Why AI Is Good for Humans (with Reid Hoffman)

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🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

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Summary

Should we worry about the human future in a world of AI? Reid Hoffman is unafraid and even optimistic. He argues that the brave new world that awaits is going to be great for humanity. Listen as he talks about his book Superagency with EconTalk's Russ Roberts and argues that the future is bright not just for AI, but for the people who remake the world using it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.2	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econTalk.org.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.6	Today is December 26th, 2024.
0:40.0	My guest is Entrepreneur Venture Capitalist and author Reid Hoffman.
0:44.4	He is the co-founder of LinkedIn, among many other projects.
0:48.4	He was last year in a long time ago, August of 2014, alongside Ben Casanooga discussing LinkedIn and their book, The Alliance.
0:57.9	Our topic for today is Reid's new book with Greg Beato, Super Agency, What Could Possibly Go Right with
1:05.8	our AI future, Reid. Welcome back to Econ Talk. It's great to be here. It's been too long. Let's do the next one in a shorter time frame.
1:13.5	Here, here. This is a very interesting book. I like the way you bounce back and forth between the world's fear of new technologies and the upside. What could possibly go right? We don't hear so much about that. We hear a lot of fear because fear sells. And you
1:29.0	chronicle how we've worried a lot in the past about downsides from new technology. And it's
1:34.4	turned out, okay, most of the time. Is this time really different? Should we be worried or
1:40.5	should we be optimistic? So as you know, my fundamental argument is that actually this time is not different, even though there's some differences in the technology.
1:50.5	It's a difference because it's moving much faster than previous things had moved, although each one had moved faster than the previous one.
1:58.7	So it's a continuing line of moving faster.
2:02.3	It's also, you know, kind of in a new realm of cognitive superpowers versus physical superpowers
2:08.5	or other kinds of areas.
2:10.7	And obviously one of the reasons why we named the book Super Agency was because the,
2:16.2	the kind of the, as we describe these AIs as agents and as
	...

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