeing all these changes happening. How does this change how I think about and orient to AI and think about, okay, over the next couple of years, O3 is coming out soon. Sam Altman is saying, hey, we pretty much have got AGI. Google just released something today called Titans.

[36:40] That's really cool and seems like a really interesting step in that direction. So arm me with some more practical, concrete ways to instantiate this compass in how I approach my life. [36:52] So, you know, another concept in the book is iterative development, which is part of actually how we get broad-based networks of inclusion. [37:04] what we also refer to as consent of the governed by customers, by, you know, kind of, [37:10] by theorists and commentators, by government, et cetera, by press, the whole way of feeding back into the system. And it starts with individuals. [37:19] experimented with it. [37:21] Right? Like engaging. And I think one of the reasons why when you think that we're in the cognitive industrial revolution – [37:29] And you think, oh, there's a new set of tools by which, like, for example, I can't be a professional and say, I don't use computers, I don't use smartphones. Every professional job requires that kind of information connectivity, processing, analysis, consumption, generation, et cetera. AI is just the amplification of that. And so... [37:51] every single profession is going to require, how am I deploying AI? How am I engaging with multiple agents in order to do my work? And you say, well, how is that exactly? Do I read a book right now? It's like, no, no, no. The best way is just to start engaging with it in some seriousness. So it's fine, for example, to go to ChatGPD and say, give me a sonnet for my friend's birthday or my kid's birthday or whatever.

[38:19] That's great. What ingredients can I have that I can make into a meal for my lunch? Great. Do that. But also use it for things that you are seriously in earnest about. And you may find that some of them it's not ready yet. [38:33] But you'll find that some of them it is. I'll give a personal example. So when I first sat down with... [38:38] chat GBT, I asked it, how would Reid Hoffman make money investing in artificial intelligence? And he gave me the business school professor's analysis that was completely wrong for venture capital. It sounded smart. You identify large total addressable markets, you understand which products and services would actually- What a relief. [39:08] this relative to these things. But on the other hand, if I then said, oh, it's useless for investing, then I wouldn't have noted the things that it's good for. For example, [39:17] Same session, I sat down and I put in a business plan and I said, how should I do diligence on this business plan? [39:25] And, you know, the list of things that came back with were not necessarily, none of them were a surprise. [39:32] But items like four and seven, I would have gone, oh yeah, I would have thought of that in a few days. And it's useful to have it now. [39:39] For figuring out what to do. And so engaging with it is really important because we will see a lot of jobs transform. And the way they'll transform some jobs –

[39:51] customer service, other places where you're essentially trying to get human beings to act like robots, there'll be much higher replacement coefficients. But a lot of jobs... [40:00] Like the human will be replaced by a human with the AI. And we want as many of the humans to be the humans with AI. So be learning it and adjusting with it. What is, so then like, let's, let's go deeper into that. So what is an agency preserving way to approach the question, which is what happens if my job goes away because of AI? Yeah. [40:24] So... [40:25] First is I don't think... [40:27] that, well, I'll do the job goes away too, but I think a lot of jobs won't go away. I think they'll transform. And so the question is, are you adapting and transforming with them, you know, at sufficient speed and in advance, which is one of the reasons to start playing with AI now. And AI, by the way, can help you with that, right? Because AI could go, oh, well, here is the new way that we can be accelerating how we understand what a good [40:57] it, how we do, think about what that goes. And AI already today can help with a bunch of different marketing tasks. And it doesn't mean it will do it decisively and say, oh, we just plug it into the machine and we press play and look, that's our marketing. Like I've used GBD4 and GBD01 for this and it's really helpful, but it's a co-pilot for these things. So now

[41:24] In a replacement circumstance, like say, for example, customer service. So you get companies like Sierra and others who are kind of designing a, how do you have the AI agent be the first client? [41:37] customer service agent, and that may reduce a lot of different customer service jobs. And you say, oh, my customer service job went away. Well, [41:45] AI can still be helpful to go, okay, here's what my skill set is. Here's what I think I'm capable of learning. What job should I now go look for if there's now far fewer customer service jobs? And you might go, well, there's these things in account management. There's these things in sales. There's these things in support desk. There's these things in, and that kind of thing may actually, in fact, go, okay, and then how do I learn those jobs? How do I get those jobs? [42:15] those jobs, AI can actually help with all of that. And that gets to another point that you make in the book, which is that one of the really important agency-preserving approaches to new technology is the idea of equitable access. Can you talk about that? So... [42:32] One of the things that's really key, I think, for kind of answering this question about, look, how do we bring as many people along in society? How do we make sure it's not just beneficial for rich individuals, rich companies, but as broadly as possible is to have it in as many people's hands as possible. [42:54] Not only does it obviously create a better...

[42:58] a chance of fair and just participation in the new jobs, the new career paths, et cetera. But it also makes society a whole lot better because when you get talent from as broad range as possible being unlocked to do work, to be creative, to create maximum benefit – [43:18] All of the rest of us in society benefit from that too. [43:23] And so equitable access is not just a question of kind of like, oh, is it fair for everybody? Which it is. It's important to have. But also that it's also better for all of us. Yeah. Another extension of that that you talk about that I feel really – [43:39] tied to or connected to is this idea of, um, uh, like generally I'd say the book is like anti-regulation in general. Um, competition will regulate itself, that, that kind of stuff. Um, but one of the places where, um, you seem a little bit more open to the idea of regulation in some form is, um, uh, the idea of, um, private commons, the way that we treat our data in a world with AI, um, [44:04] maybe should shift in certain ways. Um, so like the, the personal data that I've accumulated, let's say in Facebook and Google and all that kind of stuff, um, becomes tremendously more valuable to me as an individual. Um, when, uh, I have, I have GPT four to go through it and be like, here are some patterns I found. And that changes how we might want to think about the private commons. And then therefore the, like the regulate regulatory landscape or whatever, like for example, maybe everyone should be able to download their data, you know, like stuff,

[44:34] Talk more about that. So first, just a general thing is I tend to be – [44:40] call it more regulatory cautious than regulatory-- - Anti-regulation. - Anti-regulation, right? Because it is generally true that when you get into, "Oh, well, I should act as a regulator," [44:53] you then, I got over a degree of certainty that I can issue a, you shall do this and not this, and actually enshrine the past against the future. And there's all kinds of benefits to getting to the future. And that's why regulatory caution. So I tend to say, look, when you start having the impulse that maybe there should be regulation, you should start with, well, how do we measure the questions that we're worried about as harms? Because if we can get those measurements, then we can track it and see, do we really have those harms? Are they really increasing? And then maybe... [45:23] What kinds of innovations might bring down those harms relative to our benefits and then allow that dynamic progression of innovation and invention and risk-taking, all of which is very important? And a lot of regulars go, well, if I allow you to take risk and something bad happens, then it's on me. And it's like, well, but – [45:42] Like life is risk. And by the way, by taking some risk, we can figure out things like cures for diseases. And we need to be figuring out the cures for diseases. So... [45:53] So anyway, that's first general stance on regulation. Next is private commons, which is part of what we're actually seeing in these buildup of these big tech companies, counter a bunch of surveillance, capitalism, and other kinds of critiques, is actually these— I like that you included that in the book, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

[46:12] Exactly. Because it's like, look, it's again, it's almost like framing. Like if you frame it as the agency is, oh, it's surveilling capitalism versus it's no, no, actually it's building up a private commons that I benefit from and enables me, right? Because you go, well, like Google Maps allows other people to figure out where your house is. [46:30] And by the way, Google Maps allows my friends to figure out where my house is and come visit. Yes. Right. So that kind of framing, I think, is very important. And then these data commons then are kind of a micro instance of how super agency is created, not only because... [46:47] I have a private commons, you have a private commons, your private data sources. But then as it learns from these together, you get automatic tagging on your pictures. And you can go, oh, this picture I took of Dan, I can share it with him, et cetera, et cetera. And all this stuff adds in a lot of important human connectivity framework, richness to our lives, ability to make decisions or find things in good ways. [47:17] so you go well look [47:19] In general, most of the incentives for these corporations is very pro-social, pro-being good for society because it's like, oh, I'm building all these companies. [47:30] features that engage you, cause you to take pictures, cause you to store them, et cetera. And it's like, great. [47:37] But on the other hand, some of my incentives are on you do them only with me and you don't do them with anyone else. It's like, well, actually, maybe occasionally in a very specific way, we intervene and say, no, no, no.

[47:47] part of [47:49] My rights with my data is when you are... [47:53] I'm storing a whole bunch of my data. I have the right to move that as I like, and you must facilitate that. Yeah, totally. I'm about to go off-roading because you're making me think of something, which is a more specific example that I think you might be interested in about how this – [48:11] might play out and I'm curious, I'm curious if your take on. So, um, I don't know if we've talked about this before, but I have OCD. [48:17] Um, and their treatments for OCD, like you can, you basically like manage it. Like it's, it's fine. Um, but like, it's still not great. You don't cure it. Right. And, um, one of the things I've been doing recently is I just, I've used windsurf. [48:31] hmm windsurf is like a cursor competitor and it just has like an agent thing and you can just be like build this build this thing and it'll build it it's the coolest thing ever um and so it just makes weekends a lot like really fun because i'm just like oh i have it i have an idea so i i had this thing that i've been doing where i just i built a little app in windsurf and um every day i take a y box test which is the ocd assessment um and then i upload a screenshot of my whoop data and then i also take a little video of myself and i just do like a daily log where i don't talk about [49:01] like how I'm feeling. I just like talk about my day and I upload it. And there's an, there are some APIs where it embeds my face and my vocal tone. And what I'm trying to do is see if I can predict my, [49:14] OCD symptoms from my facial vocal and whoop data. Um,

[49:20] And that's something that-- like Whoop, for example. They have an API, but it doesn't really give you my full-- [49:28] all my data and I need that in order to like make this work. Um, and, and this is the kind of thing where, uh, there's a whole, there's like thousands of types of diseases or conditions or whatever, where, um, if you enable people to do this, we would make so much more progress on like solving them. Like, I don't know what I'm going to find when I, when I figured this out. And, and I think what I'm, what I'm likely to find, which gets into my whole like soapbox about science, uh, which, [49:58] that there's not one variable where it's like this makes your ocd worse it's like actually there's like thousands of different things that like interact together and different combinations that like i should pay i should probably pay attention to but they're all like weekly interacting and yeah i think that that kind of thing is like it's so important to the future and it makes me feel like um there was this whole like quantified self movement and and silicon valley for a long time and it's like i feel like quantified self is like it's [50:22] it's gonna happen finally. It's like a thing now. What do you think? [50:28] So I do think that it's precisely this kind of [50:32] data that if you have the ability to have [50:35] kind of [50:36] to shift it around as you need and want as an individual can create great things. So I think, you know, Whoop is one version of Quantified Self. Glucose monitoring is another one. The, you know, things that you do with the various watches is more. And I think that we are going to have all that. And actually, by the way, having that...

[50:57] stream of data that you can then index to other data that you might have, for example, [51:03] What did you eat for lunch? Are you traveling? Where did you go? How did you... Like, did you... [51:12] Planes trains automobiles, etc. And [51:16] And I think... [51:17] being able to query that together really, really matters. And so I think it's a... [51:23] A, we are moving... [51:26] - - [51:27] I think we're at this point decisively moving more and more towards quantified self. [51:33] But... [51:35] Part of it is that enabling of what I can do with it and therefore how it can really benefit me. And by the way, like for example, when you get to it, like one of the things that – [51:47] One of my doctors noted is that... [51:51] he can, if he has access to the Whoop data and sees what's happening, he can look at someone's [51:58] Um... [52:00] you know, whoop performance of the last, I forget how many days, some number of days, he can tell whether or not you're about to get COVID. [52:08] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so that's the kind of thing that's really useful. Yeah, it's so important. And there's probably, you know, maybe there's one thing that he's looking at, but it's probably like he just sort of squints at it and gets like an intuitive sense of what it is, which is a thing that AI is like really quite good at.

[52:38] here's what I did today and here's my YBox score or whatever. I think that that problem is incredibly similar to predicting the next token in language. And we're just getting to the place where we're starting to apply that in other places. So I think that there's this really interesting... [52:55] um, shift that, that happened in AI that I think you can sort of start to see it in first in philosophy where, um, we're going from, uh, like a search for like universal truths and universal definitions in philosophy, starting with like Kant really, um, you're starting to say like, okay, there's a limit to like our, our ability to like grasp things intellectually. And then there are all these like different flowerings of that. So like there's, you know, the transcendentalist [53:25] the later Wittgenstein, like there's, there's the whole continental philosophy and like, you know, postmodernism or whatever, uh, which regardless of what you think of that, it is sort of, is all in that, all in that vein. Um, and I think you can see this, that same shift in the history of AI where, um, we started in a very like, um, [53:44] Socratic platonic aligned mode in symbolic AI, where we're trying to define the underlying theory of intelligence and defining it as a set of symbols and their relations. And each symbol has some sort of semantic meaning. And what we found is like, that doesn't really work. Like, it's very brittle. Like it works in certain well-defined circumstances, but it's really brittle and it suffers from... [54:07] a computational explosion. Like, you have to have a frame of reference to start with before you can, like, start manipulating symbols. Otherwise, it's too expensive. And then we shifted to, like, sub-symbolic AI, um...

[54:20] and where we're just basically fuzzy matching patterns and bringing to bear many, many thousands of different rules, based on the context, partially fitting them based on the context. And I think that it's possible that that shift will also occur [54:39] in other areas of the world where we're sort of doing the equivalent of like symbolic AI because there's nothing better. And now we can use data and AI and that kind of stuff to like to, yeah, to make progress. Well, I think, you know, and we may have talked about in the previous podcast that my undergraduate major was symbolic systems. Yes, I do know that. Yes. And part of when I was doing that, because the theory was we are symbol processors, that we reason and think in symbols. [55:09] consume it through languages and books, et cetera, all of which is very interesting, and a bunch of different parallels between different symbolic systems. [55:19] But I was also, you know, kind of within that very early movement, which was called connectionism, which was kind of this notion of, well, symbols are important, but... [55:30] If you only had a symbolic theory, you're probably going to radically underperform your modeling of what our intelligence is, your ability to construct tools or intelligences, etc. [55:41] And so that sub-symbolic AI and like, for example, what are the things that lead... [55:49] to us becoming, like getting a mastery of concepts or...

[55:55] since we mentioned Wittgenstein, following a rule in language, is, I think, really key. Now, I think part of, if I project out the future for the next 10 years... [56:07] I think a major part of this is going to be this kind of like, [56:12] play between... [56:13] probabilistic models and symbols. And with the current LLM transformers, we have one. But I think we're gonna have more [56:23] Kind of... [56:24] as it were, technologies, [56:28] mathematical description skill sets about how... [56:33] probabilistic modes and symbols can come together. And I think that's among the things when you say, what is currently not visible within the next generation of AI is, [56:44] I think there's going to be some stuff in there. Can you give me an example of what that might look like? Well, a simple one that's out of... [56:51] The past, and I'm not saying this is the right one, but it's like using symbols but with Bayesian probabilities kind of applied. So you say, oh, well, I have the belief that we are – [57:05] uh, [57:07] that, that, that we're having philosophical insight, you know, in this podcast, but it's [57:12] Probably 90% versus probably 100%. Right? You know, like that kind of thing. Only 90% of them. Well, I'm just giving some range for humility and all the rest. And so, but you might also say like I have the belief that the weather tomorrow will be good for taking a hike. And I believe it at 80%. Yeah.

[57:36] Is the O1 paradigm a example of this, like training it on like math, like any kind of problem where it's based on discrete steps that can be verified? [57:48] I don't think it's unusually that from a lot of the Transformers, but I do think the question is... [57:56] You do these chains of thought, you have a fitness function on the chain of thought, and you're making a prediction not just on the next token, but is this chain of thought out of multiple chains of thought, which of these ones are the right ones? [58:09] And that fitness function itself might have that probabilistic characteristic. Yeah. Because I don't want to... I like to cast dispersions on symbols. With symbols, I might add. With symbols. I love symbols. To cast those dispersions. But that's mostly because it's like... It's sort of obviously like a little bit rhetorical because I think we're so symbol heavy in how we think about things. And I guess my... [58:38] at least my model right now and that's open to revision is like symbols are important but they are important when they arise out of a sub-symbolic architecture um and so uh all that means is that when you're when you're doing something like for example um [58:56] Trying to pick apart your thought process. [58:59] There's a limit to that, like picking apart where you're getting down to the symbolic level for yourself. But underneath that are like there's thousands and thousands of sub-symbolic things that you're not going to be aware of. And realizing how the symbolic level arises out of the sub-symbolic level is like a really important point.

[59:17] way to approach the world, especially if you're someone who has a tendency to philosophize, because you're like, it's the sort of Wittgensteinian like therapeutic approach to philosophy, which is like, you need to find a philosophical stance that allows you to give up philosophizing. [59:32] Yes, although I think even maybe he realized that it wasn't. [59:35] That it was never ended and you gave out because, you know, obviously early Wittgenstein's, I solved it, I'm done. I'm going to go teach. Oh, wait a minute. Talk about ego. I got to go back and redo this. Talk about agency. Yes, exactly. Which is the reason why he, you know. [59:49] died as a philosophy professor. Yeah. Every time I thought I was out, they pull me back in as Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is Godfather. Yeah. Let's see what else I have to talk about with you. We've gone a little bit into science versus engineering, which I do think like, [1:00:10] When we talk about dynamic tensions, you can probably think of everything post-Newton as like the era of science. [1:00:20] I think there's a way of looking at the era of AI that is starting to work as like turning science problems into engineering problems and that it may usher in more of an era of engineering or like lean us more in that direction. [1:00:36] in that direction, which has a bunch of other like, um, Jackson Pollock, like you, you can like twist the knobs on other dynamic tensions in this sort of engineering direction, which is like, we're a little bit more pragmatic. Um, we're a little bit less concerned with, um, uh, uh, maybe with like fully explicit causal explanations for things and maybe, uh, more okay with, um, uh, lots and lots of little correlations, um, stuff like that. By the way, I obviously love the Jackson

[1:01:06] I would also add, since you've done that one already, another metaphor, which is thinking about or framework, thinking about like we're actually moving less from thinking about these thoughts as deduction and more as induction and abduction. Yeah. What is abduction? I never remember. Oh, it's best theory. Okay. It's kind of theory that models the evidence. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. [1:01:36] data itself. Yeah, a little bit like if you contrast induction and abduction. Induction is I look at all the data points and I model the curve. And abduction is based on some [1:01:49] or other information about the world or priors, I go, here's a model which might actually be different than what you come up with an induction. And it's one of the reasons why I actually think both – [1:02:01] frankly all three but part of when we're good thinking beings we apply all of them yeah that's that is that is the thing that i love about um ai is like you don't have to decide which way to approach problems it just like figures out it has many different approaches and it just figures out the one that's that's best um or uses many different ones at the same time which i i think is sort of like the failure point of like a lot of philosophizing so like coming up with um uh a like [1:02:31] and, and when we do think that we found it, um, you, you end up with all these like weird things. So like, um, uh, uh, effective altruism is like great idea, but then you like take it too far and then you like become SPF. Like it's, um,

[1:02:46] and so, but, but then it feels really wishy-washy to be like, well, I applied the moral rule that like made the most sense in this circumstance, but that's how language models work, um, uh, for, for languages or solving problems. And I, and I think, um, [1:03:01] Having some sort of diverse, partially explicit, but also mostly implicit set of moral theories or whatever you want to call it is probably for the best. [1:03:31] uncertainty? Yeah. Look, I think it's critical that we're deriving theories of the world from [1:03:38] There's a morality theories ourselves, there is of what the, what we should be doing with our lives and work. [1:03:44] But it's also critical to think of those theories as dynamic and being updated. And part of the updating is not just kind of, oh, look, I got some new data. That's important too. But also the way we think about it, the way we learn from each other. And all of that leads to kind of... [1:04:02] a [1:04:03] you know, best judgment kind of circumstance. And by the way, [1:04:07] That's how science progresses too. Yeah. So people are, you know, they've listened to this discussion. [1:04:15] They're familiar with some of the ideas of the book. And they're probably thinking about like, should I go, should I go get it? And I'm curious, like, yeah, are there any other like takeaways that you think are really important for people to know about what your stance is on these topics?

[1:04:32] Well, so in a sense, I wrote the book for two audiences. One audience is anyone who has any AI curiosity or skepticism, because the thought is, here's a set of lenses to think about the reason why this is very... [1:04:52] humanism and humanity positive and why it is important to have a [1:04:57] a kind of a theory of agency that is, this is what we can accomplish, this is what would be really good, and how to work towards it. And so whether you're a skeptic or whether you're curious, all of that, I think, plays into it. Now, I also wrote it for technologists because I wanted technologists who were inventing this to be thinking about human agency as almost like a design principle. [1:05:27] of what we're trying to do, that [1:05:30] May... [1:05:32] make certain design decisions, deployment decisions, much more effective and much more humanist. How does that work? Because I think a lot of the framing that we've approached agency with so far is a much more like we've talked about it as like an internal aesthetic sense rather than something that you can build into a product. So how would that change a technologist's fitness function for what they're building? Well, that was a little bit of the reason why [1:06:02] employment as an example, because...

[1:06:05] You know, GBD 3.5 had existed for like a year before ChatGBT. And yet, you launch your app at GBD, and all of a sudden, people could access it. They could do stuff with it. They could make it happen. And... [1:06:17] So it's making that kind of affordances. [1:06:22] available to people so they can engage with it and that they're interested in engaging with it and that they're easy to do an iterative pattern of engaging with. [1:06:31] is one of the things that comes out of that. I also think that if I were to... [1:06:38] you know, be able to say, hey, everyone, make sure you're doing this as well as this, is obviously when we build a lot of technology, [1:06:46] we tend to think about the easiest simple path is a form of human replacement. So you go, okay, we don't need customer service agents. We'll just do this. What I think it's also super important is to think about like that co-pilot, that human amplification and making it more as per the book impromptu amplification intelligence. I think that that [1:07:08] Um... [1:07:10] that's also something to be thinking about with a kind of a super agency design lens. Yeah. One of the things that I think about as a lens for trying to figure out places to build AI that increases agency is that it reduces the cost of certain intelligence services that people pay for right now that use humans.

[1:07:40] Thank you. [1:07:40] So, like, a really simple example is I run a media company. I don't write all of the, like, YouTube headlines and all of the, like... [1:07:50] uh, descriptions and all that kind of stuff. Like I have a ghostwriter that I work with who's super talented. Um, but if you're just starting out, like you can't afford that. Um, and, but you can use chat, you can't your cloud or we have an internal incubation we did called spiral that does this. And so it lowers the cost for people to like have a lot of the leverage that I get because I have more money in the whole organization. There are lots and lots of areas like that, that are go beyond creator stuff that I think are, are really important and will be really [1:08:20] I think with AI and its amplification intelligence is I think it raises the bar, like raises the capability of the folks who have less. Like I don't have access to a lead school. I can still learn. I don't have access to a ghostwriter. I can still write some marketing copy. But by the way, it also raises the, well, you have a ghostwriter is really good. That ghostwriter learns to use ChatGPT and then also can do that in a much stronger and better way. And I think that's good. [1:08:50] across the board is actually a good thing. Yeah, totally. [1:08:54] Let me think about if there's anything else for us to discuss. Yeah. [1:08:59] Well, I'm sure there will be. I'm sure there will be. [1:09:04] This is great. Thank you so much for doing this. I had a great time. I can't wait for the book to come out and I can't wait for another one. I would love to have you on again. Delight. I look forward to our next conversation.

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