On with Kara Swisher - Reid Hoffman Talks Trump, Thiel & AI

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

From AI and the recent launch of GPT-4 to behind-the-scenes pressure on Washington to resolve the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, today’s guest is in the thick of it all. Kara tells Nayeema that Reid Hoffman is “one of the good ones.” Kara has known the billionaire Greylock VC Partner since the 90s, when he was fresh off the sale of PayPal and before he co-founded LinkedIn. Today they discuss Hoffman’s donations to Biden and other Democrats, how his political views have impacted his friendships with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and why he is so bullish on AI. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Chat GPT-4 with 100% fewer dad jokes. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeem Arraza. Do you have mom jokes? No. No. Moms don't tell jokes. They just tell you to get in line. They lecture you. That's right.

My mother does. That's the mom's job. I love that we live in this world of open AI's, GPT-4 and DALL-E and Bingbot and BigBard from Google. Who names these things? Well, you know, that's a longer topic, but you know, this new one is coming out and it's better than GPT-3.5 or 3 or whatever. It just gets better and better and it still has the same problems. It's also got a multidimensionality to it, which we haven't seen before. So GPT-4 is not just operating in text, but able to interpret images as well. And presumably there's a lot more coming down the pike. It certainly feels transformative. It is. It's the next iteration of search,

really. I've been long complaining about search being so Neanderthal, the box we type in and the text links we get. This is search on steroids. It's a very easy way to conceive it. It's much more complicated than that, but there's a lot of stuff that we're going to finally use this data in a way that is much more helpful. It puts a lot of emphasis on asking the right question. Yeah, it does. But eventually it will be able to understand that. It'll learn, like you can ask imperfect questions. I was searching for my son a hotel, he's in Switzerland right now. And it just took me 20 tries and it was kind of ridiculous and I just gave up. If it was something like ChatGPT, you'd say, what are the best hotels in this place? And it would search in huge databases and it would give you an actual answer

versus links. Yeah, right now we search our search results. You're saying you'd rather have a 90% single good answer than a bunch of potentially bad answers. Yeah, I think it's a lot of things. I think it's the same thing, you know, wearables. I was always really against them for the longest time. I do think the new Apple one is really good. But I call them unwearables because they don't give you useful information. It tells you your steps, but what does that mean?

It doesn't tell you when you eat a donut what you should do. There's a lot of information that should be delivered unto you in a form that's much better than searching. I feel a lot of it robs us of human intuition. I remember when you were doing the levels trial and I almost did the levels, the one that you stick in the content glucose monitoring. But I'm like, I don't need to be told that I feel like crap when I eat bread or when I eat a donut. Yes, but it should tell you what to do about it. Same thing with directions. You want to go this way, you might want to see this. It's okay. It's like it's an assistant is what it is, but it's search on steroids in a way that's helpful versus you doing all the heavy lifting. That's the best of it. That's the best of it. Is AI going to help

us get to a world of convergence or divergence, like where everybody creates their own stories and systems? I don't know. I think if you see it as an assistant, a really smart assistant, that could be great. It could help a lot of people. If there's AI on people's phones, people could have so much medical information, they're not available to them right now. That kind of stuff is really amazing. Or banking information, or all kinds of things. There's crop information and everything. You could think about that in a really smart way. If it's used to divide, and it will be, like here's a message that isn't true.

And bad actors always find a way to take technology and warp it. It's either a nuclear bomb or it's a nuclear reactor that warms us. Like, what is it? And so it's always going to be turned into a weapon. And so that's what I would worry about is how can you weaponize all these things? Because I think technologists have a rosy view of the future where they're always like, oh, it's going to be great. And I'm like, yeah, but what if it's not great? What's the bad thing? And they don't tend to want to traffic in those ideas because they think it's a bummer, which is my middle name for me in Silicon

Valley. Kara Bummer Swisher? I am. I've been called that by many technologists. Karasandra. Karasandra. Karasandra. That's right. You know, I'm a Karen,

according to some of these stupid VCs. That's the best they can do. Bring it on, boys. Well, speaking of rosy outlook, our guest today is Reid Hoffman. He's the PayPal Mafia member and LinkedIn co-founder who's become a major evangelist for AI, but has also proven throughout his career, I think, to be a counterbalance for many of his PayPal Mafia pals. Absolutely. When did you first meet

Reid? I met him very early on, I think probably right after he sold PayPal. I'm sure I ran into him with the PayPal people. He just wasn't as visible, but he was introduced to me through someone and he came to my house. And we also met at early LinkedIn. He brought me in to look at it and what I thought, and he had me sign up for it early on. And then he became a venture capitalist. And, you know, we just kept running into each other all over the place. He also, I know this sounds crazy, but he often tells the truth.

People lie to you, Kara? Yeah, I know. Shocker. I often would call him and say, what do you think of this? And it's not the only call I would make, but it was always a reliable person to get a good take on things because he was very straightforward. He has very little ego compared to everyone else. Very little ego. Yeah. He seems like, you know, along with Max Levchin, kind of the good guy of the bunch. There's a bunch. There's not that group? No, not a bunch in that group. I was going to say a bunch. Yeah, no, there's a bunch of them.

Yeah, I do. I see him as a benevolent force compared to many others. But again, it's a very low bar. Yeah. He's just a very high quality venture capitalist. He's always open to new ideas. He seems to always look on the sunny side of the street. He's very optimistic.

He is very. Is he living in the same place as we all are? You know, we've had this argument for years. Even going back, I would be like, you don't see the bad parts of this. He's like, you're always seeing the bad sides. Here's the sunny part. So he sees the silver lining. I see the gray cloud often. In addition to that, he's also just had this outsized political influence, but in a very different way than Peter Thiel does. He's been a donor to Democrats, to major Democratic causes and to Biden. Yeah, he's a Democrat. And most recently, he was reported to play a key kind of interlocutor role between Washington and Silicon Valley during the SVB crisis. It was

reported that he was putting pressure on the Biden administration to figure it out. And, you know, he brought in his thoughts and quietly, and that's what he did. And that was important for, they have to hear from everybody to know what to do. And I think he was substantive and useful and helpful in figuring out what to do. He didn't order them around or anything like that. He didn't tweet about it and he didn't, he wasn't loud about it. He just, he played his role, which is there's a lot of responsible people who think of themselves as citizens and they want this solved. And it's not just him, it was Clymer Perkins and some other venture capitalists who really wanted to help solve the situation and stabilize it more than anything. And we were meant to take the interview actually weeks ago.

You were sick, and then we had to cancel, and then he had to cancel because he was laboring over a book, which he's co-writing with GPT-4. How much laboring can you do if AI is helping you write the book? But it's been perfect that he pushed it back because now we have him at the right time. Yeah, absolutely. It's perfect timing. He's right in the middle of a lot of things, the GPD-4, the bank, and innovation because he always looks forward and he's got a podcast called Possible. Of course, it's called Possible and this book on how good AI is going to be for us. And so we'll challenge him on some of that and we'll see what he has to say. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with the interview. Advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

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yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Welcome, Reid. We haven't talked in a while, have we? It is on! you know, meet my friend. And was you and Megan? I was like, oh, hey, I've heard about you guys. You're great. Yeah. So we're going to cover a lot of stuff in your role as key AI evangelist of how your relationship is holding up with your former PayPal bros, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. We're going to talk about your idea of Possible, which is the name of your new podcast, and what it means in a larger sense. You are the hope side of the coin. I am the non-hope side of the coin because I feel possible has brought a lot of damage. We can debate that, as we always do. And obviously, we're going to talk about GBT4 and where AI is going. But

first, we have to start talking about Silicon Valley Bank. I was at a dinner last night with some administration figures all through the government, and they paid you, while they insulted a lot of the Silicon Valley bros, they paid you many compliments for bringing sensibility and information they needed. Talk to me about what you did. I don't think you solved the crisis, but you know what I mean. What was your role? Well, okay, I think, you know, you've characterized it well, which is you try to provide the most accurate information for kind of the healthy governance of society. So it wasn't conversations about like, oh, my portfolio companies are in trouble at Silicon Valley Bank. That's corruption if you're trying to do that within government.

is not the shareholders of Silicon Valley Bank, but actually all the startups, all the companies that are trying to make payroll, the possible contagion effect within the regional banking system. And Silicon Valley Bank is the 16th largest bank in the US. And one of the things we've learned from Lehman Brothers and other kinds of things is that very first domino

is the cheapest domino to do something about. That's a very good way of putting it. And you want to stop the contagion, right? You want people to have payroll. You don't want people to worry about it or payments processing for the operations of their business. And so that was the kind of thing I was trying to get them focused on. And I think a lot of the folks did a really good job of very quickly upping their game because Silicon Valley Bank kind of dropped a bomb in their lap when they weren't expecting it, you know, from left field. So did you go to D.C.?

You speak to Biden. You obviously have ties, and we'll talk about that in a minute because you've been a big Democratic donor. But how do you do that without looking like you're self-dealing or that it's in your self-interest? Everything is in someone's self-interest. But a lot of people were like, oh, the rich tech guys want their money. What I promptly did is dropped a whole variety of people, kind of emails and other communications saying, look, I have a point of view on this.

It's not about anything with me economically, but here's a set of things that I think are really important for you to consider. I'm happy to talk at length. A number of people called me back and said, okay, what did you want to do? Of course, the reason why you stay off Twitter and everything else is part of the damage that's done here is panic, and that causes the damage. And so you're just like, look,

I'm just trying to give you information. I'm trying to help. Let me know how I can help, but here's what I would suggest. And part of it is, roughly speaking, you know, let me know what to, you know, how I can help, but here's what I would, I would suggest. And, you know, and part of it is, you know, roughly speaking, you know, you have this debate about bailout and you say, well, you know, depositors are not investors, right? Depositors are like running their business or anything else. And obviously, you know, the, like, if you have, you know, just massive deposits. And of course, by the way, you now small businesses have actually back millions of dollars in their account and doing stuff. And this bank in particular. Yeah, because our whole thing in a fractional banking system is you want to stop these kind of panics and contagion. Every bank can have a run on the bank because, in fact,

actually it's a fractional banking system. If all of a sudden, you know, a huge percentage of the dollars in deposit flow out, every bank can fail on that. And so you want to adjust your financial system so that doesn't happen, right? Because of the knock-on effects. And that was essentially what we were talking about. And I think, you know, part of what my partners and I at Greylock have been doing is setting up, like, contributing to a fund that we were going to loan and actually did to a of our portfolio companies personally loaned for hitting payroll to make sure the employees were taken care of and didn't have to, you know, suffer the hiccups, uncertainty and fear. If they weren't getting their money on Monday, which they were quite worried about. And I did hear about a lot of the venture capitals

doing this, making sure things didn't go haywire. Do you have a thought on what happened? And you talked about the fear-mongering, particularly on Twitter, but the pulling the money out fast, the VCs writing to get your money out. A lot of VCs didn't. They said, keep it there. Let's keep this bank going. And so there seemed to be a split between the ones who want to do a citizen role and getting the stabilization of this thing and those who are catastrophe- mongers in a lot of ways. And it further underscored the idea that the rich and powerful want to get while the getting's good for themselves. And that's a bad look, I think. Well, it's definitely a bad look, although,

you know, part of the challenge you have is kind of this classic, you know, prisoner's dilemma theory, which is if you go, oh my gosh, there might be a panic and a run, you know, your responsibilities to your employees and company is to say, well, you know, be defensive. It's dual wire and so forth. Right. And so, you know, what we were trying to do was to kind of navigate both, which was, look, there's risk here and, you know, both, which was, look, there's risk here and the panic stampede will cause all the damage. And we really don't want anyone to be doing that. But if part of the advice that we gave our companies during the crisis time was say, well, look, if you move it into certain money market funds and other kinds of things where it's off the Silicon Valley Bank banking sheet, you can still be there and supportive and not actually,

in fact, run the risk, you know, legally of, you know, what the FDIC did, obviously, to say, well, you know, if you got your $250,000, we'll give you that and everything else, we don't know, right? Which, of course, caused tremendous amounts of panic. Right. And, you know, I think we're still seeing echoes of it. Yeah. Do you think that's a danger for Silicon Valley, which has already undergone a lot of knocks, to look like that? And to look like, you know, a lot of people do keep knocking the government and saying they're not doing anything. I was on Twitter. I'm not on Twitter a lot anymore. But I'm like, will you calm down?

You think they're playing pickleball all weekend? They know what they're doing in this case. Usually regulators around banks are pretty good in crises. And so I was like, calm the fuck down, making it worse by yelling. And the usefulness is helping them understand what to do. I call them screaming mimi's, but you know what I mean. You get my point. Yeah.

Well, that was obviously what I was doing and kind of trying to lob in phone calls with a, here's the situation as I see it. Here's how I can help. Let me know if I can help more. That's the reason I didn't call them initially, just sent them information because it was like, look, they're triaging an emergency. You don't walk into the surgery that's happening in the ER room and say, hey, let me help. Like, no, no, no. I'm here if you need me. Here are my dirty hands and to make it even worse. You know, I think this is very typical of people who have knowledge and also have skin in the game to be distrusted, right? But you would know more than anyone, presumably, what was to

happen. Did your relationships with the Biden administration help that? You would have done the same, presumably, if it was the Trump administration. I would have. I think probably the relationships is they know that, you know, that I'm a trusted source. Actually, in fact, last year, when I was sitting and talking with the president, he said, you know, you're one of the people who really helped me in the election, and you never call for anything. I was like, yeah, that's not why I do it. You don't want to be ambassador somewhere? No, right. No, it's what's best for our society. It not it's you know and look here's the areas where i have expertise so i can be helpful you've jumped on the public service

grenade if there's something i can be helpful i think government's super important you know one of the places where there's obviously some memes and zeitgeist within silicon valley is like you know government is the is the bureaucratic irritating thing that gets in the way but the government is actually the infrastructure in which we live, we have to be responsive. We have to try to help it. Obviously, there's lots of, you know, crud. It's like, what is it? If you don't like laws or sausages, don't watch them being made, you know, or if you like them, don't watch them being made. You know, it's obviously a lot of challenges in this kind of complex human society that we live in. But government's super important. And this is one of the areas where multiple times they've stepped up, not just 2008, but they stepped up and say, okay, we're going to

make sure that the system keeps running in a healthy way. And this shows you the criticality of government and the society we live in. But how does it look like it's not tantrums by Silicon Valley boys because they're not getting what they want? First, they insult government, and then they, where is government? Why are they not here to save us? It's sort of like insulting the fire department and saying, it does feel like that, and it's quite ugly, is what it is.

It's like teenagers. It's like, stay out of my life until I need you, and then, you know, where are you doing the things I need you to be doing? And so I do think it's important for us to say, no, no, look, this is a clear demonstration of where government's really important. I think if we just make it a Silicon Valley issue, I think that's not productive. You know, I think the real thing is, how should the financial system work, generally speaking, for small businesses, entrepreneurial,

et cetera? You know, by the way, I think Silicon Valley Bank has played a really good role in helping all the entrepreneurship of the area. I think it's been a great institution. What do you imagine is going to happen to this bank now? And what should happen to it? Well, I don't really know. It's an interesting thing. I haven't, you know, so far as I can just reading the press, have no inside information.

I haven't been able to find a buyer for it. The regional banks have gotten under a lot of pressures. And I think part of the reason when you want regional banks, same thing as startups, is you want innovation in different kinds of areas that, you know, how do you provide services and work with the entrepreneurial ecosystems? And that's not just code for Silicon Valley. I want entrepreneurship across the entire country and not just in tech. I think that the things that we should be thinking about are what are the general rules that we need to upgrade, you know, just like we upgraded

kind of regulation around credit default swaps and other kinds of things to make sure that that isn't a vulnerability in the financial ecosystem. It's like, well, okay, we have these fractional banking. We won't just have necessarily consumer runs on banks. We might have small business runs on banks. We want regional banks to be kind of a flourishing ecosystem. What are the things that we need to do in order to make that work? Sure, but this one was a little cozy with the people.

These loans, these no-money-down loans, these doing risky deals with tech people. It sort of reflected a little bit of a creature of the place rather than what a bank should be doing, which is being much more conservative. Yeah, although I don't think anything of the things that you mentioned were any of the things that caused the failure point. But, you know, it could be a cost with the Biden administration of doing this. Again, the Republicans right now are going back and forth with Janet Yellen. Do you think it'll hurt him in the election? You're obviously a big Democratic donor. Will you be backing him in the next election? Well, it all depends. I tend to go, I think so. I think there's a good likelihood. I tend to get involved in politics when I think there's a very

important difference between the two candidates. I'm frequently on the Democratic side, not only. It's when somebody is kind of, I think, trying to do the right thing for society and the other party is corrosive and terrible. So obviously, I think, you know, Trump's one of the worst figures in my lifetime history. And so that was part of getting involved. And I think Biden is a very straightforward kind of centrist American values. He's like, look, what for your everyday Americans is the thing that he wants to do?

And so likely to be supportive. Yeah, you said, I think so. What does that mean? If it's Trump, yes. Trump, absolutely, yes. No question. And probably a number of others. Now, you know, I mean, say you had, I mean, I don't think it's going to play. DeSantis, yes. Trump, absolutely, yes. No question. And probably a number of others. Now, you know, I mean, say you had, I mean, I don't think it's going to play.

DeSantis, Biden. Well, DeSantis, I'm almost certainly in the Biden camp, you know, like 99.9999% unless there's like, you know, an asteroid passes close to the earth, you know, something. Because that's what DeSantis is good at fixing. But go ahead. Yeah, exactly. No, but like, for example, take a republican that i've supported charlie baker from massachusetts you know if it was charlie and and president biden you know i might go okay look you know i prefer biden but but both could be good right great but you think this money that you inserting yourself

has it cost you friendships um some one person noted to me it's been pricey for you to do this yeah it's pricey in uh lots of ways but because i feel like i'm doing look i think um it wouldn't be as valuable doing the right thing if it was just easy frequently doing the right thing is difficult to It takes some pain and suffering, some diversion, and it's one of the things where you, like, when you feel fear or you feel, like, regret on something, that may be showing you that that's really the thing you should be doing. Silicon Valley's gotten considerably the other direction from your politics. Yeah.

I mean, I think, look, I think the real price for me is time and money and all the rest. You know, I think that because I do the things I do, that I think that even the people that I'm on the opposite side of the table of and fighting hard against don't necessarily disregard me. And I think frequently they hope when they try to get something bipartisan done, I'm one of the people they call. They say, you know, roughly the number of times I feel phone calls is like that are of the royal, well, you know, those Democrats, can you help this happen? Right. I see. So you're the Democratic friend, because they haven't gone in your direction. And again, you and I, one thing we've argued about is Peter Thiel. I think it's been decades,

two decades that we've been arguing about Peter Thiel from PayPal, but you knew him at Stanford, whereas as Insider put it, you had a reputation of being a pinko commie, and he was a libertarian wacko. What's your relationship now? Now, you were quite on polar opposite sides of this. You were a big blue donor. He backed Blake Masters, J.D. Vance, Trump, most famously. It's, you know, look, I think it's probably been challenging for both of us. You know, Peter at one point was kind of saying, hey, look, let's stop talking about Trump. This is only getting in the way. And I was like, look, until we get to resolution here, we can't talk about anything else, right? I think Peter was trying to, you know, legitimately as a friend, you know, kind of like navigate the,

okay, we're just hammering at each other on this. It was like, look, if it's hammering at each other about like, you know, Rene Girard or memetic politics or theory, it's like, great, it's theory. This is like people's lives, a corrosion of democracy. So you won't give up on that. You said we're not going to talk about it. Of course he'd want you not to talk about it, right? Because then you can all have a drink or whatever. You basically said Trump is a fascist threat.

So you do not split hairs on this issue? No. And does that affect your friendship? It does. I mean, Peter and I talk a lot less now than we used to. I mean, a lot less. Partially because it's like, well, if we're going to talk, we're going to argue about this. Because I think part of being a moral person and part of actually also when you interact with your friends, if you have a moral issue, you do not let go until the moral issue is resolved.

Does he hear you? Do you have an impact? And I'm using him as a whole. There's a whole gang. Yeah. There's a gang. There's not a gang of you, I'll be honest with you. I don't know.

I try as best I can. And, you know, people, smart people, it's difficult to change their mind. can and and you know people smart people it's difficult to change their mind i mean you know difficult to change your mind difficult to change my mind um because you know you you think through stuff um but i do um you know i guess what i would say is i keep looking for what are the things by which you know and frankly kind of being intellectually open is, look, if I engage in discussion with someone or I'm trying to persuade their mind, I'm also open to changing my mind, you know, to good arguments. But like, for example, good arguments are not things like… Bitter taxes. Yeah.

But also, like, for example, like, let's state the absurdity. Yeah, but also, like, for example, like, let's state the absurdity. The theory, as I understand it, is that now President Biden stole the election from President Trump in states that had a Republican secretary of state or secretary of electorate only for himself, not for other Democrats, right? Yeah. You know, and you're like, get some help, right? This is like Martians are running the White House kind of theory. It's like, you know, take the tinfoil hat off. And do you say that? That's sometimes Peter. Take your tinfoil hat off. If Trump is the candidate, will you spend as much in I possibly can and it takes and is effective because I think it would be destructive to our society, destructive to the world. You know, I think the January 6th insurrection that is, you know, essentially incited by Trump, you know, is just the beginning

of how bad it can be. And so I think everyone, it's our duty as patriots, as Americans, to stand for it. And so, yeah, I will be standing up. Right in the front. So one of the things you also stood up, and this is somewhat on brand for you, is this effective altruism mix, a movement for which Sam Bacon Freed became the poster child until he, you know, wasn't. Talk about what happened here. Can charity be as toxic and vanity-driven as for-profit investing? Well, you know, people can always wrap themselves in things that can be, you know, kind of like effective altruism. It's a perfectly good theory. It's how do you do the most good for the most people measured by quality days of life, and how do you broaden that to not just being anthropocentric but care about farm animals and much other stuff.

And you're like, well, what's not to like about that stuff? You're like, that seems reasonable. And there's a number of very smart, very capable, effective altruists, a number of whom are friends, Will McCaskill, other folks. I think what you take what's really good in all that stuff. Now, the fact that someone says, look, I wrap myself in effective altruism and I'm perpetuating essentially, you know, just again reading the press, have no incitement, but what looks like a bunch of fraud, right, and misrepresentation as a way of doing that, well, you know, that's not even what effective altruists would say that they should be. So, I. So I don't have a negative aversion reaction to effective altruism. But you have a negative averse reaction to Sam Bagman-Fried.

Yeah. So my producer was listening to some old conversations, especially the 2017 one. You and I had Mark Andreessen. I don't know if you remember that. I do. He was saying he didn't want to talk politics, and he kept talking about politics. But there's a clip of that conversation I want to play for you. This was something after Dean McKay had said

about the responsibility of publishers and platforms. I asked you about the responsibility of social media companies to acknowledge and try to fix the problems of disinformation on their platforms, and this is what you said. We have to be able to talk. If you can't have some basis for conversation which says, okay, this is what we think the truth is, this is where we think we should

be going. It's very difficult for a democracy to work. So, you know, it's everything from the kind of win the future. This is this organization. Yes. WTF. WTF with a deliberate, you know, kind of. I see what you're doing. Yes. I find it juvenile, but go right ahead. Oh, well, we specialize in juvenile. I know that. Believe me, after many years of covering all of you, I get that. So where is WTF now? You know, you were talking about the idea of being able to talk and having those things. Are we better or worse, or what do you think? Well, I think WTF maybe became what the bleep. You know, look, the experiments, and I believe in entrepreneurial

experiments and trying to make stuff happen uh i think we are obviously worse on getting the bridges for truth-oriented discourse like i loved when you know like during the election twitter started putting a box around things saying get the facts like on vaccine or or election denialism or so forth i thought that was a very good thing to do. It's like, look over here, this is an authoritative source of information, right? That's over, but that's over. Yeah, I understand. But I think that was great. That was a great innovation. That's the kind of thing that we should be thinking about to try to get us into a truth-oriented discourse. And, you know, I think that the important thing is to have,

look, we've made progress through science. We've made progress through democracy. It's like having the discussion, having legitimate arguments. It's part of the reason why, you know, into your earlier questions, there's a bunch of folks who are still, as far as I have found the Republican Party turn to Trumpism to be, you know, toxic and terrible. You know, there's a number of people who are still identify themselves as Republican. We talk and we argue because, you know, it's kind of like the discourse aimed at truth is how we make progress, both as a democracy and as a society. Well, you're still hopeful. I think they're gaming us, all of us. But anyway, you were mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. Do you consider yourself a mentor to him still?

I don't know if I've ever, I think to be considered a mentor, I think he would also have to consider me a mentor. Like we'd have to have that relation. I think we have a collegial relationship where like, you know, I learn from him, he learns from me, but I wouldn't say it's a mentorship. When's the last time you talked to him? About what? Well, I think the last time was a couple months ago, but it was, I serve on the Chan Zuckerberg

biohub, trying to cure infectious disease around the world. And, you know, I think, you know, in the very strong credit camp for him and Priscilla is like, investing a ton of money on how do we help fix infectious disease everywhere. So we were last talking about that. How do you imagine they're going? They're recovered a little bit, but he's moving out of the metaverse and everything else. Well, Mark is one of the most strategic people that I know. And I think, obviously, seeing that 2023 is the year of AI, metaverse... The year of efficiency at his company, but go ahead.

Yes. And I don't have any inside information on that. I read the same news you do. But I think he's like, ah, this tech platform is super important. I think you could just watch the tea leaves and see him shifting towards that. Absolutely. Have you spoken to Elon? You obviously worked with him.

I have not spoken to Elon since last summer. I've spoken to him more recently. That's unusual since we are having some problems. What do you think he should be focusing on? You do know him. You spend time with him. Obviously, SpaceX is running smoothly with Gwen Shotwell. He has Neuralink, Tesla.

I think he should be focusing on those things. Of course, this is what he's been doing, which is a lot of tantrum throwing, et cetera, and worse. LinkedIn is probably the polar opposite of these platforms. How do you look at what's happened there? So, you know, I think there's a kind of almost amusing line, which is, you know, Twitter is not rocket science. And, you know, maybe... It sounds like AI wrote that joke, but we'll get to that in one second. Yes, exactly. But, you know, Elon, you know, is amazing when it's rocket science and Tesla. And, you know, I regret every hour he's not spending on those. I would obviously handle Twitter in many,

many ways very differently than he would be. He's an amazing entrepreneur. But obviously, the political stuff, I think, is wrong. I think the layoff stuff was kind of careening down the road, flattening things on the way. And so I would handle it differently. Now, that being said, again, maybe I would have more information if, like, he called and asked about something or whatever. But I literally, I read the same news you do. What would you say to him, given this other stuff that's happened? Because I found this to be a real shift, even though he had elements of this always.

I worry a little bit that he is in his own filter bubble of advisors that are kind of giving the— Punch, punch, punch, keep punching. Not only that, but also kind of like the misinformation theory, right? And, you know, one of the things that, you know, Elon's a fighter, and so when he gets attacked, so if he gets attacked by the left, like, you know, I thought it was absurd. He wasn't invited to the Biden, you know, electric vehicles thing. I agree. You know, he fights. And I would just like him to be fighting in the right direction. I think in that case, he got overly mad. It's just one slight. And it's fine. It's fine. But he didn't need to then go whole hog the other direction. I think when he,

it's not an eye for an eye for him. it's an eye on the whole head, essentially. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform can help your businesses stand out,

stay top of mind, and see big results. Sell more, raise more, and build more genuine relationships with your audience through a suite of digital marketing tools made to fast-track your growth. With Constant Contact, you can get email marketing that helps you create and send the perfect email to every customer and create, promote, and manage your events with ease all in one place. Get all the automation, integration, and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly, all backed by Constant Contact's expert live customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to constantcontact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. Let's talk about artificial intelligence. You've been an integral backer of OpenAI since 2015,

along with Elon Musk and others, until you recently stepped down earlier this month to avoid conflicts of interest. But talk about why you stepped down. Sam and I were talking a lot about how the ecosystem is going to create a whole bunch of startups. And as I started thinking about it and talking with him, I realized that, you know, Greylock were very actively investing in a bunch of these things. And, you know, like, I literally today in my email box got three different requests from Greylock startup companies going, hey, can we get privileged in the queue, you know, for GBD4 access and so forth. And, you know, like when I'm on the board, nonprofit responsibility, I have to say, I can't touch that, right? Because you can't be doing anything that's even remotely

close to private enrichment. And it was like, okay, we're going to have to do more and more management of this stuff. And I was like, you know, I think it's, you know, my day job is investing at Greylock. I think it's best if we don't even have an appearance of conflict of interest, even though I think we can manage it and don't have to do all the work managing it. And so I stepped off the board. Right. You also want to get into this. It's a huge investment bonanza happening right now. I want you to explain some of these technologies in a lightning round. Tell me what the use case is in your assessment of how revolutionary it's been or will be. ChatGPT, the old iteration of OpenAI's language processing.

So the simple description is it's like an amazing research assistant across a wide variety of things that gives you an instant answer. And what that will mean for everyone who does any professional activity, and I think professional activity is I consume information, I make a decision. I might make a decision about investing, I might make a decision about a prescription, I might make a decision about where to go, et cetera. There will be a co-pilot that will be between useful and essential for you doing that activity, you doing that job within two to five years. Okay. So that's a helpful assistant. Dolly, which was also open and more focused on visual creation, meaning mushing up pictures and things like that. Yeah. I wrote essays about Dolly saying, look, this isn't replacing graphic designer jobs. This is amplifying whether you're no skill, I wrote essays about Dolly saying, look, this isn't replacing graphic designer jobs.

This is amplifying whether you're no skill, low skill, medium skill, or high skill. It makes you more effective in what you're doing. And it gives even no skill people in graphic design like me some powers where I can send my friend Kara a birthday card and kind of craft it myself. Right. All right. GPT-4, this is the new multi-language model that can interpret images along with presumably better answers.

It's a bigger language model, et cetera. What about that? Well, I published a book, as you know, called Impromptu, and I authored it with GPT-4, and it gives much deeper, richer language information. And it can range anything from, you know, like dad jokes to like deep analyses. Like, you know, like in my Fireside Chatbots with ChatGVT, I talked about, well, how does language mean in Wittgenstein's theory of language and language games? You know, you could do this whole range of things. And that's a lens into the assistant I was talking about. Yeah, you used one with Jerry Seinfeld, which was better than

Wittgenstein. DeepMind, which was acquired by Google many years ago. I actually broke that story when that happened. I don't think I realized how important it was. Well, DeepMind was one of the organizations that kicked off the new

massive scale computing iteration. You know, there's Demis Hassabis, my co-founder at Inflection, Mustafa Suleiman, Shane Legg, you know, kind of brought this together and said, look, this could be super important for solving a bunch of the world's problems. Like they're working on protein folding, which could mean all kinds of things for medicine and scientific advancement. And so it's one of the original gang, you know, in the revolution. Search engines powered by AI, like Bingbot or Google's BigBard. So I think one of the reasons why I think it's fairly straightforward that this will be a major step forward is that frequently what people want is an answer to something

versus 10 blue links that they have to hunt through and see if any of that information. So that it will be search on steroids in a lot of ways. Then this new company, Inflection AI, which you did co-found with DeepMind, co-founder Mustafa Suleiman,

after 20 years without founding anything, did you go along with Inflection versus just investing in his vision? Why did you do that? I think that's a bigger conflict for OpenAI's board, to my mind. We were navigating that. That's just, you know,

kind of caustically what you do is you keep me out of certain information flows and, you know, that's fine. It doesn't affect the kind of governance. I was lining up financing, right? I was the, hey, you know, Greylock's going to lead the Series A. You know, I'll be on your board.

And then we started working through the go-to-market and the product conception and mustafa turned to me and said i really love you to co-found this with me and i was like well look i'm full-time investor graylock responsibilities on these boards already so no like a day a week i was like oh i can do that and it's just what's going on with with these ai assistants uh this what, what I'm calling amplification intelligence in Impromptu, is it's transformative for where we're— So it's too big for you not to be on the sidelines. Was it okay to remain on the board of Microsoft, which is a major OpenAI partner, and not on the board of OpenAI? Yeah. Part of the way you navigate it in the Microsoft, you make sure that the board and Satya and others and Brad have, you know, all the visible information so they can make a choice about

whether or not, you know, I'm involved or not. And like, for example, when, you know, OpenAI and Microsoft were doing their deals, you know, I wasn't part of the deal negotiation or the voting, you know, you just navigate it. So, but you still say you're going to see an ally to them, nonetheless. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, part of the thing that was a little strange about it is what I was on the board of was a 501c3, where the mission is beneficial AI for humanity.

I am still 100% committed to that mission. I can still work on that mission with great vigor and help, and I know that they are committed to that mission. I can still work on that mission with great vigor and help. And I know that they are committed to that mission. So I was reading a recent blog post on that departure, which you talked about elevating humanity through tech. And it reminded me of a piece you wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year about how technology makes us more human. And then it reminded me of all our conversations where we were on opposite sides many, many years ago where I was like, this is going to end badly, Reid. And you're like, no, it's not this, this, this, and this. I thought you were a bit rosy, anonymous trolls, disinformation. Talk to me why you keep saying this. Like, I don't think you're stupid. That's not what I'm calling you. Thank you.

But I am saying, you got to be kidding, given where we've gone from, right? Look, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff where even a bunch of the technologies that we're having troubles with and working through today have added a bunch of different value to our lives. And, you know, obviously, I could bore you to tears

with talking about where I think LinkedIn is super valuable and, you know, helps everyone's lives. I don't have a problem with LinkedIn. But it isn't that I deny that there aren't challenges with, you know, currently deployed technology

or being developed technology, but I think that shaping the technology is the solution and that the solution can be so much better. So, for example, let's talk about AI. If you say, well, I have line of sight right now to every smartphone having an AI tutor and an AI doctor that could be for everybody, everybody in the entire world who has a smartphone. Delaying that is a huge cost in human suffering, right? Like, that's a hugely valuable thing. As opposed to the links, like, I've got a cough and this, it says you need to get to the hospital, that kind of thing. Yeah, could be in order of probability, it could be these three things.

Let me ask you some questions, right? Right. Oh, shit, this is dangerous. Right. Even Bing Chat today, a guy who's working on some of this medical stuff at Microsoft was showing me Bing Chat live and was showing me how it would go, oh, stop talking to me. You know, call 911. Right, right. It could do that. Right. So I know you're an investor and I believe you're a believer. I want you to argue the other side, the black mirror version of AI. In 2020, Elon, when he was speaking to me, told me, quote, AI doesn't have to hate us to destroy us. I want you to argue that side. tends to be very science fiction. So it tends to be, you know, Hollywood, Terminator, you know, Ex Machina, etc.

But what I would say is, look, what are the real dangers? Real dangers are AI can be a bunch of tools in the hands of bad human beings, cybersecurity, other kinds of weapons. Well, like, for example, in terms of bad governments, it could be an instrument of repression. weapons well like for example in terms of bad governments and it could be an instrument of repression if not being paid attention to could be a instrument of systematizing various forms of injustices um you know whether it's you know racial or economic injustice you know with credit scoring or paroling other kinds of things um all of those things i think are realistically possible now the kind of thing you were gesturing at was like, well, it just, you know, it's

the so-called paperclip is out. You're told to maximize the number of paperclips and it eliminates human beings and trying to do that. And, you know, that's like saying, okay, well, there's one kind of supercomputer that controls the whole world and so forth. And so, you know, I do pay attention to this. It's part of the safety and alignment stuff that all of the different AI groups that I work with. And I don't see anything close to that.

So you're not as scared. The possibilities are bigger. You're writing books and hosting podcasts. You're a media mogul. Tell me what you're trying to demonstrate because the book, Impromptu, is called Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI. The cover is a giant thinking man made of code, I think. I think it's a little stunty, but it is funny. You call it the co-pilot, your author's co-pilot. And you say, how might you use GPT-4 to help continue our long-standing quest to make life more meaningful

and prosperous? How can we help it solve some of the hardest challenges we face to expand opportunities? This is a very positive person. And your podcast is called Possible, like not impossible or improbable or get out the way because it's going to kill us, that kind of thing. Talk a little bit of what you're trying to do here and why you wrote a book with GPT-4 other than it's a great thing to say. Well, it is a fun thing to say and causes people to comment on like you just did. The short answer is, look, technology in very much is part of how we shape it. And part of, for example, that earlier existential risk thing is actually I think we can shape this with work and with diligence and intelligence to being really, really good. And, for example, the general discourse around AI is, oh, it's going to take jobs.

The only reason I think people are doing this is in order to make more money from this. And I think that the point is to realize what the positive, the possible great futures that we can work towards, and how do we go do that? And I think that any scale problem between 30 to 80 percent of the solution is technology. Obviously, AI will be an important part of that technology in a number of cases. But I think that that's something that we need to kind of be motivated by hope, not fear in doing this. And I think our dialogue, you know, to wrap all the way back to our early conversation is much more like the, you know, the Silicon Valley Bank. Don't panic. don't panic. It's like, no, no, let's build something good.

And that's what I'm trying to encourage. It's growing very quickly. Your first chapter knows that by February, 2023, OpenAI said the chat GPT had 100 million monthly active users. How is that possible? Well, because it's new magic, right? You can have this conversation about like anything that ranges from here's the leftovers in my fridge, what should I cook for dinner,

to like my friend's pet just died, I'm trying to figure out how to talk to them, and what I should say and not say, right? And so, that range is like super important. I think that was the thing that everyone went, oh my gosh, this is now new. I mean, you know, a couple of years ago, it was like, oh, we're going to get a computer that passes the Turing test. I'm like, well, okay, yep, we kind of done that, right? Right. So you're giddy about it. I mean, a lot of people are in this idea. Are we building a second floor on top of a crummy house of disinformation? Because social media was ripe with enthusiasm, left to run rampant. We're paying a little bit of the price there. How to avoid that? I mean, liability is one thing. I don't believe this is covered by

Section 230, so there's liability issues. But how do we, this is more powerful, more prevalent, more able to do all these things that we already have a problem with, what should the government be doing right now? Well, generally speaking, part of the usual problem with the format of government is it's trying, it worries about risk in the future, so it tries to enshrine the past. What I think we need to do is a different thing is what future outcomes do we want to get to and what future outcomes do we want to avoid to discuss that in some specific so like when i'm asked by government folks what to do is i look engage in dialogue and be specific about what you what you want to what kind of things you want to see and what kinds of things you really don't want to see now for example take this information

you know i think that the question would be as like you know well how do you then use technology as part of the solution well i was already gesturing at the kind of Twitter boxing of inspiration of get the facts. Well, you can imagine, you know, kind of AI is a powerful search technology, you know, kind of web with search like Bing kind of going, oh, on this, here is the search that gets to the higher probability true things, you know, get the facts like, here's how you could find some information. Here's how you could get more information. And that can be, you know, in the browser

or in, you know, in the newsfeed. And that could help, you know, kind of with... Where it's from, provenance. So if you were a government official, what would you do right now? What would the first thing that they should be passing? Well, look, I think part of it is- And don't give the Silicon Valley answer, they shouldn't get in the way of our fantastic

innovation. Well, look, what I was saying, it wouldn't be pass a law right now. What it would be is, like, I would almost do like kind of the equivalent of like a blue ribbon commission saying, what are the outcomes that are really important to have? What are the outcomes that are important to avoid? Right. And getting that versus saying, you know, kind of like thou shalt not use AI or thou shalt, you know, use AI, but only for travel planning, that kind of stuff, which is one of the dangers of it. Right. You still remain positive. And I'm going to end the show by reading, you had said, write an epic poem in the style of The Odyssey about Kara Swisher,

Reid Hoffman, and AI. And let me just read this one line, which I think sort of handles this pretty well. Reid wants to advance the tech unfurled, but Kara wonders if it's all for the best. If we're hurtling towards some unknown test. Reid speaks about the positives, the gains of technology to ease our strain, but Kara's not easily convinced. She doesn't want a future rinsed of humanity and of our need to be thoughtful, to take heed of consequence of our choices, to listen to dissenting voices. And so the two of them debate in AI's role. They contemplate the conversation ebbs and flows. But in the end, Kara knows that she won't back down from her stance.

She'll keep asking questions. She'll take her chance to fight the power and make sure we all embrace the responsibility before we fall. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Yes. So, I'm watching you, Reid Hoffman. Just remember.

Please do. Please do. I'm watching you. Really. Don't fuck up. I just got to tell you. I try not to. Yeah. Yeah. You're not the problem. And I like our debates. And, don't fuck up. I just got to tell you. I try not to. Yeah, yeah.

You're not the problem. And I like our debates, and I think you're right. Keeping talking is important with people who are able to talk and able to have discourse. Amen. Always great talking with you, Cara. He's an AI evangelist. He is. A bit of a hype man.

Oh, it's not hype. No, it's not. You always think something's because you getist. He is. A bit of a hype man. Oh, it's not hype. No, it's not. You always think something's because you get along with people is hype. This guy has created amazing amounts of technology over the years, and he likes this, and he's excited. He's a technologist. Not everybody's a hype monster. Hype is not a bad thing, by the way. The word hype is insulting.

It is. It's meant to be insulting. It's not meant to be insulting. He's enthusiastic. He's very passionate. He's very optimistic about the world. And I appreciate that he does see, it's not like he doesn't see the other bit, but he is like super enthusiastic. Just so you know, hype means extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion. I mean, he's writing a book with AI and he's doing a podcast with AI.

I know, but what do you think he's going to do? It sounds rampant, extravagant, and promoting. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, you're wrong. You're wrong about him. He's actually one of the good ones. I think he's trying to visualize the world. I mean, he said it himself. He's trying to be an antidote to the panic, right? I would rather have Reid Hoffman in charge of almost anything than most of these assholes. That's all I have to say. I'm not surprised. I thought you were a little soft with him on the SVB stuff. Because I like him and it's okay to like these people when they're doing the right things. You don't have to be an asshole to be a great interviewer.

Walt Mossberg taught me this. When he likes something, he said it. And it doesn't make him a patsy for them. It makes him, I like this. I don't think it makes a patsy, but I think people want to hear the question asked and answered. So, I mean, asking him, here's someone with skin in the game who's got pull with the president. Yeah, but everybody has skin in the game of every business they run. Like you could say that about lawyers, you could say that about doctors,

you could say that about anyone. Of course he has skin in the game. I'm not talking about it at a personal level. It is actually a systems level. We live in a society where this kind of thing happens and you rely on the benevolence of the people who have power to do things. So I get that he is one of

the good ones, but I also think that- Right, but you can say that if it's Jamie Dimon asking for money, if it's a- Yeah, but we would say that. Then that means everybody. Everybody has skin in the game and has self-interest. Everybody deserves to be asked the question about whether they can be objective. I think it's obvious they are. He's not objective. He's saying his side. Well, no, he said he was doing what was best for society. Let me tell you, compared to what the others did, 100%. He and a number of other venture capitalists were trying to do what was best to calm everything down and help the most people.

Other people were totally self-interested, totally and completely self-interested. That's a very big difference. They could care less if people are thrown out of homes or whatever happens. This other group of people does care less about the whole system. And I do believe that. I believe that, too. I've known them for 25 years. I know the difference between jerks and people who really actually do care about something bigger than themselves.

Well, it was interesting to hear Reed talk about how he engages with people who disagree with him, including some people you would describe as jerks. I do. I would engage with them, too. They don't want to engage. You asked David Sachs for lunch, and he said, no, thank you. I'm going to have a colonoscopy. Colonoscopy. I'd make him pay. But I appreciated his approach, which is to ask questions.

Yep, yep, he does. Which I think is really an approach that works particularly in the Valley, where people are more rationalist, and so they're willing to kind of consider questions more than arguments. And he certainly affiliated himself with people that are more like Microsoft, Satya Nadella. The people he's affiliated with have been the ones that are trying to do bigger things without constantly breaking things down. And I think there are people who want to just see it all burn and they want to start new banks. You know why they want this bank to go under? Because they want new banks. They want their banks. And so I think there's also a group of

people who want to, you know, it's an imperfect society. They want to help make it better. And it's a very stark group difference in Silicon Valley of people. Well, I think one of the things I hope is that, you know, obviously Reid Hoffman came in to put some pressure on the system, but I hope that to the extent that people stay activated around what are the systemic issues that cause this problem and how do we prevent it with ideally more regulatory oversight in the future. Presumably. But there's two sides to that in terms of the, you know, always trying to cut something down on, you know, like, you know, the first thing Elizabeth Warren went to was all the problems. And I get why she is, but at one point she's got to say why it's a good thing. Also, what's the first thing Elizabeth Warren went to was all the problems. And I get why she is, but at one point, she's got to say why it's a good thing. Also, what's the good thing?

What's the medical stuff? Seems very promising, right? And so you have to, it's like, what's the internet? Is it good or bad? I don't know. No, actually, like, I'm a believer that AI is, like, is neutral. It's how you use it. That's right.

I think the question is, is it inevitable? Are we ready for it? Have we designed enough as a society, as a government around that? And those are big questions. And the move fast and break things philosophy that you're so familiar with in Silicon Valley, how do we avoid that here? Politicians and our leaders have to understand that it's both things. And on the whole, if we put it in the right direction, rather than do sort of a Cassandra-like thing, which I think, listen, I'm the number one Cassandra of Silicon Valley. You are. Carisandra. But I was also right. Like, I also love technology.

And I love the possibilities of it. And so I think you have to see what is the good stuff, stress that, and then deal with the stuff that's a problem. It's the yes and kind of thing of doing both of them. And I think that's really hard. And I do think people go to their corners and they don't have a more rounded thing, which is why I like talking to someone like Reid Hoffman. Because he at least has a perspective that's not just one-sided. And that's a pleasure. Because he sees what's possible.

Possible. It is literally the perfect name for that guy. He's always been like this. Let me tell you, when he had no money and just, he did have money from PayPal. He's just an idealist. He really has been. He has changed not one friggin' iota. And the first time we met, I remember him, you know, this is going to be this.

And I go, you've got to fucking be kidding. This is going to kill us. And I had been grown up on, you know, Terminator and that kind of thing. And so would he, but he was a Star Trek person. He loves that stuff. And I'm like, no, they're going to kill us. They're going to kill us if they get a chance, if we put our heads above the ground. Anyway, I enjoy talking to him. I really like him. And I like talking to people I like sometimes. All right. Well, want to read us out, Cara? Absolutely. Today's show was produced by Naeem Arraza, Blakeney Schick, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Rafaela Seward. Special thanks to Hayley Millican. Our engineers are Fernanda Arrudo

and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, congratulations. GPT-4 will write you a lovely thank you card. If not, it's big bard for you. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.