Reid Hoffman on ChatGPT, Data Centers & Why America Needs AI

Reid Hoffman (0:00)

I personally know three people whose lives have been saved by ChatGPT.

Eric Newcomer (0:04)

It's amazing that this is an industry where we have to remind ourselves that this is for human beings.

Reid Hoffman (0:09)

You should never connect AI or any automated system to nuclear stuff. And you should keep the nuclear stuff disconnected from the internet, not just because of AI, but because of all the human beings. You're like, I'm a middle of the road kind of guy. Yes, I get hit by cars going both directions.

I like weaving in the middle of the road.

Eric Newcomer (0:28)

Reid Hoffman, welcome to the Newcomer Podcast. We're thrilled to have you in person. You are fresh off a Substack post, laying out a sort of middle ground on artificial intelligence. And obviously there's lots to talk about there. I want to just give you a second to give the high level view.

I feel like you resist, you're not claiming one of the monikers, like I'm an EA, I'm an accelerator. Do you have a brand for this middle of the road take, or what is, would at least give us sort of the argument behind it?

Reid Hoffman (0:59)

Well, maybe a smart accelerationist, a pro steering versus accelerating or deer accelerating.

And generally speaking, I think I tend to think of myself as a techno humanist, which is how do you have technology enhance humanity? Which is, I think, where we mostly orient towards most technology going, and we just need to keep steering in that direction.

Eric Newcomer (1:26)

It's amazing that this is an industry where we have to remind ourselves that this is for human beings.

It feels like that gets lost sometimes, and then there has to be a sort of a corrective of, oh, who are we building this for? Not the machines themselves. What is the main thing you're calling for here? Because there's sort of like the data center piece of it, there's like access to AI.

Reid Hoffman (1:46)

So, the primary thing is kind of two things that need to go together. One, which is like, why is it important that societies, and let's talk about the US, the America, needs to win at AI? Because it is the next industrial revolution, and industrial revolution is the thing that determines future prosperity, just like the previous industrial revolution did. So, if you go, we want to opt out of the industrial revolution, that's what crushed a whole number of societies for centuries. Whether it's India, China, a bunch of others, it's like, no, no, no, you actually have to do.

So, succeeding at it really matters. But then, simultaneously, and at the same time, more than 60 percent of Americans are having a very difficult time.

There's questions around like, okay, the enormous gas price rises, the cost of beef, how many jobs you need to work, and it's the responsibility of the entire American society to try to make that, and since our ethos as a society is a middle-class ethos, to make that work better. And so, and I think AI can. That doesn't mean there won't be, and this is part of the thing that was the backdrop of addressing in the essay, a lot of significant issues around work change, and people are legitimately concerned about like, well, what can you tell me about that? What's, when it's going to happen? How is it going to be? And by the way, no one actually in fact really knows, neither the people who go, oh my God, it's going to be huge in a year or two, or the people are like, oh, no problem, nothing this year. Actually, nobody really knows, and most people in the nobody really knows get nervous about that. Although that's, I think the kind of the nobody really knows part of it means that it's like going down a road. It's like if you're planning a highway trip, do you know there's an accident on the road already? Do you know that there's not?

Eric Newcomer (3:47)

Right, you know you have the capability to navigate it, you set yourself up, this could come, this could come, I'll do that, but you don't just say, I need to know everything ahead of me or I will not drive anywhere.

Reid Hoffman (3:57)

Exactly, so it's kind of like, so my thing is, get on the road and drive and keep driving. And by the way, sometimes you hit a curve or traffic, you slow down a little bit for that, but it's a forward motion orientation.

Eric Newcomer (4:10)

Some people think we're at the curve now though, I guess to ask that directly, do you worry, like should we be pacing, should we be halting, or you think in terms of what you've seen, keep driving?