REID:
AI is going to have a massive impact because we’re all going to have, you know, a kind of personal AI, a co-pilot in the work that we’re doing. That’s going to be glorious. You go, “oh, how do I get ready? How – what do I do?” It’s like, the answer is: start playing!

ARIA:
How do we give the American public and the public of the world time to reflect, think, change? These transitions are tough, and we don’t want our fear driving them away.

REID:
Hi, I’m Reid Hoffman.

ARIA:
And I’m Aria Finger.

REID:
We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way.

ARIA:
This is Possible.

MONTAGE:
Possible. x7

REID:
This is Possible.

ARIA:
So, Reid, here we are in episode 10, which is the final episode of the first season of the Possible podcast. And I’m so excited to talk to you to talk about the season and how it went. And for everyone listening, there are more episodes coming this summer, so please subscribe so you can be the first to hear the new episodes. But first, we are going to talk to reflect on how the show went so far. Usually we get to interview an esteemed third guest, but today, I’m turning the table a little bit and I would love to ask you some questions.

So, as most people know, you are an OG podcaster, whether it’s “Masters of Scale” or “Startup of You,” and so why did you think it was important to do the “Possible” podcast? I would love to hear what you thought others would take from this pod.

REID:
Well, I will definitely answer your question, but I reserve the right to ask you questions, too. [laugh] I think there were a couple of reasons for doing Possible. One, we unfortunately think, at least in the US and a number of other countries, were kind of living in this techlash moment. And, you know, there’s a number of different reasons for techlashes. Obviously, the questions around, “hey, it’s becoming so big and ubiquitous,” when it goes wrong, people feel it in a bad way. There’s worries about the tech companies, all of which I think is definitely fair from a viewpoint of tech companies should be talking about, like, what are they building for, being more transparent, being more like, “here’s our values and here’s our discourse and where we’re going.”

On the other hand, technology builds the future. Thirty to 80% of any scale solution that you care about, even including things like criminal justice – you know, why we talked to Bryan Stevenson, and so forth – is going to be technology, and so it’s very important that you have a theory about how that’s built. And naive is to say, “well, the government will just build it.” And it’s like, have you seen a lot of technology coming from the government in these things that matter? How is that, you know, in the US context, that DMV app working for you? Like, simple technology, let alone anything else, as a way of kind of going to it and seeing, “oh, look, we have to have a plan for how we get that.”

The next part of it is, you know, we have these failures in leadership in the techlash, and in leadership here, I mean government, I mean media. Like, you get this dialogue around AI and it’s like, “oh, the AI is coming for you and it’s going to destroy your jobs.” And you’re like, “well boy, then why the hell would we be doing this stuff?” And the answer is, think about every month you delay an AI tutor or an AI doctor on a smartphone that’s available to everybody. If you said, “well, I don’t want to displace my doctor.” Of course you don’t want to displace your doctor. You’d rather have the AI medical assistant with your doctor. Now, for the seven plus billion people that can’t get access to a doctor, what about them? And we have this massive failure in leadership within the government, and also within the media. Media says, “well, it’s not my role, my role is to be skeptical.” It’s like, “no, your role is to be skeptical, absolutely, but your role is to help facilitate the kind of thinking about what futures we should possibly go to.” So that was the reason why you and I and others in our network and team and everyone’s conceived in doing this podcast to say, “let’s shine a light on where we should be heading to.”

ARIA:
It’s so interesting. I think that I was surprised by some of the reception because I think of you and myself as positive, as optimists, but people kept saying, “whoa, what a breath of fresh air. We’ve only been hearing about doomsday scenarios.” And so, how can you be hopeful? How can you build the future when it’s just doomsday? We’ve tried to shine the light on some of the things that are actually happening.

So, I would love to hear, is there a particular comment from a guest that has stuck with you, or something that you were like, “ah, yes, that’s the positive future that we’re building towards?”

REID:
Well, we’ll get to your question because I think we should talk about our amazing guests, but, you know, I had to twist your arm a little bit to be my co-host. [laugh] You know, it wasn’t a hard twist, but it was a, you were like, “well, what about so-and-so? What about so-and-so?” I’m like, “well, what about you?” You’re like, “what about so-and-so?” I’m like, “what about you?” But how is the co-hosting experience for you?

ARIA:
I mean, no surprise, it’s been so fun. Some of the topics, as you mentioned, criminal justice reform is something I know a lot about and I’ve been sort of studying and been involved with for years – other issues are critically important, but I didn’t know that much about, whether it’s fusion or learning about electrification from Saul Griffith. And so the ability to, every week, be excited about something. Mostly I’m just insufferable by the time I get home at dinner and I’m telling my husband and my kids and anyone who will listen about all the exciting things that are happening, and so I just find that positivity contagious because then everyone can get behind something.

I actually heard from a friend last week, and I won’t say which, but he’s doing a startup based on one of our episodes and I was just like, oh my God, that is so exciting, to hear the tangible things that people are working on, to get smart about something, learn about it, and then see the actual execution, which has been so fun.

REID:
So, I’ll get back to your question. Every episode had things that I loved about it. We were obviously very careful about who we selected. I think I was not surprised, but extremely delighted that – and I think it surprised a bunch of people who didn’t realize – that, you know, Trevor Noah has a comedic hat and is very smart about it, but it’s not like that’s his whole being. That he actually in fact thinks about technology, can think constructively, optimistically, as opposed to, “oh my God, the writer is going to be put out of work by GPT-4, or ChatGPT!” He was like, “oh, they can use it to do amazing things and they just need to start using it.” And you could reinvent the media and relationships and customize shows and that kind of thing. And oh, that could be really exciting.

You’ve got Saul. with, like, “hey, if we just fix our relationship with six household objects, we could be so much better than the hopelessness – or, frankly, inactive whininess – that you can see too often in this, it’s like, “oh, I know how to fix at least one, if not all six objects!”

And then, Dr. Kim Budil. One of the things that I think is still important, even in our accelerating age, is to participate in what I loosely think of as “cathedral projects:” projects that go on past your lifetime as ways that we contribute to the future of humanity, the future of our children, grandchildren, you know, and other kinds of things. And to have had her show how she was still so dedicated to that and has made so much headway in these kinds of cathedral projects. And, like, fusion, if we solve it, if we get low cost carbon, totally clean energy, there’s ocean acidification, water, a bunch of problems you can solve with that. And that’s just touching on some small highlights. And, you know, I’m leaving Bryan to you.

ARIA:
We didn’t share it in the episode, but I was lucky enough to attend the Obama Foundation’s first ever conference, and everyone had a badge and on the back you had to write who was the person who inspired you most in the world, and, no surprise, I chose Bryan Stevenson. And as I’m walking around the conference hall in Chicago, I see him across the way and I sprint up to him and turn my badge around and say “Bryan!” And I’m sure he thought I was a crazed fan, but he took a very delightful picture with me and it was great to chat with him again a few weeks ago.

And what I loved about Bryan, again, besides just his total hopefulness and positivity in the face of such, you know, discrimination and horror and abomination of the US criminal justice system. But he kept reframing the question. He said, “oh, yes, technology can be enormously helpful. Let’s think about, instead of technology better incarcerating people, let’s use technology, to your point, as part of the solution to how we can better help people.” How we can get people to avoid the criminal justice system altogether, how can we use technology to make sure that recidivism is going down? And so, I thought that was quite beautiful, from someone who is facing so much negativity in the work that they’re doing.

And I actually had a moment the other day that I almost texted Janette Sadik-Khan, because she had talked about CitiBike, which is the bike share program in New York, and I realized it was such an encapsulation of how tech works. They launched the program, it wasn’t that great, some of the tech was buggy, it was only in certain areas. People were like, what is this? But then it slowly caught on and then Lyft came on board and so now it’s a public-private partnership. They gave the city of New York their tech to make it better. I actually went on a CitiBike last week for the first time in three years and it was incredible and seamless and amazing in the way they scaled it as a public-private partnership. They now have e-bikes. Of course the e-bike technology wasn’t available 5, 6, 7 years ago when they launched. And so now we have another clean way to get around New York City. And it was really fun to see that full circle because I love how the government is working with tech to bring their tech experience, and bring a better service to New Yorkers. And of course we have bike share programs in cities across the US.

So one thing I loved about all of our episodes, but specifically when we were talking to Ariel last week, is that they all crossed together. She was talking about how AI could be so influential in space travel. We talked to her about fusion and Dr. Kim Budil and she was talking about how inspirational that was. And they’re both having pipelines of talent. So, even though our episodes are on such different topics, education and criminal justice reform and space exploration, the fact that they overlap so much, and especially with Ariel talking about space exploration, was really neat to see.

REID:
And we had so many different threads that we could go into, because, for example, it’s like, “well, we need faster nonchemical nuclear accelerant,” and obviously that plays into fusion and all the rest. And the fact she’s already thinking about it relative to nuclear subs. And everything from that to, you know, how does biology change, and what is the key thing to be able to be doing in radiation? Which could also, of course, really help medicine, which is later, when she’s saying, “well, the other area that I’ve given some real thought to and hope for is precision medicine.” And CRISPR and genetics and genomics are obviously tied to some of the radiation thinking. So, you know, the Possible podcast also goes into space and goes to the moon.

ARIA:
Another guest, of course, that we had this year was GPT-4. GPT-4 played a part because they were part of our GPT-4 AI stories throughout the episodes and throughout the season. I’m not going out on a limb by saying that AI is going to continue to dominate many of our conversations into the future.

When you think about the future of this podcast, the future of AI, like, how is AI going to play into our conversations of social change and making our world a better place?

REID:
You know, this is, again, a very central part of Possible, which isn’t to say don’t take concerns and steering and challenges and potential harms seriously, but the way that you do so is by driving to the things that are good. Again, with Jamie and the future work, it’s kind of like, is this going to take some of my job? And the answer is, it’s going to take some of it, but it could take the bad bits and leave you with some really good bits and make it a lot stronger and amplify whatever kind of thing you’re doing. And that’s part of that amplification intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence, or aha moment, amplification of a human ability as ways of doing this. Part of the reason why we included GPT-4 was not just to have the artifact and this being the year of AI, but also the fact that we could show how you could amplify what you’re doing on a podcast. Not just like, oh well, we will do some things where we bring out, you know, my voice in an AI voice – watch this space, that that’ll happen – but also can be a co-pilot, a personal AI, in the way that you’re doing these things. And so we’re experimenting because that’s our advice to everybody, in their work and their careers, is to experiment on how you could make your work better. And we’re like, well, maybe if we charted some – we’re talking about the future and we’re charting the future, and maybe if we could kind of chart some stories that could make the dialogues more interesting and better with our guests.

You know, another thing that I’ve done on a television program that’s hopefully going to come out soon is one of the things that I’m on the board of is an app called Tome, which is creating these story-generative tools. And it’s like, “create a story about the Possible podcast.” And, literally, you type in six sentences and it generates a little pitch deck for our podcast. Well, experiment with it and play with it! That’s the way to learn, that’s the way to think about how to engage in these things. That’s part of the reason. And AI is going to have a massive impact because we’re all going to have, you know, a kind of personal AI, a co-pilot in the work that we’re doing. That’s going to be glorious. You go, “oh, how do I get ready? How – what do I do?” It’s like, the answer is: start playing! Right? Just start interacting with it, start doing stuff.

Let me give you a parallel. People are like, “oh my God, autonomous vehicles are going to take away the truck jobs.” Well, look. One, we have a massive shortage of truck drivers. So when Aurora is continuing to make huge progress on this stuff, as it is, it’s not going to like – now, if every truck manufacturer in the world started tomorrow with the perfect technology of building autonomous trucks, it would take 10 plus years to have over half the trucks be autonomous trucks. That’s time to adjust. So like, it’s the, no, no, no, let’s make it happen. Let’s have the safety, let’s have the benefits, everything else. So let’s do that. And that same thing as applying to, kind of, large language models, generative AI.

ARIA:
So as we talk about AI, I love how you said, you know, that transition time. When we heard from Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, that’s what they talked about a lot, is how do we give the American public and the public of the world time to reflect, think, change? These transitions are tough and we don’t want our fear driving them away.

And so, as we’re talking about AI, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that you just launched your first company as a co-founder since LinkedIn. Inflection launched a few weeks ago, and I was actually playing around with it and I wanted to talk to this personal intelligence. And so I said, “hey, Pi, what should I do?” I was asking it, you know, really deep questions about my life: whether I should stay in Brooklyn, whether I should move to the suburbs. And Pi was asking me back really thoughtful questions about, well, what are my values? Like, what are the things that are most important to me? And it wasn’t giving me answers, but it was really helping me understand what are the critical things for me and what’s going to optimize my life and my happiness in the real world. So it was really fun.

I would love to hear your discussion about why did you launch this company with Mustafa Suleyman, and what are you hoping for that as it relates to AI?

REID:
Inflection is very much in this whole amplification intelligence. It’s how do you have a better life and technology helping you do that? And one of the things that Mustafa and I were kicking around a couple years back now was, “hey, this could be a really great kind of personal AI, you know, help you navigate your whole life.” Not just work, not just Wikipedia answers, but things that you encounter in your everyday life. It could range from an odd conversation you have with a friend or a coworker and you wanted to kind of unpack it, to something stressful that’s happening, to, I’m not sure, I’m kind of bored, I want to know what would be fun to do this Friday night in location X? And that whole range is particularly useful and it’s one of the things that AI could do. And, to some degree, it could be great if the AI asked you questions, or helped you sort out your own mind in this kind of stuff.

And, you know, everyone goes to, “whoa, is this going to replace human beings and human interaction?” And it’s like, well, certainly not if you’re training it the right way, and probably not otherwise. I think we as human beings like interacting with human beings. But if you’re not trying to get your teenager to be sitting only with your phone, only interacting on the phone. Like, if you had it kind of interacting and being like, “hey, so what are you doing with your friends?” And like, “well, my friend pissed me off.” Like, “oh, can I help you solve your friend having pissed you off?” When you do it that way and you approach it, as it were, in the Stanford human-centered interaction and that’s what you’re training it to do, that’s really key. A lot of the AI stuff, because these are all high IQ people, train high IQ. Of course, you want high IQ. But how about also high EQ? And that’s part of what Inflection and Pi is doing. And those are the kinds of things that I think are part of this amazing future and part of what Inflection is trying to offer to people’s – well I will deliberately be slightly punny – delectation. [laugh]

ARIA:
[laugh] To your point, it was a high EQ to get me to think through my own values and what I want for my life. And also to your point, I consider myself the most social person that I’ve ever met, so I will never have computers replace people. But this helped me think through, you know, where I want to live my life and how close to people I want to be.

REID:
Yeah. It should be human-amplifying, once again.

ARIA:
Exactly. Right, exactly.

So, Reid, let’s talk about the future of the Possible podcast. We are ending season one today and we are just scratching the surface. We had these first 10 incredible episodes, but there are truly too numerous to count other subjects to tackle. What can you see about future episodes that might get on the docket?

REID:
Well, first let’s talk a little bit about these. I mean, part of the thing that we were trying to do is highlight builders, highlight people who are optimists who, when they see a problem, they go try to help solve it. And this is part of what we think is great, general human identity, obviously something that historically the US has been proud of in itself with good reason. I think that kind of optimism – “I’m going to go tackle the problem, I’m going to go work on it, I’m not waiting for someone else to solve the problem, I myself am doing it, and also, of course, I realize that technology can be an important part of the solution,” – you know, all of that was part of what we saw.

You know, I think we’ve got a whole bunch of interesting possible episodes, pun moderately intended, in the queue and it’s everything from more future work stuff, obviously, but also oceans, or disease, or global peace and harmony. Actually, I’m going to turn that question around on you, too, as I think about this. What do you see as possible future zones that we could be going in?

ARIA:
Well, like you said, there are just so many interesting topics and we’ve heard from so many people. I think one episode that really struck a chord with people was Ben Nelson talking about higher education and folks said, like, this was incredible, education affects us all, it’s such an upward mobility driver – can we look at K-12 education? And whether that’s – I was talking to an entrepreneur last week who’s looking at K-12 education in Kenya and other African countries – to looking at the US K-12 education system. There is so much that is possible with technology, smart policy, et cetera.

I also think government. We always talk about government and tech. It’s like it’s a tri-sector: it’s nonprofit, it’s industry, it’s government, working together. And I think AI in particular could make government work so much better for its citizens and make us all smarter, less gridlock, all of the things that AI can bring.

And then, lastly, I would just say some of the real exciting things with AI are also coming, of course, in the health sector, whether we’re talking about infectious diseases or just living healthier lives or just making going to the doctor less painful. I think there’s just so much potential for positive stuff that’s coming our way. So I’m excited. [laugh] I’m really excited for season two and what’s to come.

So on the same day that we launched the Possible podcast, you also launched a book co-written with GPT-4 called Impromptu. And it was all about what magical future AI will bring, especially in terms of human amplification. I would love for you just to tell our listeners a little bit about Impromptu.

REID:
Well, not a surprise, because you were a heavy co architect and co-creator in Impromptu, along with the entire team, which I’m very grateful for.

The whole point, of course, is very similar to Possible, which is AI is amplification intelligence, AI is an amplifier of what can be human. I mean, part of the very last chapter is to think of how part of how we evolve and who we are as human beings is we are constituted, in part, by our technology. And it becomes so much part, it fades into our background. We think clothing, glasses, cars – it’s like, yeah, all this stuff is part of how humanity’s been evolving. AI is going to have another place in that pantheon, even though it feels very strange right now. And you can see the feeling very strange by how many bad AIs there are in Hollywood stories.

You know, I think part of the question was to show, well, don’t just say it, show it, show it through co-writing a book, show it through a travelog of various areas of human experience, and in particular, touch on both some of the ones where there was criticism, like education, and say, “look, this is part of the reason why it could be so magical for students, for teachers, the entire thing and for the world.” But also, you know, questions around like creatives going, “oh my God, am I going to be replaced as a writer?” It’s like, “well, here’s how you get amplified.” Journalism, since the journalists are kind of 95% critical of this, it’s like, look, here’s how it’s going to be important for journalism and good, versus just, “oh, the AIs are coming for the newspaper near you, you know, not just your job.”

And so, you know, all of that is part of doing it, and to get people to engage with that seriously. Don’t just engage with the risks. Obviously do engage with the risk, but our whole thing is to get to what can be really, really good. And of course there’s little chapters which, you know, many people will find very, very strange, like public intellectual, something that really matters to me, and people are going to be like, “Adorno, who’s that?” [laugh] Right? Of course, more and more with AI, throwing in little bits and pieces of it. Like, when you do the fireside chatbots doing a podcast with ChatGPT, you know, threw in a bit about Lichtenstein at the very end of the very first one, so it’s little bits and pieces. And, of course, show how it amplifies my own work in the business stuff, Blitzscaling, Alliance, you know, other kinds of things as ways of doing it. That’s the broad brush of it

And, you know, I think we will nearly certainly do a follow on to this. When, and what shape, and how… I mean, I think our very first step will be a set of upgrades to Impromptu itself, because watch this space for that happening. But then, of course, there will be a sequel, an additional book, travel to a different continent involving AI, travelog. Who knows.

By the way, you know, you were very key to all this. I’d be curious what your reflections on – you helped a ton with the criminal justice chapter, you know, given that I was like, “hey, you know this, I try to do this stuff, you know this 10x better than I do.” [laugh] Right?

ARIA:
So, one of the things that really surprised me was actually the response, because you and I live and breathe AI all day long. We’re reading the Twitter feeds and The Atlantic articles and The New York Times articles. But, obviously, there’s a lot of folks out there who don’t get exposed to AI. And so reading through the reviews on Goodreads, so many people said, “whoa, this was the first time I really got to learn about AI and I got to hear about some of the things we should worry about. I used to be scared, but then I read this book and, like, whoa, the possibilities are endless.”

I think that was one of the goals. It’s like, how can we expose people who might come in fearful or a little scared that, oh, there’s so many possibilities, especially if you’re not steeped in it, and so you’re not paying attention to sort of the latest and greatest that’s coming out. And that was really fun to see that it could be super useful for people as they go about their everyday lives.

REID:
Oh, and we’ll drop the link to Impromptu in the show notes in case you haven’t read it yet.

ARIA:
One of the things I love about our work is that we, of course, take it incredibly seriously, we see the potential for enormous positive change across the globe, but we also have fun.

Friendship is very important to you. So tell us a little bit about that.

REID:
Well, obviously, I did the commencement speech at Vanderbilt on that last year, as you know.

I think that this question about taking friendship seriously, I mean, it’s really funny. I mean, here’s some parallels for people to think about. You walk into a bookstore. Yes, I know that’s a little retro, there’s still bookstores in the world. You walk into a bookstore and there’s an entire section on romantic relationships. Great. You know, okay. Friendships I think are as important as romantic relationships. Where’s the section? [laugh] No section. Is there a book? Well, maybe one somewhere. And you look at the intellectual history, you go, well, there’s an Aristotle essay, a Montagne essay, a Cicero book… okay, where is the other stuff? Right? And it’s so important to address this. And there’s this, that, and the other. I have, now, I think a one 15-book shelf of various things that people have done. And every serious effort has something to recommend it.
But there’s so many lacks. Like, one of the things that you think about is people think, “oh, friendship is natural.” And you’re like, yes, it’s natural, but it’s like the nature versus nurture thing. It’s like, well, like some people run faster than other people naturally, but you can still learn to run faster, right? [laugh] It’s like, what are the skills of friendship and why not think about them? And it’s surprising how many smart and thoughtful people just hadn’t really thought of that.

As you know, when we started working on Impromptu, I first thought, oh, maybe I’ll just do the friendship book with this and took 600 pages of research assistant notes with it, some of which we still end up using in future stuff, but it was like, okay, people have got to understand AI and the friendship stuff is still going to come as we go.

ARIA:
For those who are listening, I do encourage you to go listen to Reid’s commencement speech at Vanderbilt last year that was on friendship. It’s so clear that friendship is so important to you, Reid, and it’s an inspiration, because friendship, to your point, is what makes our lives rich and exciting.

Reid, do you have any final parting thoughts to leave us with as we think about season one of the possible podcast?

REID:
Well, I always love network intelligence. I’d love it to have comments about what zones of possibility would be most human-amplifying and things to try to shape our image to.

Let’s climb that mountain. Let’s use these amazing tools we’re building in order to get there. And so, you know, I’m delighted to go on this journey and I hope people are as delighted to come with us as I am to go on it.

ARIA:
Absolutely. And I would just say to everyone, so many people have reached out with ideas, keep ’em coming, keep commenting, keep letting us know. I realize that it’s not a surprise that the NGO I used to run was called Do Something, because I love highlighting these doers and shapers and dreamers of what’s possible. So I love it all. Thanks so much, Reid—really appreciate it.

REID:
Aria, always a pleasure.

ARIA:
The Possible podcast will be back this summer with more episodes, so stay tuned and subscribe for more.

REID:
Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network, hosted by me, Reid Hoffman, and Aria Finger. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Edie Allard and Sara Schleede. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor. Special thanks to Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, and Ben Relles.