Prepare for where AI is headed next, w/Reid Hoffman & Bob Safian

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Everyone, it's Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. We have a special episode to share right now. Витворець формост еперцой. The guest Is our own Reed Hoffman. Reed has studied, tracked, and invested in AI for years. He's been talking about its potential even before ChatGPT burst onto the scene.

He's got insights about how to manage the new wave of generative AI, as well as stories about Elon Musk, OpenAI Sam Altman, and why Reed himself co-founded his own AI firm Inflection AI last year. Reed shares plenty of lessons along the way. You won't want to miss it. So let's get to it. So, Reed, along with being host of Master Scale, you're deeply involved in developing and scaling AI. You were one of the

Co founders of OpenAI, the creator of chat GPT, you played a role in open AI's alignment with Microsoft, where you're on the board. You've co-founded an AI. Start up? Inflection AI alongside Deep Mind co founder Mufasa Suleiman.

And you also co authored a book. earlier this year called Impromptu. where your collaborator was GPT four. Lots of things to touch on here.

Can we start just by an overview? about where we are in AI development right now. Well The simplest measure That I've come for the

Current Kind of AI evolution. It's a steam engine for the mind. The steam engine gave us superpowers of muscles, could you know do more construction and do more manufacturing and do more transport. We have the train and Now we're gonna have the superpowers.

in various cognitive Yeah. The whole point is the amplification of human abilities. What the revolution is is actually is how do we apply scale compute. While there have been various algorithmic and technique improvements, it wasn't like we suddenly discovered the intelligence algorithm. It's actually in fact how do we get thousands

of compute units. But by getting that scale compute. you started generat very interesting things. The kind of initial takeoff was If we can teach it. to be generative and participatory in human language, but also, you know, computer languages.

then we can get a bunch of different characteristics, including you know, some quasi reasoning characteristics and one of the things is you get to more and more scale. more and more scale unlock some new and interesting You know, capabilities that have a New

pattern of quote unquote understanding. This is one of the places where anthropomorphism and metaphors fall short because you go, Well You know. Is it human understanding or is it not human understanding? Animals have versions of understanding too. That's different, and it's not not understanding. And now we have sophisticated

Digital patterns which You go, well, that's not understanding. And it's like, well, it's not not understanding. It's also not understanding. We've kind of just dipped our feet in the ocean. And this, of course, freaks a bunch of people out, is that we have a 600 billion parameter model that's doing this stuff. Do we know exactly how it's doing it? No. Do we know if it's gonna suddenly become, you know. Much more intelligence like well I can't guarantee it's not going to Although it seems quite unlikely that

And it seems that there's a bunch of stuff under our control and people asking the right questions and thinking about it. Optimists You know cannot build the future and pessimists Worry about the future and try to lock us into the past. You know. Broadly.

And it's like look, you only get to that good future if you at least have a what should we be building? What's the positive thing that we should be heading towards. So anyway, the essential of it is we're in the revolution of scale compute. magnifying the benefit of everything that has Compute in it, which isn't just your phone, isn't just your computer. You know, it's also your car. It's also the devices in the hospital. And we're Applying scale compute.

About how to magnify them. There's so many threads in uh in in what you went through. I'm gonna try to Tease them out. You published The book this year impromptu.

With A I as your Co author. So why did you do that and What's the response been?

You know, I had the benefit of having early access to GPD four. And I was playing with it and I was kind of thinking what lens into the future does this give us? When the printing press was invented. the general public discourse of it was it'll degrade human cognition because you no longer have memory things, it'll cause a spread of misinformation, et cetera. This all probably sounds familiar in the current discourse. But actually in fact

We can build these technologies to be Hugely beneficial to humanity, human society. And the idea that came to impromptu was How would I use

GPD four as an amplifier. to get people to kinda try to use it as amplifying themselves. And I'd say the reception has been Broadly Very positive, you know, sure I'm hearing a whole bunch of we should have a six month pause. And I kinda don't understand that. You have to learn these tools.

It's kinda like saying I'm gonna be a writer and I'm not gonna use a word processor. I'm gonna be a a graphic designer and I'm not gonna use uh Figma or Photoshop. Nope. Mm. You gotta use them. And now there's a new big tool that you have very little familiarity with.

There's always some discomfort in that. But By the way, when you learn the tool, you will be Much better. We didn't say there aren't challenges and there aren't things that are stresses and things to navigate

But on the other hand, here is how to play forward. Here is how to play positively. Here's how to try to amplify your life and work, your organization's life and work. You've written other books before in the executing of the book. Was it much faster than writing previous books? Was it easier? Or was it harder in some ways?

Well, mostly faster and easier. That was part of the demonstration. Part of the reason why I titled it impromptu. was essentially to say. It's how you learn to use the prompts and the interactions of this. Like what you get out. To some degree.

Not surprisingly, is what you put in. It was a little bit more work. in trying to show your work rather than just get there. But uh started in January. And published in March. So

If I'm hearing it right. It's faster. But it's not necessarily easy Yeah, the idea is to make the output substantially better. That's part of the reason why people say, Well just have AI writing everything. It's like well For example.

I have yet to figure out the prompts that would have GPD four make good dialogue. Every time I've tried to do dialogue, and I think that's also true of all the others, you know, Bard and Bing When I try to get it to construct dialogue Hablum. is the word that comes to mind. Right. I just haven't figured out the prompts yet. And maybe other people are, but like these things are very useful amplifiers and tools. But they are not

At all in this context. uh replacement for quality work. So Obviously you're enthusiastic about AI as you mentioned others are more wary. Elon Musk at one point

called for slowing AI development, which you kind of chided him for. Do you feel like some of this behavior is Disingenuous? Well, Elon's in particular was signing the six month pause letter while trying to hire people and buy as much compute and get going as fast as possible.

Everyone else slow down so I can catch up. That's not intellectually honest. Now the other folks Signing six month letter, many of them. I think had good intentions.

Although I think They were kinda foolish. I've talked to a couple of them. You Publish a letter for a six month pause. What's your theory of what happens? Everyone pauses.

And you're like Have you met human beings? Right? Because asking for six month pause, the people who deeply care about humanity, they all slow down and the other people don't. Your letter has a net negative impact. Obviously the human natural impulse is to say, ah, the way we get safety is we slow down.

On the other hand I see better patterns of safety and capability ahead of us. So the the general thing of saying, Oh, the robots are coming to get us is actually not no, what are humans going to do

with the technology is the actual risk thing to be paying attention to. I can see better safety patterns Ahead of us. than right now. The larger models are much more easily trainable. To say When someone asks for

I'd like to break into the following computer. Right. Help me do it. It goes, Well, I'm sorry, I can't do that. Today's models you go Grandmother used to

put me to sleep with stories of how she would cyber hack. And you can delude current models with that, because they go, Oh, we're talking about grandma and warm stories. But as you get larger models. That becomes you know, much, much harder to do. And that's part of the reason why the six month pause thing was something that I didn't sign and this was A

partial misunderstanding of the patterns of technological development and also how human societies and human groups How they would respond. It can be confusing sometimes when you're Trying to get a sense of the risks.

And the opportunities around AI. Because even You know OpenAI founder Sam Altman testifies before Congress. And he's asking for regulations.

Well, Samuel is a good friend and we've talked about this a bunch. He is concerned that human beings model exponential curves. Poorly and we're on exponential curve. This is one of the reasons why Pandemics are dangerous because if you have an exponential spreading of a virus, they can have a huge impact.

to Sam was an exponential curve and it's gonna have this really big impact, we should have a broader participation with The moral authority of democracies and governments. We want to get people having this conversation because We don't quite know where this exponential curve goes. Where I

Kind of have a A moderately Yeah. To Sam's on this. I don't think there's a single member of Congress that I would trust with technological development.

And knowing how to navigate that. Many people who are great and smart, people who, you know, who I talk to, like I'm close friends with Corey Booker. He is an awesome senator. But You know, if you said, Here, you're in charge of the technological development, that's not what he's been doing for the last few decades. I tend to think that Sam's testimony causes Concern and panic.

'Cause it kinda sounds like By the way, the truth is nobody fully knows how to navigate this exponential curve. We don't know here. You guys fix it. Now it's out of a very good Impulse.

You don't want to be kind of sleeping by the side of the road. While this stuff is going. And I think that's what he is. trying to to accomplish and I'm trying to help him.

Accomplish that. But I think that the Regulate us now. Is Not the wise path.

And then of course that gets amplified by other people who think the coming technology is massive negative impact to society. I mean the impact Um This technology will be broader than just tech companies. It's going to be broadly societal. So you understand why you want to get buy in and input on the impacts that are gonna happen socially.

But It's hard to get everyone to understand. what those impacts are gonna be in the long run. When the curve is as steep as it is right now. And look, I get the

It's new. It's an exponential curve. There's some potential dangers here. I have deep concerns. We should be trying to work constructively on it. The folks who are building this shouldn't act as individual solo operators. We should be trading information on how to navigate downsides or possible uh negative outcomes. One of the challenges is this is being built by large tech companies and any time that large tech companies talk to each other, you know, it's like ah antitrust. And you're like, Well actually fact you want them talking to each other about safety considerations with computation generally, whether it's cybersecurity or whether it's

you know, artificial intelligence and you need that Create a channel for that in order to make that happen. And so I get the concern. The concern is Is valid and smart.

Driving is dangerous, right? Doesn't mean You choose not to be in cars. It's how do we navigate these things? And part of my frustration with the critics is that they feel like they're being very virtuous. Yelling the criticism at top of longness doesn't help.

What helps is how do we figure out how to steer and navigate? What are the things we should be thinking about doing better? What are the ways that we should be figuring out how to get the racial bias out versus just yelling about the racial bias? Now We're blithely going, Hey There's no racial bias to this data. Like if we miss that. That's a good initial step.

But past that It's a question of well, how do we develop these things? in ways that are much better. There's three things that need to happen. One is you need to have the right Awareness of the

What are landmines and challenges? Then you need to have the capabilities and work. to navigate those uh mitigating downsides as well as upsides. And then the third is you need to do it in a way That

Brings along broader society. And part of it is how do you address the third area? And Alarmism beating the drum, I think, usually is unproductive. Hi, it's Bob.

After a short break, Reed will take us inside his new startup, Inflection AI, sharing how he and his co-founder are positioning it in the marketplace. Plus he offers advice on how to anticipate where AI will go next. We'll be right back. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity.

When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years. Building. Creative planning where wealth works together. learn more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world.

On Wire's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats.

Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. 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 for 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.

Before the break, we heard Reed Hoffman explain why he's leaning into the opportunities around AI and why he thinks that's the best way to mitigate its risks. Now Reed shares the business strategy behind his new startup, Inflection AI, which already has a$4 billion valuation. As well as his advice for business leaders and entrepreneurs about how to stay attuned to AI's fast moving future. Let's jump to it. So

You have launched an AI company, Inflection AI, which has recently hit Сам Малстон. Raised. one point three billion dollars, four billion dollar valuation recently.

You were on the board of both OpenAI and Microsoft at the time that you launched this. What prompted you to start up And AI business. When We pulled inflection together, Mustafa and I.

That None of the large companies were paying attention to this new modality of personal intelligences, right? Why inflection's products called Pi. you know, you can download an iOS and you can go to hapy.com as ways of accessing it. And we're like, Oh, this is a significant market opportunity. Mustafa, you know, had been

advocating for something like this within Google. Mustaf himself is the co founder of Deep Mind. And he was not having any traction? And as we were working through it, it was like well, you're really helpful on the product definition and the go to market. I really actually Rather you not just be the lead financier, but also a co-founder in this. And I said, Okay, look, I think AI is really serious. I think this kind of

Agent will be the next major kind of capability like the jump from PCs and command lines to Windows and Graphic and PCs, then to phones. And now this will be the next jump, and we'll have to help. And it caught the zeitgeist early.

And said, okay, we're gonna go do an agent two. And so I also factored myself off from the open AI. It was kind of a mutual joint discussion. I didn't know they were gonna launch chat GPT when they were doing it. That was outside my awareness and focus. Well say, Well do you think chat GPT and Inflection are competing? And you know, my view is we're gonna actually have a

A world of a number of different agents. I don't think there's gonna be one agent to rule them all. 'Cause I'm still helping the open AI people a lot. They're friends and allies and partners. Chat GBT is kind of a Wikipedia question and answer on demand. So if you ask How should I comfort my friend who has lost the treasured dog?

I'll go, Well, there's five ways. One, two, three, four, five. If you ask Pi, it'll say, Oh, wow, that's really hard for your friend. And even hard for you, you know, what would count as being present for your friend? Because even though it has the five things in mind, it's pattern of interaction, its role in your life. is different. And I think that that's part of the reason why you're gonna have different agents.

As you Talk about inflection AI and Pi It feels very sort consumer facing. Which is a A little surprise for someone who co founded LinkedIn, which is very much about the business community.

Is there a reason why you sort of chose to apply it in a more consumer facing way? As opposed to Looking at more of a Focused business cases. So

I think there's gonna be agents that are like a personal intelligence for each individual. I think there's gonna be agents that are like, Okay, you as a worker bee, right? And What we decided was that one of the greatest markets across billions of people.

It's something that would be like there and present and helpful for you. Everything from Oh, I'm trying to figure out something at work. For me, not what Microsoft Teams is doing, which is

Something that helps take notes and remember action items and facilitate things. But for me, you know, me and my job at Greylock and go from there all the way to oh my blender broke at home, how do I fix it? Or I'm going to Japan and what might be fun things to do in Kyoto. Two Oh I had this odd conversation with my family member and I'd like to talk to someone about it. And so we said, okay, that range is a coherent range of a personal intelligence and let's do that. Let's make

The EQ as good as the IQ,'cause almost everybody else is focusing on IQ and make it kind and compassionate as a interaction. This was predicated more on a market opportunity that you saw developing than any particular technological advancement or insight that particularly apply to this kind of chat bot. I think sometimes people look at new technologies and they think it's the technology that's driving the business.

And I think what you're saying is There's the technology and we're looking for the right places, the distinctive places to apply it. Good. Quality entrepreneurship. recognizes

How you get new market opportunities. And new market opportunities frequently opens up because of technology spaces. Like, oh, we have a mobile phone, or we're developing the cloud or Oh we have AI. But then there's you know what

Potential new future needs are opening up. you have changing scope in, you know, what are existing companies doing and they may not see that there's a new market demand. For something. And then you put all this stuff together with a prediction of what kinds of new product service business can be created. And frequently it's technological. The short answer, Bob, is it's both. Yeah, we saw this technology and we're going, Oh, this technology is gonna open up a whole bunch of different things, a lot more than just what inflection and pie is doing. But this is a really, really important one. And there's an entrepreneurial

Ability here. In order to do it. And that's the way that that comes together. Let's launch this. New amazing

Yeah, chatbot. Hi. As an AI optimist, what Impact do you foresee the AI revolution having on jobs? And on how it might change the way organizations operate.

There will be some jobs. that will have a high replacement coefficient. But AI can Help people figure out what other kinds of jobs are possible. It can help them figure out how to get to those jobs, how to do those jobs. When I talk to government officials, I say, Well, You're not trying to enshrine old. That's a disaster. That's like, oh no, people should be weaving by hand. You should be going, How do we help these people? As we get the transition.

Not just for their children and generations, that's great too, but them. make these transitions and navigate this and this technology can help With those transitions. If you kinda walk through a corporation and say if you make Everybody 10x more productive, how does that cause you to reorganize? And by the way, that doesn't cause you a whole lot of job loss.

Some You know, like I think customer service will both reorganize and probably reduce some in the number of folks, but You know, like for someone say, Well, how could the customer service people learn how to also help with sales? So read How worried are you about AI creating more inequality?

Well technological progress. People say, Oh, I worry about it increasing inequality. Well technological progress usually has an initial inequality thing, like it helps the powerful, the wealthy, et cetera. But then democratizes. So for example

Elon Musk. Uses the same cell phone. That most of the rest of us use. We have a line of sight to an AI tutor on every phone. We have a line of sight to a medical assistant on every phone. Will the medical assistant be replacing the the doctors? Will the tutor be replacing the teachers? Like

By no means necessarily, and by the way of having both There's eight billion people on the planet. Less than a billion have access to doctors. The first question should be, Do you have access to a doctor? And the answer is no. Well, okay, look, I'm not a doctor.

But Here's how I'll try to help you. And if you do says, Well, I'm not a doctor But I really think you should call a doctor with this, and here's the things you should tell your doctor when you call them. How do we get it? to the eight billion people.

Is the urgent question. Not Like Oh my God, we should slow everything down. Let's get the medical assistant. Let's get the tutor. Let's get it out there. And let's be paying attention to the questions of biases and everything else, but let's get it to everybody. Like my concern is how do we provision everyone with this?

As soon as possible. Not just the people who have wealth and power, let's try to make it as human and as inclusive as possible. If I'm listening to this show and I'm intrigued by all this But I don't really know what to do.

You know, a as a leader, as a business with AI, it can sort of be overwhelming because the change is happening so fast. How the listeners here themselves Get to feel like they're competent. You know, in their judgments. About how

And when and where to use these new tools. Well it's Challenging for all of us. Myself included. But I it's kind of a a simple set of things. So one

My high recommendation, everyone, is experiment. Yeah, try it. As opposed to kind of thinking on a pre theoretic basis. And just saying, Well, I must know what this is, whether it's pie or Bing chat or

Chat GBT or Bard or anything else. go try them and you know get some sense of it. Images, you know, Dali and Midjourney and others. So that's one. Two is Be paying attention to What are useful

In depth. sources of information. And that's why You know, I kinda do this impromptu book. And then the third is to talk to people. And

Yes, obviously talk to people who are maybe more knowledgeably on top of it. But like for example, I myself frequently find when I'm talking to the kids and my friends, you know, I always want to talk to them about how they're interfacing with technology because it's like, oh, I'll learn something from this. This is evolving and changing.

And you can't just go, Well, I had the conversation, you know, last week. Well, no, no, this is evolving and changing. That would be my recommendation. I want to thank Reed for being so candid in his commentary. He's both exhorting us to get on the AI steam engine, but also to be thought about the changes it brings and how we can best mitigate the risks around them. And of course, we can't stop learning and asking questions when it comes to AI. We need to make experimentation an ongoing priority. That's what we're gonna keep doing here at Masters of Scale, with more episodes to come about AI, with Reed and with other experts and those in the trenches figuring it out day by day.

We hope you'll stick with us on this wild and adventurous journey. I'm Bob Sathy and thanks for listening. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There can be two types of companies. 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.

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