As your company scales, the hardest part isn't ambition, it's alignment. That's why Atlassian built the teamwork collection and AI-powered teamwork platform designed to help teams move faster together. By connecting Jira, Confluence, Loom, and Rovo, teams can easily align work to real business goals, plan and track progress together, remove knowledge silos, and access the real magic of AI plus human collaboration. Visit Atlassian.com slash Team Changer to learn more.
That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N dot com slash Team Changer. Hey folks, Jeff Rerman here. Using news, applications are now open for the Masters of Scale Summit. It's happening October 20th through October 22nd in San Francisco, and it is a really special event.
Please join our curated community of founders, innovators, and leaders shaping the future. Expect ideas that challenge your assumptions and connections that move your business and maybe even your life forward. It's an experience that can change literally everything. Apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply26.
That's mastersofscale.com slash apply26. Leadership Faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone, anywhere, and get visas handled fast. So you stay focused on scaling.
Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 40,000 fast growing companies trust Deal to move fast. Visit deal.com slash MOS. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash MOS.
Would you rather have an radiologist, read your X-ray scan or do you have a radiologist with an AI? Read your X-ray scan? The answer is radiologist's an AI. Every day of the week, eight days a week.
That then gives me a much better health outcome. And so the society that you experience in this kind of super agency is when many people get the same super powers. It'll all together and we're all benefiting from our own and from others. That's Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and founding host of Mastersof Scale.
Reid is always instructed to talk with, especially about AI, which he has ardently championed as a founder, as a Microsoft board member, and as an author. He's just released a new book called Super Agency about the fast evolving AI era. Today we dig into it. So let's get started.
I'm Bob Safian. And this is Rapid Response. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Graylock, founding host of Mastersof Scale.
Reid, great to see you. Great to see you as always. So you have a new book out today called Super Agency with co-author Greg Biodo. Some people have called the book a surprisingly positive take on AI and on humanity.
Now I think the surprise is less about you being optimistic than about the topic, that there's so much skepticism right now about the future of both AI and of humanity. Can you start first by defining the word agency, regular old agency, and then sort of what Super Agency is beyond that. So agency is our ability to kind of express ourselves in the world, to make choices, to configure environment, to say, you know, this is kind of what I want to have happen to me, to my environment around me. And obviously nobody has infinite agency, but we all have some agency and we aspire to that as part of what we do.
AI, like other kind of general purpose technologies that have come before, gives us superpowers and superpowers like car, give you super power for mobility, phone, give you superpowers for connectivity and information. And AI gives you superpowers for kind of the entire world of kind of information, navigation, decision-ing, et cetera. And what super agency is not just when you as an individual get the super power, but when you and many of the people around you, when millions of people throughout society also get that super power because just as a car doesn't, you know, transforms your mobility, your ability to go somewhere, when other people's mobility are similarly transformed, like a doctor can come to a house call, a friend can come visit. And so the society that you experience in this kind of super agency is when many people get the same superpowers and we're all benefiting from our own and from others.
I mean, the fears around AI, I guess, are that AI will eventually limit human control. And when you're talking about super agency, you're sort of pausing the opposite that we're going to have more control. Well, it's actually different, but more in some important ways. These technological transformations of agency never are only additive.
They're mostly additive. Like the car is broadly additive. But of course then, you know, if your agency was previously that you were a driver of a horse carriage, you know, that agency changes, like, you know, when you have a phone, you can reach out to other people, but other people can also reach out to you, so you're available. So agency kind of transforms in these cases.
And you can already see it if you start playing with these agents that you can say, hey, I can actually now do things and accomplish things that I couldn't accomplish before. And that unlocks my ability to learn things, my ability to communicate things, my ability to do things faster in more interesting ways. And so that's part of the reason why it's really important that we actually play with these technologies. We engage with them.
We do serious things with them. We do what I'm in the book I call, in order to deployment. And I think that's what is so important for us all engaging on this path heading towards super agency. You talk about two different kinds of super agency or two different tracks in some ways.
One is where AI helps me complete tasks that otherwise would be hard for me to do alone. And the other is where AI does things for me without me. You might say, when you're getting a new Uber, is this a gain of agency or a loss of agency? Because you say, well, you're not driving anymore.
But of course, because you're choosing it and because you're engaging it, actually you gain an agency because you have to have the car there. You could have drunk a little one or two cocktails too many. And you still have them ability. So the man's sake is important because if you kind of said, I am getting an Uber because I hate it and because I've got a stranger who's driving me to some of the different place and I don't really want to be doing it, it's equivalent of like, you know, I mean, cart it off to jail.
And of course, you're going to have this enormous, you know, perception and decrease in agency. But like, if you adopt it with the right mindset and kind of say, hey, this is something that I am seeking to do, I'm trying to do, then obviously you begin going from negative to positive to curious. Think about the first time you want a bike, right? You're kind of terrified of it.
You're like, do I really need to be learning this? You know, you got training wheels on. But once you begin to learn it, you go, ah, I now have increased mobility. I can have new exercise.
I can get new experiences. And that's the kind of thing of leaning into that agency is I think really important as we adopt new technologies. Yeah. And I guess trusting that agency, I mean, your example about the Uber driver, it makes it makes me think that like I'm giving agency over to the driver, but the driver is probably giving agency over to a maps app that is telling them the best way to get to my destination, right?
And they're trusting the map and I'm trusting that they're trusting the map and all those things sort of lay on top of each other. Yeah. And actually I wouldn't say giving over agency because you always have some agency in that choice and ongoing, but like you're utilizing the agency, you're engaging the agency. Well, I'm offloading some mental load for myself, right?
And allowing to spend my time doing something that I feel like is more valuable. Yeah, exactly. One of the very earliest things when I was saying, why do we want autonomous vehicles? Because drinking and driving goes from a horrific act of negligent or deliberate evil to something that might be actually quite relaxing and enjoyable.
You've been preaching about the potential of AI for some time. You were the book with Chetchi PT to demonstrate the potential. You've made digital twins of yourself to try demystifying it. Not everyone is convinced.
What do you feel like you have to sort of fight most in getting people over this? And what prompted you to do the book now as a way to try to make that change? Well, the book is kind of a natural extension from impromptu. So impromptu first book on AI, co-written with AI, trying to show how it's amplification of intelligence and how you could use it in these positive cases.
My biggest hope and persuasion is that people who are AI fearful or AI skeptical may begin to add some AI curiosity, you know, kind of say, hey, look, I should try to play with this. I should try to see this. And part of what super agency is about is to say, look, it doesn't just matter for yourself. But as other people get this exposure, this other people's getting exposure will also be good for your life.
So for example, if you think about the fact that like I have a smartphone, I have a medical assistant that is, you know, good or better than the average doctor, would you rather have an radiologist read your x-ray scan or do you have a radiologist with an AI read your x-ray scan? The answer is radiologist with an AI every day of the week, eight days a week, because that then gives me a much better health outcome. So it's not just me and my superpowers, but other people giving the superpowers also help me. Even if I'm not engaging quite the way you would like me to most, I'm still going to get some of the benefit of this.
It's going to be part of a cultural changes. Yeah, I think that's ultimately how people get to adopting and, you know, kind of adapting their lifestyle to these new technologies because they begin to see, oh, actually, in fact, this is a new, very good thing. And as opposed to like, for example, when cars were first introduced, they were considered to be so dangerous that I had to have a person walking in front of them waving an orange flag. Now, I think we got rid of that regulation very quickly.
And I was like, okay, well, they're dangerous, but okay, can we contain and shape the danger in ways that are small relative to this massive benefit of superagency and mobility? You know, and I think about you, Reed, it's like you have these different slices of audience across your influence. Like you've got your own peers in tech and then you've got business people and entrepreneurs who aren't in the tech and AI space. It's not their core competency.
And I wonder when you're constructing this book, are you thinking about each of those groups like separately and hoping to get different reactions from each of them out of it? Well, there's two primary groups in broad category that I'm writing to. The first and the foremost is the people who are skeptical, AI, uncertain, AI fearful, and say, this is why you should add AI curious and AI hopeful. It doesn't mean that I'm going to persuade in one fell book, you know, all of this skepticism or uncertainty or fear to go away.
But to add that in and to begin to see that, you know, the only way that you can get to the kind of future that you want to get to is when you steer towards the positive future. You can't get to the future you want, but just trying to eliminate the future you don't want. And so you're going to eliminate a future you don't want, but you'll eliminate a lot of other features too, including a lot of good ones. And so that's the thing of getting to that good future.
Now, that's my primary group. Secondarily, it's actually also for technologists, companies that are building these new technologies. They look, what are the concerns that people have, the concerns around jobs, the concerns around misinformation, the concerns around privacy, they all kind of come back to kind of concerns around agency. And so if you then become a technological builder, developer, iterator, et cetera, with a focus on how do you enhance human agency?
What is the design lens? I think is actually in fact really important. And so that's the reason why that's the second group. And this design lens for technologists, it's not necessarily that like, oh, I shouldn't design something because it might replace someone's job.
But to be mindful that if there's a way to design it so that it augments the job instead of replacing a job to make that choice. Well, or to always be thinking about how would I do that? Could I do that here? I said, I mean, don't do replacement.
Because for example, there's a lot of jobs where we have human beings, you know, kind of trying to connect like robots, like customer service following a script and robots will do that better. We want to create new jobs that are essentially human jobs where you might have a little bit more agency, a little bit more creativity, a little bit more ability to express yourself, et cetera, versus just following the script is the kind of thing that we want to create a lot more of those. AI acting on its own seems to be what scares people the most, you know, but I've thought that like the likelihood that I'm going to lose my job to an AI alone, it may happen at some point, but I'm more likely now to lose my job to someone who uses AI better than I do, right? Although if I'm losing my job, it maybe doesn't matter that much either way, which one I'm losing it to.
Yeah. So part of the thing that I love about thinking about technology is whenever you think there's a problem, including a problem created by technology, you think about can technology be a solution? And so yes, I do think that a lot of jobs will then start being requiring use of AI and AI agents as part of being professional. It's a little bit like if you said, hey, I'm a professional today and I don't use a computer, I don't use a smartphone.
It's like, no, not really. Good luck getting that job. Right. Exactly.
Yeah. So there are technological requirements which increase with new tool sets for doing jobs and AI is definitely going to be one of those. Now, that being said, part of the solution, oh my God, am I going to be out of jobs? Well, actually, in fact, and this gets back to the book being for technologists and the human agency, how do we help people have their agency of learning the new skills and saying, hey, yes, my job is going to be taken over by a human using AI.
Well, how about that human be me? Or, okay, so this particular one doesn't work, but how can the AI help me find a different job? In many ways, I think we will naturally get there. But I think just because we'll naturally get there doesn't mean we can't get there better by being intentional and having this on.
So one of these is I identify myself as a bloomer in the book versus a zoomer because I actually don't think that everything will just be great with technology. I think we actually have to steer it some intentionally because when human beings encounter new general purpose technologies, as early as the printing press, all of the rest of them, all kinds of like we f**k up in various ways, we handle the transition of new technologies badly. And part of the reason why I'm doing this book, this podcast, these things like this, is try say, let's do this transition much better. It doesn't mean it won't be without the will be suffering and transition is like, well, I don't want to be learning the new job.
I don't want to be learning the new tool. And it's like, well, unfortunately, you're going to have to, right. But if you embrace it with some agency, you know, we can possibly make that both less painful and have more opportunities. We are entering into the cognitive and industrial revolution.
And all you have to do is look at any simple books about the industrial revolution to recognize transitions can be painful. Let's do these ones better. Reed may not be a zoomer when it comes to AI, but he's always been a techno optimist. The tech is an essential tool in creating a better future.
And he definitely feels that way about AI. So how do we handle the risks and trouble spots with today's AI? And how might the Trump administration impact things? We'll talk about that after the break.
Stay with us. The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet, when it comes to their own wealth, most are running a disconnected stack.
A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative Planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof.
Creative Planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com slash masters of scale. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.
Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future that is human-centered? I run at El-Kauubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answered that question and so many more.
As an AI scientist, entrepreneur and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.
Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devil Wears product. It takes about 10 seconds to find just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode.
I hope to see you there. This is Rapid Response and I'm Bob Safian. Before the break, we heard Reid Hoffman talk about what he means by superagency, which is the title of a new book he just released. Now he shares his vision of what an AI infused workday will soon look like, how we can address the risks and trouble spots with the latest AI developments, plus what the first week of the Trump administration indicates about our tech and business future.
Let's jump back in. Some of the technologies in recent years that we've all gotten really excited about, you know, social media and smartphones, we sort of underestimated the societal impact, right? The wow factor gave way to these consequences that we didn't foresee, filter bubbles or too many hours of screen time. How much do you think this sort of alarm about AI is because of that recent history?
I think we always hit alarm when we hit new technologies. So I don't think it's just because, you know, the concern around social networks and information flows and children and other things, which are very, you know, kind of legitimate concerns and issues that need to be addressed. But also, we would have hit it anyway, even if it wasn't there. I mean, we had all these concerns.
I mean, you and I are old enough to remember, you know, all the description around the internet about how, you know, it was kind of like a terrible place, cyberspace, very dangerous, you know, who would ever want to upload their credit card and buy something that's probably full of criminals and frauds and dangerous people. There still isn't much bad information on the internet, but there's also much of really good information. I mean, the kinds of things you can find with Wikipedia and broad cases, listening to random podcasts, these two guys talking to each other. There's all of the stuff that actually can be quite good.
In some ways, when new technology comes in, like the best parts of it, we get used to so quickly, like the world never existed without this before, you know, can you imagine if I needed to have a paper map to get around? Like, I wouldn't even know how to move myself through the world. And then those trouble things pop up, and I guess that's why you want to keep iterating and improving because those trouble spots will always pop up. Look, the trouble spots will pop up whether or not we have new technology or not.
And you know, as you know, one of the chapters in the book is innovation and safety. You know, people always think innovation is just changing risk of actually, in fact, you know, you create the car. And part of the reason, like, you know, we now have cars that you can drive at 50 miles an hour, 60 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour on the highway is because we innovate it on safety and brakes, safety and car construction, safety and seat belts, you know, and that, which things to iterate on, which things to do, you only really discover by going down the road. You can't sit before you create the car and invent all the things.
There's no way to do that. And so that's why the iterative deployment and engagement and getting millions of people to engage is so important to how we create these things in ways that help us as a society and as community. So do you have a vision of what like super agency mode would look like in a so-called average day for a US professional on the job? Like, do you have a vision about what that day looks like?
What happens? Look, I think that what will happen in relatively short order of years, we will be using co-pilots to help us. Say, Bob, you and I are meeting in person. It would be odd if I put the phone on the camera, put on the agent and just have the agent note taking, you know, suggesting certain things in the conversation and so on.
I think that will become typical. It may not become typical when, hey, what we're doing is we're just talking about the vacations that each of us had or something else, not going to be. But whenever we're working or wherever we're having conversation with some kind of goal and earnest, I think we'll do that. If there are areas that you are worried about with AI, like, what are the ones that are sharpest?
I'm thinking about something I read recently. I think it was in Axios about sort of the national security implications, whether it's military or whether it's information security or whether it's code breaking, you know, are those areas that you get more anxious about? I'm less worried about the AI by itself. There's obviously a bunch of Hollywood things, Terminator robots and so forth.
But the AI, since it gives you superpowers, it also gives rogue state superpowers, terrorist superpowers, criminal superpowers. And so I'm worried about the, you know, and by the way, all of them have an incentive to adopt early experiment with it and so forth. And so I'm worried about, you know, how do we navigate that? That's one of the reasons why, you know, I help advise a whole bunch of governments, you know, helps it up, you know, kind of safety and alignment conferences, talks between the various providers of and builders of artificial intelligence.
And that's another area, I think of worry. And while I think, you know, this kind of category of doomer of existential risk, oh, someone's going to build terminators, you know, either autonomous or with humans and, you know, present a human, an existential risk. I think that AI is much more naturally going to reduce the number of humanities, existential risk, pandemics, asteroids, other things, even as it is. But even as such as that is, I think it's important to say, well, what should our B, our international global treaties on the use of autonomous weapons on, you know, kind of building, you know, kind of killer robots?
And one of the things we should do there in order to have the next century, the best human century. And I guess you want technologists at the table when those discussions are happening because they understand better than anyone, you know, what's practical and what might unfold. But at the same time, you don't want just technologists at that table. Oh, for sure not part of, you know, what we covered in super agency is this kind of notion is look, part of how technology develops is not just an individual tech company with some potential regulatory body.
You know, part of what makes companies do this while is they have, you know, growing network of customers, they have a network of investors, they have a network of employees and their customers, you know, there's a whole stack of these interlocking networks that create what we call the consent to the government. And I think that it's important to have that kind of broad participation, hence, you know, iterative development. And, you know, by myself, you know, while my undergraduate degree was artificial intelligence, my master's degree in philosophy. And I think if anything, AI brings out the importance of humanity degrees when you think about, you know, well, how should it be designed?
How should we interact with it? You know, what should be the kinds of things that are agency focused on increasing our super agency? And these are, I think, kinds of considerations that, you know, humanities education can be very helpful for. It's a little early, but new administration in Washington.
Is there any sense yet about what that administration, how they'll look at AI or whether the regulatory environment will be any different, any change? Well, no news to our listeners. I was putting a lot of energy into, you know, like the inheritors versus Trump. But I think that there's an earnestness around the fact that AI really matters and that there's people who are specifically appointed from the very beginning of administration in order to navigate one of the phrases that I've been, you know, starting to use a lot more as American intelligence.
How do we make that American intelligence? And so that's, you know, building on the chips act. But then also in the new administration, you know, kind of making a massive shift of regulation for provisioning new energy, provisioning new energy, provisioning data centers. So I think all of that has a lot of good potential.
And so part of, you know, what I'm trying to do is help the country build on that potential and, you know, build things that really help American citizens as a group. I had a guest on rapid response recently talking about the impulse by some businesses and brands to sort of go quiet early in an administration to be paralyzed to some extent by the uncertain ground rules and guardrails and repercussions. Do you have advice about how business leaders should act around this inflection point we're in right now? The short answer is it's high volatility.
And you know, all you have to do is look around the world. It's not just kind of various conflicts, but also obviously we have a lot of turmoil in the country of tiny percent voted for Trump over Harris. It's like, you know, less than two million people. You've got, you know, kind of a divided country in various ways.
What that means for your business leaders is expect more volatility, expect more crisis, expect more uncertainty. And so the advice that I give folks is look, there may be great opportunities here, a bunch of smart deregulation, may open up opportunities like nuclear energy or other things. And also the questions around the uncertainty also creates a lot of volatility. So you should be kind of protective on that.
And that's that's the advice that I'm giving folks. Well, Reed, this has been great. As always, I love hearing the way you're thinking about it and the things you're doing. And thanks for taking the time.
I look forward to doing it again. Yes, me too. And Bob, always a pleasure. Whenever I talk to read about AI, I always come away excited and also a little chasing.
In part, it's his acknowledgement of the risks, which I tend not to want to think about, but also his encouragement to engage personally with AI in our work life. I'm reminded that I could experiment more, should experiment more. I'm definitely talking a lot about AI, but I could put more into action. Reed's observations about volatility, from tech changes from political changes, that hits home.
We all need to be as adaptive as possible, and new AI tools can only help. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Rapid Response is a Weight What Original.
I'm Bob Safian, our executive producer is Eve Tro. I'm producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Mashamaku Tonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli, theme music by Ryan Holiday.
My head of podcasts is Lee Tom Malad. For more, visit www.rabbitresponseshow.com.