Transcript

Reid Hoffman confronts the AI critics, w/WaitWhat CEO Jeff Berman

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I was talking to Jeff Bezos and he was like we could give people the ability to do the audio book in their own voice with AI. And we could also give them the ability to choose other voices. If I wanted to have you know, read as a British accent, and eventually here's him speaking perfect Chinese, which of course I can do zero of. Next year I suspect it'll just be Which version of the read voice you want? Do you want the Masters of Scale read voice? Do you want the Fireside Chat read voice?

Do you want the Ree Hoffman doing his Humphrey Bogart interpretation? I mean whatever the thing is, we'll have all of that as part of it. And that's again human amplification. Hi listeners. It's Jeff Berman, CEO of Wait What? The company that brings you masters of scale. As a longtime friend of Reed Hoffman's, I wanted to capture the sort of conversation we would have off mic.

a conversation about the growing impact of AI and what leaders and aspiring leaders can do not just to survive. But to thrive in this new era of artificial intelligence. It's been more than six months since Reed released his book Impromptu, written in collaboration with Chat GPT. In this discussion, we explore how the landscape of AI has evolved. And we take a peek at where it's going.

In this special episode, you'll hear how early stage business leaders should tap their networks to take advantage of AI. And how leaders of big organizations should create long term strategic plans they can adapt at the drop of a hat. Reed, you and I sat together almost exactly fifty-one weeks ago, and you told me that it was time to buckle up because what was coming in AI was going to blow my mind and was going to be a wild ride. So I'm curious on your perspective about what's happened in the past year.

What's different from what you expected? What surprised you and and where you think we are? Well So I had been Distracted. By

The general Discourse around superintelligence to think of the superintelligence as something that's happening in the future. And here's what I realized: we already have superintelligence. GPD four is super intelligent. That doesn't mean, for example, if you say Okay, GBD for tell Reed Hoffman how to better invest.

An artificial intelligence or craft. Good artificial intelligence. that'll say anything that the experts don't already know. Because it's not super intelligent in that way. But the way it is super intelligence is by its breadth.

So for example, if you said Hey I've been thinking about neuroscience. Can you give me the parallels between modern neuroscience And Game theory.

It'll do that. And maybe there's a few human beings who can do that. But then you say, Well, okay, also give me the parallels between modern neuroscience. And contemporary Oceanography. And the study of that.

And it can give you that too. And it's the same thing. And it's that use of it for breadth. Which Also is something that you know

We're just not capable of humans,'cause it's ingested it's you know over a trillion words as a way of doing that. But because of that, it is already super intelligence. It is that breath of superintelligence that has radically shifts my search behavior. I I would say I'm I'm going to GPT. At least half as often as I'm going to Google.

Is that happening for you too? Do you see that happening more broadly? Is this gonna completely disrupt the search industry? Well, I think it definitely transforms the search industry. And I think that once people start using it, they use search overall less. And part of the reason for that's very straightforward, which is sometimes you're looking for An answer, not ten blue links. Of course, that's part of the reason why

The Microsoft Concept was that in the you know, Bing chat to Bing is a way of doing it. And I think that is Fundamental. It's not just a

replacement for things that search did badly, but it's also I use it differently. So for example, part of what I will use The AI assistance for is I go, Well, I'm thinking about making an argument, for example. human beings will always be able to adapt. their ability to be creative with their tools. Here's my argument. And then I can go to the AI and can say, make the better argument, and then I can say, make the counter argument.

And I can look at that too. And then I can begin to go to okay, what do I think is the right way to make this our argument balance against the concerns and criticisms and All of that is done. kind of immediately. Now there's one other use case that I think is probably worth highlighting. Because

I think one of the things that people are not tracking is that by use of AI we can actually make our interactions with each other even more human. And here is a simple way of putting it. Which is You know

Many of us get very busy. Get a whole bunch of email communications and don't have the time to really respond. In the way that we would like to respond. Well, actually, in fact, AI today can say, Oh, I get this. Detailed

email and say it's like, for example, a work context. It's like wow. I'd like to initiate the following kind of change in our process. You know, your real thing is hey, that's complicated. Let's have a meeting about it. You could just say, Okay, let's have a meeting. It's like uh that's not as appreciative of the all the work that someone's put into it. You go to GPD four and it says, oh. I can see why you think that's a very interesting idea. And there's a bunch of different compelling things to it. I particularly like this, this, and this. On the other hand,

It does have some complexities and we'll probably be better off if we first get together as a group and talk about it. So why don't we do that? And I really do appreciate your bringing this up. And that's a much more human way to respond to it. but it takes all the time to do it. But you're kind of agent of preference. can help you craft that.

And actually in fact that allows you to raise your game. You might change a sentence or two. You realize that would be the better way to respond. And You know, part of how we learn as human beings is we learn from each other. So someone responds compassionately to you, you learn something in that compassion. You learn about them, you learn about the reaction. It brings out the generally speaking, it brings out the better parts of yourself.

And that's a the reorientation of perspective that You know. I think we will all come to. And the quicker we come to it.

The stronger And better will be. Reed, about six months ago you published Impromptu, on which you had an unusual co author. Because you corroded with chat GPT.

As you look back, given the evolution that we've seen in the space and the technology, how would Impromptu be different if you were writing it together today? That's interesting. In getting impromptu out. I wanted to not just tell the story of human amplification, but I wanted to show it. Now, if I were writing a sequel to it. then I would probably go

A different set of chapters. Like I would say We have a line of sight to A medical assistant. That can Help everyone who has access to a smartphone.

Navigate. medical considerations, including, by the way, directing you to your GP if you have one. But there's, you know, five billion smartphones in the world and you know, less than a billion people have access to a doctor. So like helping all the people who don't have access to a doctor. is far better to do. And even the people who have access to a doctor You can do well, you're talking to your agent and your agent says

Hey, here are three things you might want to go talk to your doctor about. And you show up and say, Here's the the dialogue I already had, and here's the three things. Sometimes, by the way, doctors make mistakes and Actually working together get you there faster and better and everything else. And I would include that. As a Chapter. If you're a parent and and you've got a kid with a rash on their arm and you you can't reach your doctor in that moment.

Are we at a point where that parent can take an a picture of that rash and ask an AI to diagnose and to recommend a course of action where you trust the answer to that. We certainly are In Capability.

because of medical regulation All the providers of the AI Essentially are tuning down the ability to do that. Which is kind of paradoxical,'cause you'd say, Well, this could be really helpful.

But because of of legal liability and everything else, we're saying you can't do that. And that's absurdly stupid and causing a lot of human pain. And what you should do is say Hey, I'm not a GP. You should consult a GP.

But if you can't, here's the thought and here's something you go talk to your GP about. And you know It's on you to make that decision. I'm not the legal liability GP of that. And as long as we said that's fine. Then we should enable it. And for example, a researcher at Microsoft again Peter Lee has written an excellent book.

About showing how GBD four can already do medical diagnoses. Better than You know. The majority

Of human GPs. And then people go, well, is it gonna replace doctors? And the answer is hopefully not. Because while that can be helpful, the doctor can look at it and say, Well, you know, in this case While it says that's the top thing, it may not actually be getting this, and maybe we should look at the second thing. So all of that is there. And the craziness is.

Because many critics of AI believe they're being virtuous and helpful to humanity by kind of articulating their criticism as highly vocally as possible, including a lot of journalists and everything else. And then they feel virtuous'cause it's like, I'm pointing out this thing that could be Danger. Yeah, but That's all you're doing, and because you're not pointing out the raison d'être.

to make this work. You're causing Thousands to millions of human beings to suffer. by not having access to this medical agent and deferring that. Because you're saying the criticism is the most important thing to understand about this. And so while you think you are helping humanity, you're actually hurting humanity. And it doesn't mean don't be critical. You know, oh, you're saying never say criticism. Of course not.

You know, navigate intelligently, but realize There is this amazing set of outcomes that are super important. to billions of people. That Our real question should be is how do we get there as vigorously as soon as possible?

So the other side of the medical specific example is privacy. How would you advise individual users or business leaders who are uploading sensitive data to AIs to think about the privacy of their data? Well A lot of work has been done on this and will continue to be. We're in early days of fast iteration.

And generally speaking, I tend to think that people overblow the risks. on this stuff. And so you go, Well I No, my kid has a rash. I'm trying to solve the the rash. It's like well actually in fact it's much better to solve the rash than it is

To go, well, I don't know exactly what happened with the the picture of my kids' rash, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, I'm kind of trusting that this fast moving early stage company is gonna be you know, intelligent and judicious about it and you know, there may be an error there. But it's overall much better. And now that being said.

as we iterate part of what's gonna happen. is we're gonna get much, much better on this. One of the things that has been kind of concerning to me is if you said look if we put all of the Medical data. into a database and then said now let's try to figure out what are mitigating forces against cancer. We could do that.

If we didn't have the intense individual privacy thing. Relative to Every individual user and the benefit to all of us would be very large. But people obviously first worry about the negative downsides of their own data and say, No, no, that that I

I don't want to participate in that. Well, one of the things that's gonna come from AI is how do you look at a big pile of data and then generate a fictional piece of data that has the same characteristics. So you say, Well We should allow this AI to look through.

All of the medical records. And then it will construct a bunch of data that will never come back to anybody else, right? That then can be used for all that medical research. Ultimately, we're gonna figure out how to do this in a way that we're gonna get. A lot of benefit, I think. The optimistic step forward is the Most important thing.

to be thinking about even as you navigate You know, potential potholes and so forth. After a short break, we'll hear why Reed chose not to join his peers in signing an open letter on the existential risk of AI. Plus, Reed shares how his collaboration with Microsoft will amplify his ability to record his voice in ways we've never thought possible. We'll be right back.

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Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't how do we build a future. That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi.

And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey there, it's Jill Slessenger. I'm launching a new show. It's called Money Moves, and your money is going to move. We're gonna help you make better financial decisions. We're gonna call out the BS you're finding all over social media. We're gonna give you actionable guidance to make your financial life clearer, less stressful.

We're gonna answer your financial questions and take the mystery out of your financial life. Follow and listen to Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger wherever you get your podcast. Before the break, we heard Reed Hoffman explore how individual users should consider data privacy while experimenting with AI. Now Рідніс хав на часто бізнес лідер.

But leaders of all organizations who aren't tech savvy can still take advantage of AI's capabilities. Let's jump back in. I'm confident that most tech companies are already well ahead and experimenting with AI, trying to figure out how to work with it. If you're working in or running a non tech company

And you just don't have the expertise, you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the staff that that's already there, other than maybe playing with it here and there. What's your advice to business leaders in those kinds of companies for how to get started? What I would say is Figure out. Within your network, which includes within your company.

Figure out who you have who's good at kind of being Experimental. And then say, Hey, can you help me with this? And you might say that you're not going to be able Look, what I'd like you to do is figure out a kind of a micro project about how we could be using this.

Effectively for ourselves, and then come back and demonstrate it to all of us. Right. you may discover that hey, the AI tool today in twenty twenty three is not really fully ready for the thing that I would most want it to be doing. But I've now got a sense of it. And then as that AI tools evolve in twenty twenty four.

And I'm paying some attention to the evolution, I might suddenly realize, oh It wasn't this thing that I was looking for, but this other thing that could be really helpful to us. And then let's start engaging on that and let's engage in it on an ongoing basis. Roughly a decade ago, I worked at a big company that engaged in a five year they called it the Slurp.

the strategic long range planning process. And when you're running digital at a big company and they're asking to look out five years and model your business, it's really tough. But but a lot of big businesses do work this way and they can predictably work this way. Given the changes in AI, if you were advising a a big company business leader How would you be suggesting they revise their long range planning process given the pace of change on AI? Well, I think try to get a sense of what do you think the parameters of change will be potentially for you in your industry. Probably presume it's more than you're presumptive. And then realize that you're gonna have to replan pretty constantly and quickly.

You know. We have to plan with some ability to replan and flexibility. We have to pay the price for Maintaining some optionality and flexibility. You know, that's the kind of thing

to go more into because The thing that is guaranteed. Is that next year these tools are going to be even better than they are today. And to give you a microcosm of like how good they are today. In the Microsoft Copilot product.

developers who are using it for the suggestion of code that they're writing. are accepting over fifty percent Of the code suggestions. And if you think about that, you say it's not quite a two X productivity increase, but it's pretty stunning. So that's a a good transition back to impromptu, which I chose to listen to. And I I enjoyed listening to it in part because I got to hear GPT four's answers in a voice different than yours.

So I'm curious, especially given GPT four's text to speech capabilities. you know, uh again in in terms of the impromptu two point oh whether you would use that, how it would look different. So what I wanted to show was That there is

an ability to even be more human and connect because I don't have the time to spend the eight hours reading the book. And so I said all right. I'd like to show how the AI voice generation can both be trained the cadences of my voice, the ongoing Relationship. That

I have with My listeners on masters of scale, you know. The readers. You know, or listeners to the book. And be there and be present for them, but also, you know, within a way that operates. So

We did actually have Microsoft technology called Vali that was the text to speech. part which they've been very careful not to release because they don't want it to be misused. But of course, I'm not misusing it. I'm using it. Reed for Reed's voice. Uh and then a totally fictional voice for an AI. When I was talking to Jeff Bezos about what I was doing, he was like, Oh wow.

Then One of the things we could do is we could give people the ability to do the audiobook and their own voice with this, and we could also give them the ability to choose other voices. If I wanted to have you know, read as a British accent. And eventually, for example, when you have impromptu is a Chinese voice. It'll go, Okay, here's Reed's vocal cadence and so forth, and here's him speaking

Perfect Chinese, which of course I can do zero of. So those things also then become possible as part of the human amplification. Read the ability to create different accents to speak in different languages to immediately translate you into a perfect dialect.

One can only imagine the different use cases here. I'd love if you go just a little bit deeper on what your audio collaboration with Vali might actually sound like. Well so I think It's not perfect. We worked on two different channels for it because we were exploring. One channel is

Text to speech. And that tends to do the best kind of human Read voice. And then there's another, which is speech to speech, which you have a human actor

You don't read the speech and then you transform their voice into the read voice. And that one Does better at not having some weird Pauses and other things, which the text speech does.

But also doesn't Mimic. kind of the cadences as purely as the text of speech one does. And so because it has the human actor who is doing the read speaking and so forth. And there are some people who are very, very good at doing that. But it's more human, but slightly different human. That's what we learned.

By doing this so far. Now part of it is, you know, next year I suspect it'll just be Upload text file. Yeah. Which version of the read voice you want? Do you want the master scale read voice? Do you want the Fireside Chat read voice?

Do you want the Ree Hoffman doing his, you know, kind of Humphrey Bogart interpretation. I mean, whatever the thing is. I don't know if that one will be next year, that one will be the year after, but We'll have all of that. As part of it. And that's part of

Again, human amplification. Read, before we go I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the open letter regarding the looming threats presented by artificial intelligence. A number of your peers in tech. People like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.

sign the statement, but you chose not to. I'd love to hear why that is. Can you give us some insight into why you made that decision? So You know, it's very popular talk about existential risk. And there was a statement that a bunch of my friends signed earlier this year saying AI should be treated as an existential risk, along with climate change, et cetera.

And one of the things I think is naive about that statement and the and the reason I didn't sign it is because while it can be An existential risk just like Yeah, for example you create nuclear power and nuclear existential risk and so forth. It is also one of the ones that makes

the largest positive difference column. It can help with climate change. And for example, AI is going to be essential. to monitoring and saving us from future pandemics. And so I think that there's a bunch of different areas, not just as the language assistant, but as the extraordinarily valuable tool.

For the ongoing thriving of humanity and human society. that it's gonna be and is being developed across these things. And that's The kind of thing that's going to be very important to us. So that is kind of more advanced AI game, but those are areas where this.

Essentially really matters. Reed, it is always fantastic to catch up with you. Jeff, very much likewise. We have infinite things to talk about.

Historically, business leaders have played a critical role in shaping society and leading change. Especially given the pace of innovation and growing volatility. Business leaders must focus not just on shareholders, but stakeholders as well. Including Most importantly.

Our own team members. Reed argues that a human must be at the center of whatever we do in AI. I would add that we need to center humans and humanity in all of our work. We hope this episode inspires you to think about how to do that more effectively. Thank you again to our own Reed Hoffman for his invaluable and candid assessment on the state of AI.

If you haven't heard our recent series of episodes AI and you, I implore you to dive in. This series functions as an actionable playbook, leaving you primed to tackle this new and exciting chapter. Thank you for listening. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely.

From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Chris McLeod. Our producers are Chris Gautier, Adam Skuse, Alex Morris, Tucker Lergersky.

and Marcia, Marco Trinina. Our editor at large is Bob Safian. Our music director is Ryan Holiday. Original music and sound design by Eduardo Rivera, Briday. Hayes holiday.

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