Reed Hastings: From Building Netflix to What Comes Next

Speaker 0:00 In the 1980s, I was in the AI wave that was expert systems, and they were public companies and-

Aria Finger 0:05 Yeah

Speaker 0:05 ... the fifth generation, and the Japanese were gonna be this big threat, and, you know. And that AI didn't work, but this one is. Anything that lives in the emotional realm-

Aria Finger 0:15 Mm

Speaker 0:15 ... will be impacted not as much by AI-

Aria Finger 0:18 Mm-hmm

Speaker 0:18 ... because we humans react to these things emotionally. And so again, I think we'll not watch robots playing basketball. STEM practically took over Stanford University.

Aria Finger 0:28 Totally.

Speaker 0:29 Okay? And now maybe what we'll see is a rotation, you know, back to the humanities-

Aria Finger 0:34 Mm

Speaker 0:34 ... into, um, understanding combination of, uh, history and literature. If I had a three-year-old today, I would be, like, doubling down on the emotional skills.

Aria Finger 0:44 Mm.

Speaker 0:44 In 20 years, robots will do maybe 1% of the plumbing.

Aria Finger 0:48 At most.

Reid Hoffman 0:49 Reed Hastings is the co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, the company that helped define the streaming era, and in doing so, rewired how two billion people spend their evenings. Under his leadership, Netflix launched streaming, pioneered the original content model with House of Cards, went global in 190 countries, and produced some of the most watched programming in TV history. He ran it for 25 years.

Aria Finger 1:18 But Reed's ambitions have always extended well beyond entertainment. He served on the boards of Microsoft and Meta. He's currently on the boards of Bloomberg and Anthropic. He's given hundreds of millions of dollars to education reform, and he holds a master's degree in artificial intelligence from Stanford from 1988, before most of us had AI on our radar.

Reid Hoffman 1:37 Today we're asking: What does someone with that vantage point across entertainment, technology, AI safety, and the long arc of institutional change actually think is happening right now? Where is the leverage? What are we getting wrong? And what would it look like for this moment to go genuinely well for humanity?

Aria Finger 2:01 This is a conversation about technology as a civilizational lever, about whether the people building AI and the people governing it are asking the right questions, about what entertainment can teach us about human nature and what human nature can teach us about AI, and about what it means to have spent 35 years watching technology reshape the world and to still believe the best is ahead.

Reid Hoffman 2:25 And now, to our conversation with Reed Hastings. Reed, awesome as usual to talk with you. I thought we'd start with something a little light for both of us, so I'll answer this too, but we'll start with you. In various weird ways, we get mistaken for each other. What was one of the funny ways that comes to mind for you about being mistaken for me? And then I will, I will also answer that question.

Speaker 2:45 Uh, Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings, both in tech, so I get introduced sometimes at conferences, and someone's done the quick ChatGPT, and they, you know, do it on Reed or Reed H. or something, and they call me the founder of LinkedIn.

Reid Hoffman 2:57 [laughs]

Speaker 2:57 And I'm very excited 'cause that's a hell of a business. [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 3:00 Yes. Uh, well, and, and similarly, 'cause Netflix is a hell of a business, I think the last one that I got, and this out of, you know, many, many, was, "Oh my God, that Wednesday show is awesome. You guys have done such a great job," which I'm now passing along to you.

Speaker 3:13 It is.

Reid Hoffman 3:14 It's an awesome show.

Speaker 3:14 No, that's right.

Reid Hoffman 3:15 But, you know, like, that kind of thing. And, you know, we've been doing this for a while, so when we get the emails, we just kind of forward them to each other. [laughs]

Aria Finger 3:22 Exactly. All right. Well, people confuse you guys, but let's see if you guys confuse yourselves with each other. So I'm gonna say a quote, and you guys are gonna tell me who said it. Shout it out. "Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid, and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right."

Reid Hoffman 3:43 I think that's me.

Speaker 3:45 I would totally disagree.

Aria Finger 3:46 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 3:47 [laughs]

Aria Finger 3:47 That was Reed. That's good.

Speaker 3:49 Most turn out to be wrong.

Aria Finger 3:50 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 3:50 [laughs]

Speaker 3:50 That's the whole point of the contrarian thesis.

Reid Hoffman 3:52 Yes.

Speaker 3:52 And then occasionally they're right.

Reid Hoffman 3:54 Yes. But they'll, they sound stupid.

Aria Finger 3:56 Oh, wait. No. Reed Hastings, you said it.

Speaker 3:58 No, I did not.

Aria Finger 3:59 [laughs]

Speaker 4:00 Um, I'm sure that's a misquote.

Aria Finger 4:02 Oh my God, we're gonna fact check this.

Speaker 4:03 The, the qu- the... Okay, let's, let's hit it from the top. But, uh-

Aria Finger 4:07 [laughs]

Speaker 4:07 ... the quote is, "You gotta have a contrarian thesis that everyone else thinks you're stupid," basically.

Reid Hoffman 4:12 Yes.

Speaker 4:12 And then it turns out to be right, which is rare. The whole point is that most of the time, the entrepreneurs fail-

Reid Hoffman 4:19 Yeah

Speaker 4:19 ... because the idea doesn't work.

Aria Finger 4:20 Yep. [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 4:21 Yes.

Aria Finger 4:22 Oh, my God, I lo- they're so similar that they're confusing each other's quotes.

Reid Hoffman 4:25 Yes.

Aria Finger 4:25 All right. "The future isn't something that experts and regulators can meticulously design. It's something that society explores and discovers collectively."

Speaker 4:35 Boring.

Aria Finger 4:35 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 4:37 So, so that means me, and it's accurate. [laughs]

Aria Finger 4:38 That was Reid Hoffman. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we have a few more.

Reid Hoffman 4:41 Boring is frequently how Reed, you know, talks to me-

Aria Finger 4:44 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 4:44 ... but, you know, it's the details.

Speaker 4:46 The entertainment part of Netflix, the key to that was always, and n- not that I am, but always trying to be thrilling, and boring is the only sin in entertainment.

Aria Finger 4:55 [laughs] There you go.

Reid Hoffman 4:56 Yes. Yes.

Aria Finger 4:57 All right. "Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, we define entire epochs of humanity by the technology that they use." Reed Hastings. All right, we got that. All right, two more. "We are homo techne. When we cross the river, we are deepening our understanding of technology and ourselves."

Reid Hoffman 5:15 Yep.

Aria Finger 5:15 [laughs] That was Reid Hoffman. And last one: "Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly." That was Reed Hastings-

Reid Hoffman 5:27 Yes

Aria Finger 5:27 ... but I feel like you've said-

Reid Hoffman 5:28 Yes

Aria Finger 5:28 ... such similar stuff

Speaker 5:30 Could be either of us

Aria Finger 5:30 ... such similar stuff.

Reid Hoffman 5:31 You know.

Aria Finger 5:31 All right.

Reid Hoffman 5:31 It's blick and brack, you know, what's going.

Aria Finger 5:33 Thank you for humoring me.

Speaker 5:34 Okay, you should do, like, who's the better investor?

Aria Finger 5:36 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 5:37 [laughs] Who's more entertaining? [laughs]

Speaker 5:40 [laughs]

Aria Finger 5:41 All right. There you go.

Speaker 5:42 Well, it turns out that operating personality's really different from-

Aria Finger 5:46 Mm

Speaker 5:46 ... allocating capital personality. So operating personality, you're like a dog with a bone.

Aria Finger 5:51 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5:51 You never give up on a problem. You just work it, you work it. And investing personality is staying very broad, not falling in love with an idea-

Aria Finger 6:00 [laughs]

Speaker 6:00 ... you know, cutting your losses and moving on. And, like, when I tried investing, I just fell in love with all the entrepreneurs and kept-

Aria Finger 6:06 Sure

Speaker 6:06 ... giving them money, and then-

Aria Finger 6:07 [laughs]

Speaker 6:07 ... none of it worked out.

Reid Hoffman 6:08 Yes.

Speaker 6:08 Um, and when Reed tried operating, you know, we quickly found the right guy in Jeff to operate for him-

Reid Hoffman 6:14 Yes

Speaker 6:14 ... uh, who was an amazing operator.

Aria Finger 6:16 Fair enough.

Reid Hoffman 6:17 Yes.

Aria Finger 6:17 Reed, I'll turn it over to you.

Reid Hoffman 6:18 So, uh, you were CEO of Netflix for 25 years, and then when you handed over the role January 2023- What happened the next day? What did you, what did you then go do?

Speaker 6:33 My schedule evaporated.

Aria Finger 6:34 [laughs]

Speaker 6:35 So, [clears throat] you know, I had, uh... First of all, it was a secret, and second, you know, I had a whole bunch of work meetings and a pretty full schedule that I then [clears throat] wasn't going to do, a bunch of internal and external things. You know, first couple days it was just, like, be at home in shock and, and, you know, a lot of calls and just people saying congratulations.

Reid Hoffman 6:56 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6:56 Kind of nice, uh, sweet things. Um, and then, you know, I said, "Well, I've always wanted to ski a lot, and I've only been able to ski 5 or 10 days a year, uh, 'cause of work. So I'm gonna take February and March and, you know, ski my brains out." So mostly that's what I did. Uh, and that was a super fun release and fulfillment, but it wasn't really planned.

Reid Hoffman 7:20 [laughs]

Speaker 7:21 Um, and it gave space, you know, really to the company. And you kind of, in many cases, it's good to have the C- the ex-CEO not be itching to, like, call in to make decisions.

Aria Finger 7:33 [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 7:33 [laughs]

Speaker 7:33 And, "How about lunch, Ted?"

Reid Hoffman 7:34 [laughs]

Speaker 7:35 And, "Greg, let's talk about strategy." And so it was-

Aria Finger 7:37 "That episode of Love is Blind was terrible!" [laughs]

Speaker 7:39 That's it. So I was able to just enjoy myself-

Reid Hoffman 7:43 Mm

Speaker 7:43 ... and, and, yeah, focus on, uh... well, snowboarding, but [laughs] a little-

Reid Hoffman 7:46 Was there anything that you found surprising that you missed?

Speaker 7:51 No, the huge surprise is how much I was okay with moving on.

Reid Hoffman 7:54 [laughs]

Speaker 7:54 I thought I would, like, miss everything.

Reid Hoffman 7:57 Mm.

Speaker 7:57 You know, 'cause it was my whole entire life.

Reid Hoffman 7:59 Yeah.

Speaker 7:59 I loved every second of it.

Reid Hoffman 8:00 Yeah.

Speaker 8:01 And what I was just realized, I had done everything I wanted. I had, you know, done this huge global rollout.

Aria Finger 8:07 Yeah.

Speaker 8:07 I had lived on an airplane around the world and [clears throat] every week in, you know, Seoul or Mumbai or Berlin, and it was incredibly fun and exciting, but I didn't need any more of it.

Reid Hoffman 8:19 Mm.

Speaker 8:19 Um, and so [clears throat] I was super surprised that I didn't, like, yearn to get back in the saddle.

Reid Hoffman 8:26 Mm.

Speaker 8:26 You know, and of course there's aspects you miss, and the people I missed, but, uh, you know, I stayed, I've stayed in touch with them on sort of a personal basis. So it was surprisingly easy.

Reid Hoffman 8:38 Mm.

Speaker 8:38 And 'cause I certainly have heard of people who have a very hard time with it.

Reid Hoffman 8:42 Yeah.

Aria Finger 8:43 We've certainly seen some CEOs who stepped away and then had to go right back because they missed it so much. [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 8:48 Even in your former industry. [laughs]

Aria Finger 8:50 [laughs]

Aria Finger 8:51 But beyond Netflix, you've been on the boards of Meta, Bloomberg, so many influential companies, and these companies were some tech, some less, different business models, different industries. Like, what did you learn from being on the board of such diverse companies, obviously in addition to Netflix, about the AI and media ecosystem?

Speaker 9:10 Well, the lucky break [clears throat] of my professional life in that way was that in the... 2005, uh, Microsoft was looking to get someone from tech on the board and... but they have conflict rules, so they couldn't have, [clears throat] you know, the head of Cisco on the board. They, they, you know. And so they started going down the list, you know, of tech people, and after a year they had gotten down, uh, to the head of a domestic DVD rental service-

Aria Finger 9:37 [laughs]

Speaker 9:38 ... uh, Reed Hastings, for an interview. Um, and so I was like, "You wanna interview me?"

Reid Hoffman 9:42 [laughs]

Speaker 9:43 Um, [clears throat] and then I went up and, uh, met with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, and we really hit it off. And a little while after that, they put me on the board of directors of the Microsoft Corporation, which, you know, was a million times larger than Netflix at that time.

Aria Finger 9:58 Sure.

Speaker 9:59 Uh, and super global and super long-term in their thinking.

Aria Finger 10:02 Mm.

Speaker 10:02 So the stuff I got out of it was amazing, 'cause they were willing to work on projects for things 10 years ahead.

Aria Finger 10:08 Wow.

Speaker 10:09 And, like, I had never been able-

Aria Finger 10:11 [laughs]

Speaker 10:11 ... to do that because we, the company, didn't have enough, uh, profit stream to do that kind of thing. And so it was, uh, such incredible, uh, learning for me. Then later, as social became really important-

Aria Finger 10:23 Mm-hmm

Speaker 10:24 ... uh, I thought, "Oh, you know, I'm kinda old. I should really get much closer to this. This is gonna transform Netflix like it had transformed photos and things." [clears throat] So I got on the board of Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg was very open, and the company, and I tried to do what I could to help, and I certainly learned a ton about social. But then it turned out that social really had very little to do-

Aria Finger 10:44 Mm

Speaker 10:44 ... with movies and TV shows.

Reid Hoffman 10:46 Yes.

Speaker 10:46 So it wasn't, like, this huge transformation-

Aria Finger 10:49 Sure

Speaker 10:49 ... of the rest of the universe, like, in the way that, say, AI is. So those were two long-term board assignments I did and I learned a lot on, and I certainly encourage all the CEOs I know-

Aria Finger 11:00 Mm-hmm

Speaker 11:00 ... to do one or two other companies, hopefully big companies, where they can learn from.

Aria Finger 11:05 Yep.

Speaker 11:06 And then I got on the Bloomberg board, really as a favor to my friend Mike Bloomberg, who's an incredible philanthropist.

Aria Finger 11:12 Yeah.

Speaker 11:12 He's been number one the last two years of most giving, uh, in the US, and a, you know, just a great human being and a great philanthropist. So that's been a favor and fun. And then I'm on the board right now of Anthropic as well as Netflix. And on Netflix, uh, it's pretty passive-

Aria Finger 11:27 [laughs]

Speaker 11:27 ... because, um, the CEOs trust me and I trust them, and so it's just kinda easy. But Anthropic is really exciting and intense and, you know, I've really come to appreciate-

Aria Finger 11:38 Mm

Speaker 11:38 ... uh, the team, the mission, um, and it's neat to have a seat kind of on the, on the-

Aria Finger 11:44 Absolutely

Speaker 11:44 ... front edge of what they're doing.

Aria Finger 11:46 Absolutely.

Reid Hoffman 11:48 Well, one of the things some people know, but very early days in LinkedIn, I wrote to you asking you to join the board 'cause you were one of the top board picks for, uh, Silicon Valley intelligent people. Uh, but I wanna go back to the Microsoft. So, so you were there before me. I joined in 2017. Um, actually called you and, as usual, kind of got advice on the stuff. What do you think... Speaking of long trajectories, you know, Satya's done a great job at Microsoft. What do you think the, the things were that, or the, were the right setup for Satya doing that? How much of that's, you know, kind of Satya's own brand of things, and how much of that's kind of the, the patterns of work that were already present at Microsoft?

Speaker 12:34 Well, let's think about [clears throat] why is Microsoft 10, 15 times more valuable than when he started? Mm. Um, you know, the profit stream has continued to grow, but then it grew a lot before that- Yeah ... under Steve Ballmer. Um, and so Office has stayed a very strong franchise, and they have withstood, you know, some erosion from Google, but there was no wholesale change. Mm. Okay? So they kinda won the Office wars- Mm ... and they've made Office good enough that, you know, fewer people are switching, so they stabilized that. Yeah. Windows didn't particularly get stabilized. Mm. You know, Apple in particular has continued to grow, uh, in the face of, of Apple. Search has continued, uh, Google Search has continued to grow, so Bing, and all those. And so, like Windows and Bing, [clears throat] you know, haven't really delivered. Azure has delivered in a big way. Mm.

Aria Finger 13:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 13:25 Um, it's delivered in a big way because of the AI workload.

Aria Finger 13:28 Mm.

Speaker 13:28 Yeah. Okay? That's the big validating workload. So then that comes back to Satya made one incredibly ballsy, insightful decision, which is to invest in OpenAI back in 2018. I thought you were gonna say buy LinkedIn. [laughs] But that's okay. You know, keep going. So, you know, he bet big on AI, and that catapulted them both reputationally- Mm ... and in terms of other... A little bit on the pro- and the Azure business. So it was the workload that then has grown-

Aria Finger 13:56 Mm-hmm

Speaker 13:56 ... Azure into a monster and a big success. Yeah. Uh, which th- 'cause Amazon had the e- had their own first, their first party workload- Yeah ... plus all the early adopters. Yes. Okay? So it was really hard for- Yeah ... Azure for a while. Yeah. Uh- Early adopters like Netflix. That's right. So where Satya gets incredible, he also, uh, internally, you know, he just got people talking and working together- [clears throat]

Aria Finger 14:19 Mm

Speaker 14:19 ... uh, more than Steve had been able to do. But that, n- I mean, again, IBM was a nice place to work, but they just didn't take any product bets that really delivered. Yes.

Aria Finger 14:27 Yeah.

Speaker 14:27 And Satya took a huge product that, that did deliver.

Aria Finger 14:30 Yeah. So talking about AI, everyone is talking about AI, and you have also joined the public conversation. Where do you think people are asking the wrong questions, maybe having the wrong answers, or, like, what is part of the discourse of AI that you think is totally missing that people should be talking about more?

Speaker 14:48 Well, I'm not sure if whether AGI comes in [clears throat] 18 months or six years-

Aria Finger 14:54 Mm-hmm

Speaker 14:54 ... it really is gonna make much difference. So I think we-

Aria Finger 14:56 Mm

Speaker 14:56 ... should just sort of say, you know, it's coming fast, and w- how do we want society to be? What do we imagine in 10 or 20 years? You know?

Aria Finger 15:05 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:05 Sort of get over the idea of, like, the, the, the intensity of, of how fast it's happening to it's here. [clears throat]

Aria Finger 15:12 Mm.

Speaker 15:12 And what will we do and how does it work, and, um, you know, how will the legal profession work? Like, as an example, in education, people say-

Aria Finger 15:21 Yeah

Speaker 15:21 ... "Oh, it doesn't change at all," and, you know, look at how medicine has changed from 50 years ago. Educators are, you know, recalcitrant 'cause they don't wanna change.

Aria Finger 15:31 Sure.

Speaker 15:31 But if you look at the practice of law, like, you know, pleading before the Supreme Court, [chuckles] it's identical to 100 years ago.

Aria Finger 15:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:37 Yeah. And we're sort of proud of that, right? So I imagine things like that, you know, a briefing before a Supreme Court, will actually work identically in 20 years when AI is, is fully ubiquitous.

Aria Finger 15:49 Sure.

Speaker 15:49 Right? Now, the briefs will get AI edited and improved, and the research will be a little faster, but, you know, it's kinda like in the noise in the way that today LexisNexis-

Aria Finger 16:00 Yeah

Speaker 16:00 ... or, or, or Word for legal briefs. So some, uh, areas of the economy, it's a huge change. Some areas-

Aria Finger 16:07 Yeah

Speaker 16:07 ... not so much. So I, I think, again, there's so much focus on, you know, is the current version of-

Aria Finger 16:12 Right

Speaker 16:12 ... Claude code, you know, this or that, and, you know, as opposed to, okay, it's gonna happen, and the robot side, the humanoid robot's gonna happen, so then what will soc- society be in 10 to 20 years?

Aria Finger 16:26 Well, you're saying if, so education, medicine, law, those are either sort of highly regulated industries or industries with big unions. Like, do you think that's why they might be affected less, and others will be affected more? Or to actually throw your question back at you, do you think there's a profession that will be the most affected b- by AI, whether it's in three years or 10?

Speaker 16:47 Well, I was gonna say least affected, I think, will be entertainment. Like, you're not gonna watch a basketball game of robots.

Aria Finger 16:53 Right. March Madness is not gonna be taken over by AI.

Speaker 16:55 So we like-

Aria Finger 16:55 We're safe. [laughs]

Speaker 16:56 ... the human conflict-

Aria Finger 16:57 Yeah

Speaker 16:57 ... and that, uh, draws us in. So most, like, uh, percentage reduction in employment, one theory would be software engineers-

Aria Finger 17:06 Sure

Speaker 17:06 ... 'cause everyone's working really hard on, uh, kinda automated software development. But there's a substantial chance that while many companies will have reduced software-

Aria Finger 17:15 Mm-hmm

Speaker 17:15 ... engineering employment, there'll be many other opportunities for more software.

Aria Finger 17:19 Right.

Speaker 17:19 [clears throat] So that kind of elastic response is... Well, it's what we've seen in radiology, which is an interesting example because radiology is image processing. Computers and AI are much better than humans at, and have been now for several years.

Aria Finger 17:35 Yeah.

Speaker 17:35 Okay? And so you can now go into an MRI center, uh, and if you're self-pay, 300 bucks and get an MRI. It dramatically-

Aria Finger 17:43 Sure

Speaker 17:43 ... down in pricing, and so people are getting many more scans, and they're being-

Aria Finger 17:47 Ah

Speaker 17:47 ... read by AI with a radiologist approving them.

Aria Finger 17:49 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17:50 So I had thought four years ago, gonna be devastation in radiology.

Aria Finger 17:54 Right.

Speaker 17:54 It's gonna be the first, you know, high-end profession.

Aria Finger 17:56 Everyone talked about this, right?

Speaker 17:57 Yes.

Aria Finger 17:57 Obvious.

Speaker 17:58 Well, we have a shortage now. We have 35,000 radiologists.

Aria Finger 18:01 Interesting.

Speaker 18:01 We need about 40,000. Wages are high. And so it's a good example of it's easy to get focused on, you know, the disaster case-

Aria Finger 18:10 Mm-hmm

Speaker 18:10 ... with, you know, Armageddon.

Aria Finger 18:12 Right.

Speaker 18:12 We love movies-

Aria Finger 18:14 Right. [laughs]

Speaker 18:14 ... about Armageddon. We have them in our religions. You know, it's like we love disaster.

Aria Finger 18:19 Yeah.

Speaker 18:19 So we're drawn to these scenarios- Yeah ... of AI wiping out things.

Aria Finger 18:23 Yeah.

Speaker 18:23 Okay? And again, hasn't happened in radiology. Maybe it will eventually, but not in the last five years. So I'm gonna-- My hunch is that many professions will be resilient-

Aria Finger 18:33 Mm-hmm

Speaker 18:34 ... and that there's m- certainly much more demand for healthcare. So now, is there much more demand for legal services? Maybe. I mean, poor people are definitely under-lawyered. They get taken advantage of a lot. Um, so maybe there will be a whole-

Aria Finger 18:48 [laughs]

Speaker 18:49 ... uh, elastic response there-

Aria Finger 18:50 Yeah

Speaker 18:50 ... and, and we'll see. But if I had to guess, it might be lawyers-

Aria Finger 18:54 Yeah

Speaker 18:54 ... as the kinda most affected because it's very verbal.

Aria Finger 18:58 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18:58 Um, and it's somewhat formulaic.

Aria Finger 19:00 Yep.

Speaker 19:01 Not as much as writing software, but it's somewhat formulaic.

Aria Finger 19:04 Okay.

Reid Hoffman 19:04 Well, and also, if we thought about, like, what would be an increase in productivity if you had actually people shifting from legal work, which is generally transactional costs on things that are happening, to actually production of things, that would actually, in fact, be a general positive thing in society. And I say this as a child of two lawyers, so I actually think it would be a good thing if the work shifted more towards how do we build more products and services? What are the ways that we create entertainment, create other work, you know, other kinds of things versus, versus the transactional cost, which is legitimately there on a number of things, but they increase transactional costs that's in legal.

Speaker 19:43 Well, I think where we both are is no one quite knows exactly, right? [clears throat]

Reid Hoffman 19:47 Yeah.

Speaker 19:47 Which fields, uh, will be.

Reid Hoffman 19:49 Yeah.

Speaker 19:49 But what I think we both see is an era of great promise, um, that the next 20 years will be super exciting.

Aria Finger 19:55 Yeah.

Speaker 19:55 And I think it will usher in this era of abundance through both scenarios, which is, again, you've got the white collar symbolic processing stuff-

Aria Finger 20:03 Mm-hmm

Speaker 20:03 ... that's getting pioneered now, uh, like lawyering, writing software. And then [clears throat] we've got the Android, uh, humanoid robots coming, uh, at some pace.

Aria Finger 20:14 Yeah.

Speaker 20:14 So that'll be pretty exciting.

Reid Hoffman 20:17 So one of the things that, you know, obviously a lot of discussion of AI is on, the question is, is there safety issues? And, you know, the safety issues range, you know, we've been in these conversations, anything from various smart people being, you know, as you were referring to earlier, you know, apocalypse doomsayers. You know, whether it's, it's, it's, it's Terminator scenarios, whether it's jobs, et cetera. So what do you think the right way of trying to navigate the development of all of these, what we both agree are amazing future capabilities, medicine, amplification of software engineering, a whole bunch of other things, and navigating the safety? How much of that should be technical work, right? Constitutional AI, et cetera. How much of that should be incentives? How much of that should be regulatory? What, what's, what's-- What are the guideposts that you'd throw out there as to-- or, or principles by which people should think about how to navigate both keeping up our speed in building AI for all the good things, and also navigating safety?

Speaker 21:22 Well, in safety, we can break it down in a couple [clears throat] categories. So there's the super disaster Skynety case-

Reid Hoffman 21:30 Mm

Speaker 21:30 ... where, like, AI takes over.

Reid Hoffman 21:32 Soon, soon to be a Netflix film, New Year's-

Speaker 21:33 And yeah. [laughs]

Aria Finger 21:34 [laughs]

Speaker 21:35 And we, you know, absolutely have to prevent it. It's not something that's gonna happen in the short term.

Reid Hoffman 21:39 Mm.

Speaker 21:40 But the danger is that we could slide into it, um, [clears throat] as these things take care of more and more of our life. So I think because the downside of recovery from that, 'cause we don't have time travel, you know, is extremely hard. That's when we have to think about even if it's low probability, sort of like massive nuclear war.

Reid Hoffman 21:58 Mm.

Speaker 21:58 We have to do some stuff about it to prevent it, uh, because it's-- would be so, uh, disastrous. Okay, so that's the kind of, uh, mass nuclear war equivalent case-

Reid Hoffman 22:09 Mm

Speaker 22:09 ... um, that they take over. Then the other case is, you know, North Korean soldiers use it to design a virus and, you know, a lot of people die.

Aria Finger 22:19 Yeah.

Speaker 22:20 So think of it as in the hands of the wrong people, it's very powerful.

Reid Hoffman 22:24 Yeah.

Speaker 22:25 Uh, one scenario sort of combined with synthetic biology. Um, another scenario is cracking into other computer systems.

Reid Hoffman 22:32 Mm.

Speaker 22:33 So, uh, it turns out AI is very good at breaking in, uh, finding bugs in open source things through code analysis or finding bugs through closed things by probing in the way that national security agencies do today. Uh, but instead now it's in the hands of, you know, uh, terrorists or, or other people. So again, think of it, those are two specific examples of bad people using AI as a powerful tool to do very bad things. And so there we've gotta make sure that the whole industry does tech prevention, that it's hard to do. Now, right now, they're sort of, everyone is doing that because they don't wanna see these scenarios, but you could imagine that it might need to be regulated over time to insist that all of the sufficiently powerful AI systems protect against these kind of scenarios. And probably they-- some of them will happen, and then we'll set up a protection regimen afterwards to prevent that kind of thing.

Reid Hoffman 23:32 Mm.

Speaker 23:32 But no one of them is gonna, like, destroy all humanity at once, like massive nuclear war might.

Reid Hoffman 23:37 Mm.

Aria Finger 23:39 All right, we're gonna go from nuclear war to AI writing. [laughs]

Reid Hoffman 23:43 [laughs]

Aria Finger 23:43 So-

Reid Hoffman 23:43 Which some people think of nuclear war-

Aria Finger 23:45 Yeah. Fair

Reid Hoffman 23:45 ... but it's, it's, yes.

Aria Finger 23:46 So the New York Times recently ran a blind test, and eighty-six thousand people took it, and I don't know if you saw the results, but they were showing folks snippets of AI writing versus human writing, and fifty-four percent of people preferred the AI writing. And so some people argued like, "Ah, that was short form. That wasn't novels." Like, that's what AI is particularly good at. Other people were so devastated that more people preferred the AI writing. Like, what do you think that-- Like, what does this mean? Does this mean that most writing is gonna become AI in the future? Or like, what are the implications of a test like this, where regular people preferred the AI writing?

Speaker 24:22 You know, I think short form writing [clears throat] on a specific topic is, uh, very different-

Aria Finger 24:27 Yeah

Speaker 24:27 ... writing a story-

Aria Finger 24:28 Sure

Speaker 24:28 ... and, uh, de- developing character and a character arc and a conflict and a resolution.

Aria Finger 24:33 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:34 Um, [clears throat] just look at how Shakespeare still has a huge impact, uh, you know, and it was 400 years ago.

Aria Finger 24:41 Yeah.

Speaker 24:41 And no one's been quite as good as him at a certain broad range-

Aria Finger 24:45 Sure

Speaker 24:45 ... of things. So I think it's an extremely rare talent, um, of, of the very high-end AI. But, like, average writing is, I don't think, the way to analyze it.

Aria Finger 24:56 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:56 And I'm not surprised that the AI is better than the average writer today.

Aria Finger 25:00 Right. Fair enough. And so thinking of, like, thinking about all these creative revolutions, it's like you were there for DVD to streaming, and now obviously lots of people, their concern about AI is the entertainment industry. So forget the tools that people use, whether we'll, you know, use AI for editing or scripting or whatever, but the actual stories that are being told, like, do you think the AI era ushers in new stories or different people who are telling these stories? Like, what will the effects be?

Speaker 25:27 Well, and people have been talking about democratization of film-

Aria Finger 25:30 Right. [laughs]

Speaker 25:30 ... for 50 years, and so, like, the early wave of democratization was in the '90s when [clears throat] you could take it with digital-

Aria Finger 25:37 Yeah

Speaker 25:37 ... instead of celluloid film.

Aria Finger 25:39 Sure.

Speaker 25:39 And so you could do more takes, and the cost of filmmaking was gonna come down, and that was gonna democratize film. Um, and you know, it [clears throat] really didn't change except we got, you know, bigger budgets, higher special effects, uh, we did reshoots more.

Aria Finger 25:51 Right, we just raised it up. Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 25:54 Oh, yeah. So it turned out that the constraint really wasn't the film cost. There's lots of student-

Aria Finger 25:57 Interesting

Speaker 25:57 ... films produced today-

Aria Finger 25:59 Mm-hmm

Speaker 25:59 ... produced back then, [clears throat] and they just don't break through.

Aria Finger 26:02 Right.

Speaker 26:03 And, uh, take our recent success with K-Pop Demon Hunters. I mean, you know, in some ways, wow, cool.

Aria Finger 26:07 I have a 10-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a five-year-old.

Speaker 26:09 I mean, cool that it's a thing.

Aria Finger 26:09 I certainly know about it. [laughs]

Speaker 26:11 Okay. It's like our 28th animated film.

Aria Finger 26:13 [laughs] Right.

Reid Hoffman 26:15 Yes.

Speaker 26:15 Okay? You know, it's like even for us-

Aria Finger 26:17 Right

Speaker 26:17 ... it's really, really hard. And God knows we want to repeat K-pop.

Aria Finger 26:21 [laughs]

Speaker 26:22 But, you know, other than we'll do the sequel, but other than-

Reid Hoffman 26:24 Right

Speaker 26:24 ... it's like can we apply-

Aria Finger 26:25 Right, lightning strikes

Speaker 26:26 ... the same lightning strike. So w- and we are really working hard. But think of it as it's a very subtle set-

Reid Hoffman 26:33 Yeah

Speaker 26:33 ... of high-end things. So, uh, it'll help a little, particularly in TV when you gotta do a lot of episodes-

Aria Finger 26:39 Mm-hmm

Speaker 26:39 ... and, you know, it'll help a little bit on the scripting. Uh, where it'll help particularly is then script to screen.

Aria Finger 26:44 Mm.

Speaker 26:44 Okay? So you've got a big crowd shot, you know, and like, you know, a big stadium, okay?

Aria Finger 26:49 Sure.

Speaker 26:50 That might be, you know, a very expensive VR shot now-

Aria Finger 26:53 Mm

Speaker 26:53 ... a special effect shot, but you know, now it'll be AI.

Aria Finger 26:56 Right.

Speaker 26:57 And that'll be lower cost. So the mechanical parts-

Aria Finger 27:00 Yeah

Speaker 27:00 ... or industrial parts will be lower cost.

Aria Finger 27:03 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27:04 But the backbone, the story... And then the, uh, back to the basketball example, so we don't wanna watch robots.

Aria Finger 27:10 Right.

Speaker 27:10 I think we're gonna want, people will pay for real actors-

Aria Finger 27:14 Absolutely

Speaker 27:14 ... um, and people they recognize in that way. So, but we'll see. I mean, you know, there's definitely a threat of short form. You know, does, do young people only go on TikTok, okay, and never, you know, watch a podcast, uh, or a Netflix? We'll see.

Aria Finger 27:30 I mean, we'll also see Val Kilmer has a new film out, and he's been dead for several years. And so AI Val, Val Kilmer, we'll see if that's a success or not.

Speaker 27:39 Yep. Re- recovering past IP and extending it-

Aria Finger 27:41 Yeah, absolutely

Speaker 27:42 ... is, is, is a niche. Yep.

Reid Hoffman 27:44 And, and by the way, people will watch robots, one of the great Netflix Love, Death & Robots series, right? [laughs] You know, et cetera. So, like, there are... It's what do you watch robots doing is the interesting question.

Speaker 27:54 There you go.

Reid Hoffman 27:55 Now, what do you think are some of the interesting more side effects? Like, obviously, you know, if you came to me today and said, "Hey, AI will be, have a, will, will help us improve identification of potential hits early," that's like seems unlikely unless there's some, like, analysis of major data streams that, you know, the humans don't do yet. But what are some of the more, like, side cases of how AI comes into this? You know, it could be, you know, also like, you know, an AI discuss the content with. I mean, like, what are some of the things that kind of not just reinventing the process, but thinking about AI at the corner cases or AI at a corner case that may become big. Is there any of that that you've had musings on yet?

Speaker 28:43 We haven't found, say, the equivalent of sports betting.

Reid Hoffman 28:45 [laughs]

Speaker 28:45 So bet- sports betting is a whole kind of value, emotional engagement layer on top of sports.

Aria Finger 28:51 Yep.

Speaker 28:52 It's not really AI-enabled. It kind of nothing to do with AI. But we're always, with entertainment, looking for things that what's a layer of conversation-

Aria Finger 29:00 Mm-hmm

Speaker 29:00 ... what's a layer of engagement, um, you know, that enriches the experience. Um, [clears throat] so, you know, maybe AI will improve that, but it's n- uh, not obvious what that will be.

Reid Hoffman 29:13 Mm.

Speaker 29:13 And, and to some part, the beauty of a show or a movie is that it is, you know, kinda self-contained and, you know, that it's, it's this, you know, it's been more than 100 years we've had films. And so it's like a novel, where the novel as an art form has really stayed constant. And so there's something about, you know, the size and the capability-

Reid Hoffman 29:36 Mm

Speaker 29:36 ... that people are used to. Sure, there's short stories-

Aria Finger 29:38 Yeah

Speaker 29:38 ... and sure, there's epics, but, like, almost all of the business is novels and the-

Aria Finger 29:43 Yeah

Speaker 29:43 ... what people read. And I think there's a lot of that with film and TV series that they're not artifacts, they're really reflections of st- human attention span and stories.

Reid Hoffman 29:53 Mm.

Aria Finger 29:53 I feel like people have been complaining forever about, you know, you have one superhero movie hit, and then you have 25 more superhero, or, like, Barbie hits, and then all of a sudden you have toys, like toy stories. [laughs] Like, you're not, we're not getting sort of the diversity of hits because people are looking at an algorithm or they're, "Well, you know, you gotta put this star with this story," and then... And so you don't maybe get a K-Pop Demon Hunters, which, like you said, was the 28th and no one could predicted it. Obviously, we're in sort of the, the time of heated rivalry when no one could have predicted that. Do you think AI will, will flatten things? Like, will AI lead to people just, you know, betting on past success because the algorithm told it to, and so they'll take less chances? Or that's already happening? Like, how does AI affect it from a data perspective?

Speaker 30:38 You know, very [clears throat] very little. We're really predicting for a kind of that human conflict and something.

Aria Finger 30:45 Mm.

Speaker 30:45 You know, you want something that's both familiar but also fresh.

Aria Finger 30:48 Yeah.

Speaker 30:48 So those are our tensions. In terms of, like, over-sequelization-

Aria Finger 30:53 Yeah

Speaker 30:53 ... if you look at the amount of new content that Netflix is producing, that's really gone away. Um, in other words, sure, we'll have some sequels, and think of Season 2 of Wednesday was, uh-

Aria Finger 31:02 [laughs]

Speaker 31:03 ... you know, and we'll have Season 3, et cetera. So [clears throat] that's always been a part of the business.

Aria Finger 31:07 Yeah.

Speaker 31:07 It's very enjoyable for people-

Aria Finger 31:08 Mm

Speaker 31:08 ... because it's a story they already know-

Aria Finger 31:10 Sure

Speaker 31:10 ... and you see more of it, but you don't want it to be the only thing, and that's certainly not true today. Today, we have an incredible set of, uh, new films coming out all the time.

Aria Finger 31:19 Yeah. And do you... Like, how well do you think Netflix can predict a hit? Like, sometimes things come by surprise, but you're like, "No, no, no, we got it. We know." Or you're like, "Eh, we, sometimes we don't."

Speaker 31:29 Yeah, it's a mix of both.

Aria Finger 31:30 Okay.

Speaker 31:30 Um, so, uh, season twos, we have much more, uh-

Aria Finger 31:33 Sure.

Reid Hoffman 31:34 Yes. [laughs] Agreed.

Aria Finger 31:35 [laughs] Sure. You have more data there. All right. Fair enough.

Reid Hoffman 31:38 Um, one of the many smart things that Ted Sarandos has said is that there's a much better business in, uh, increasing the upside, the quality, the volume of the recept- reception of content by 10%, than cutting costs by 50%. And it was a way of kind of lensing to why is AI potentially really amazing. What are the kinds of things, in terms of thinking about how AI can be additive, that you think that the entertainment industry should be thinking about broadly, given obviously there's a lot of concerns and uncertainty around it?

Speaker 32:14 You know, in entertainment, there'll be a lot of work on special effects and sort of-

Reid Hoffman 32:18 [laughs]

Speaker 32:19 ... things that didn't fit in the budget-

Reid Hoffman 32:21 Mm

Speaker 32:21 ... uh, before can now be done, uh, you know, using AI. Um, so that's a good example. [clears throat] But more or less, I think anything that lives in the emotional realm-

Aria Finger 32:31 Mm

Speaker 32:31 ... will be impacted not as much by AI-

Aria Finger 32:34 Mm

Speaker 32:34 ... because we humans react to these things emotionally. And so again, I think we'll not watch robots playing basketball, and so it's the easiest example for people to get, that things that are emotionally stim- pleasure, emotional stimulation, we'll still do. So, you know, you like to give and get real flowers, not fake flowers, so it's like I don't think that's changing just because of AI. So where AI is very good is at thinking and logic, like [clears throat] coding. Wow.

Aria Finger 33:05 Right.

Speaker 33:05 It's really fi- It's breaking through. So I think there's just... Think of it as tremendous excitement in medicine, in biology-

Aria Finger 33:11 Mm-hmm

Speaker 33:11 ... in things that are very factual, logical, hard, um, and complex. And things that are emotional, you know, will be... It's not that it won't eventually be able to add value, but that's certainly not the big thrust of the AI world.

Aria Finger 33:26 All right. This is something I'm very excited to talk about. You and I share a deep passion for education, and I feel like education is, like, at the center of AI. It's like, is it gonna usher in a new era where everyone has amazing tutors and education is supercharged? Or are public school students especially perhaps just gonna have AI slop constantly? Like, as a philanthropist who's invested a lot here and sort of studied the education, especially in the United States, how do you think AI is gonna affect education?

Speaker 33:58 Well, there's two kinda big questions, which is one, what are we educating kids for?

Aria Finger 34:03 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:03 What kind of society are we educating them for? What skills should they have? So the kind of goal state, [clears throat] uh, you know, in the past was, uh, pass a lot of AP exams.

Aria Finger 34:14 Sure.

Speaker 34:14 Okay? Um, and that's probably not the right goal state for the future world.

Aria Finger 34:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:19 So there's a big discussion to have, which is, what are the skills that you're trying to target for your kids? And then second is implementation, which is, can we use AI tutors to... Whatever we decide is important-

Aria Finger 34:33 Sure

Speaker 34:33 ... to teach more of that, to make teachers' lives better, to have kids learn more. Um, so they're two different discussions that get kinda mushed together.

Aria Finger 34:41 Yeah.

Speaker 34:42 I would say on the second, like how to teach more, then there's some relatively clear paths of doing, you know, different kinds of AI tutors and, you know, just like we're gonna have AI doctor, AI lawyer-

Aria Finger 34:52 Mm

Speaker 34:52 ... there'll be AI teacher, [clears throat] and that will come along. And it'll be, it'll be easier in private schools, it'll be easier in charter schools.

Aria Finger 35:00 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 35:00 It'll be harder in, in school district schools, uh, 'cause of all the regulations they have.

Aria Finger 35:05 Sure.

Speaker 35:05 [clears throat] It'll be easier outside of the US, where they're more willing to, to do some of these things. So, you know, that will happen. It's unclear, the first question, which is, what's, what... If you have a three-year-old or a five-year-old-

Aria Finger 35:20 Yeah

Speaker 35:20 ... what do you want them to learn?

Aria Finger 35:22 Totally.

Speaker 35:22 Because the hard skills like, uh, that we used to value, STEM.

Aria Finger 35:26 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 35:27 Okay? That's probably, like, coding. Like we, you know, we spent 25 years saying, "Learn to code. Learn to code."

Aria Finger 35:33 Right.

Speaker 35:33 Oops.

Reid Hoffman 35:34 [laughs]

Speaker 35:34 You know? [laughs] Don't learn to code. Don't learn to code. So it's probably true that, like, all the hard facts of, you know, biology, chemistry-

Aria Finger 35:43 Mm-hmm

Speaker 35:43 ... physics will be extremely specialized and not necessary general knowledge.

Aria Finger 35:48 Hmm.

Speaker 35:49 Um, and, and probably not that valuable, let's say, if you had a AP result in this.

Aria Finger 35:54 Yeah.

Speaker 35:55 The things that are more emotional, how you read people, how you work with them, um, uh, probably are quite valuable because they're much harder for the computers to do and, and humans, uh, like doing them with other humans more often. So I think we'll see a, a kinda shift of the value, you know. STEM practically took over Stanford University.

Aria Finger 36:17 Totally.

Speaker 36:18 Okay? And now maybe what we'll see is a rotation, you know, back to the humanities-

Aria Finger 36:23 Mm

Speaker 36:23 ... into, um, understanding combination of, uh, history and literature, but also kind of the, the physiology of the brain and-

Aria Finger 36:32 Mm

Speaker 36:33 ... um, you know, how we interact with each other. If I had a three-year-old today, I would be, like, doubling down on the emotional skills.

Aria Finger 36:40 Mm.

Speaker 36:40 There's some great middle schools. One's a charter school, Valor. Another's a private school, Flourish. And, you know, they really focus like in seventh grade on these emotional circles-

Aria Finger 36:50 Mm-hmm

Speaker 36:50 ... where you sit around and talk about your feelings. And because they feel like this kind of skill, uh, knowing yourself, interact with other human beings, is gonna be the thing that sustains those kids-

Aria Finger 37:01 Yeah

Speaker 37:01 ... you know, through their working life.

Aria Finger 37:03 Do you-- I feel like when people talk about AI in education, Alpha School always comes up. We had McKenzie on the pod a few months ago, and I feel like some people are like, uh, the criticism is like, "They're not even using the cutting edge AI." Other people say, "Look at their test scores. They're doing, you know, twice as well as anyone else." Some people complain about equity, you know, four-- forty thousand dollars a year. The thing-

Speaker 37:25 Sixty thousand. It's fantastic.

Aria Finger 37:26 [chuckles]

Speaker 37:27 If you can afford it, go. Um-

Aria Finger 37:28 So why do you-- Like, the thing I love about it is actually less about the AI, but more just about the, like, giving agency to kids, focusing on other things. Like, what do you-- why do you think Alpha School is so great?

Speaker 37:39 Well, it starts with McKenzie and Joe's philosophy that the kids have to love school and they love vacation.

Aria Finger 37:44 [laughs]

Speaker 37:44 So the number one goal [clears throat] -

Aria Finger 37:46 Such a high bar

Speaker 37:46 ...is the kids don't wanna go on vacation. They wanna stay in school-

Aria Finger 37:49 Mm-hmm

Speaker 37:49 ...'cause they love it so much.

Aria Finger 37:50 Yeah.

Speaker 37:50 Then they start from, okay, if we want them to love it and we need them to know the basics stuff to do well on tests-

Aria Finger 37:58 Yep

Speaker 37:58 ...what are we gonna do? And so they do two hours on software a day where, [clears throat] you know, it's relatively practice and drilling-

Aria Finger 38:05 Mm-hmm

Speaker 38:05 ...and these kinds of things, but they have a coach really motivating and helping. Um, and then they get the reward for that, is they get to spend the rest of the day doing stuff they want. Either-

Aria Finger 38:14 Totally

Speaker 38:14 ...a set of the schools do-- are for athletes and people for sports-

Aria Finger 38:17 Mm-hmm

Speaker 38:18 ...or they spend the rest of the afternoon doing, like, watching TED Talks and talking about them-

Aria Finger 38:22 Totally

Speaker 38:22 ...or a range of things. Um, but I would say they're kind of like the Tesla Roadster. That was the first Tesla, over a hundred thousand dollars sports car-

Aria Finger 38:31 Yep

Speaker 38:32 ...specialist thing, but it set electric cars as the aspiration.

Aria Finger 38:37 Yeah.

Speaker 38:37 Then they were cool because the first electric car was this, you know-

Aria Finger 38:41 Absolutely

Speaker 38:41 ...very high, extremely fast accelerating thing. So that's Alpha School-

Aria Finger 38:45 Yep

Speaker 38:45 ...is our Tesla Roadster-

Aria Finger 38:47 Mm-hmm

Speaker 38:47 ...for AI schools.

Aria Finger 38:48 And you think it can be done-- We, we can go down the cost chain, and we can do it at a lower amount.

Speaker 38:53 A hundred percent.

Aria Finger 38:54 All right.

Speaker 38:54 Model, Model Three will be coming and, you know-

Aria Finger 38:56 I love it

Speaker 38:56 ...so, uh-

Aria Finger 38:57 Cool

Speaker 38:57 ...yeah. There'll be more and more innovation at that end.

Aria Finger 38:59 Cool. So Reid, we talked about education and how there's enormous opportunity for change. Alpha School, which is operating within the United States. How is education gonna change outside the United States with AI?

Speaker 39:10 Well, I think what we'll see is tremendous flourishing of AI teacher in an international situation.

Aria Finger 39:17 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 39:17 So we have pretty good teachers in the US and pretty-

Aria Finger 39:19 Yep

Speaker 39:19 ...high satisfaction in rich countries generally here.

Aria Finger 39:21 Sure.

Speaker 39:22 Uh, but in lower income countries, the education budget might be three hundred dollars per kid per year, and the class size might be fifty to seventy kids.

Aria Finger 39:31 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 39:31 And there's just not a lot of learning going on. And I think the combination of a Starlink on every school and tablet for every child and then really good AI software will close the gap. So think of, uh, the way mobile phones are ubiquitous in the developing world.

Aria Finger 39:47 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 39:47 I think AI learning will be ubiquitous, and that will help. I don't know that they'll leapfrog the advanced countries, but they'll certainly close the gap that we've seen historically. Um, and in places they may leapfrog.

Aria Finger 40:01 I feel like lately there's been, like, breathless articles everywhere about how one laptop per child was the hope, and then it was really a failure, and we put so much money into it and it didn't work. And then other people are saying, like, "Well, that's really nice that you want that, but, you know, the cost of compute is too much." Like, what would you say to those people who think that, like, we've heard tech solutions in education before, but it's not gonna happen this time?

Speaker 40:23 Yeah. There's always the crash dream phenomena. Uh, like, you know, in the 1980s, I was in the AI wave that was expert systems, and they were public companies and-

Aria Finger 40:33 Yeah

Speaker 40:33 ...the fifth generation and the Japanese were gonna be this big threat and, you know, and that AI didn't work. But this one is.

Aria Finger 40:40 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 40:40 So just think, just because it failed before-

Aria Finger 40:43 Yep

Speaker 40:43 ...it was too early, doesn't mean it won't work. So I think the one tablet per child around the world is very scalable-

Aria Finger 40:51 Mm-hmm

Speaker 40:51 ...builds on the mobile phone platforms.

Aria Finger 40:52 Yep.

Speaker 40:53 Um, and it is some of the same ideas that one laptop per child had, but that was just twenty years too early.

Aria Finger 41:00 Yep. And I assume you think the cost of compute is just gonna go through, through the floor, and so that it won't be a barrier to entry for folks in the developing world.

Speaker 41:07 Um, that's right. The costs are really driven off the phone market.

Aria Finger 41:11 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41:11 So, you know, we have eight hundred dollar phones in the US, but in most of the world, you know, there's fifty dollar phones, um, are quite usable.

Aria Finger 41:19 Yep.

Speaker 41:20 Um, and so think of it as a fifty dollar phone and a Starlink per school, um, and some solar panels, you know. Uh, so it, it's very scalable.

Aria Finger 41:29 Fantastic.

Reid Hoffman 41:30 So one of the things you said earlier, which I, I completely agree with, and one of the things I think I would partially reframe, and it's kind of a question leading into education. I think our human skills, um, uh, kinda how we collaborate, getting into humanity, understanding these things, I do think will amplify up. And the skill of learning coding obviously goes away 'cause it's like, oh, this does the code. But I think the various-- Two things that I think will still be pretty deep in what we're doing is, one is a good systematic understanding of what truth in the world is around, so like biology, physics, chemistry, et cetera, because that kind of iteration of understanding the nature of the world we're in, I think is pretty familiar scientific thinking. Is it-- Like, the patterns of thinking, I think are important. The patterns of strategy are important. And I think actually even coding will go that way because part of the thing is, is while people say, "Well, should I study-- Should I stop studying computer science?" Like, well, no, you should study computer science, not coding, right? Like, more of the kind of the thinking about the, the system or the pattern of it in terms of how we operate, and I think that will become more general. I'm curious what you think of my modest reframing of your earlier statement.

Speaker 42:48 I think I'd just study math. Um-

Reid Hoffman 42:51 [laughs]

Speaker 42:52 You know, if you wanna get to, like, patterns-

Reid Hoffman 42:53 Well, alarms are terri-terrible at counting, so yes.

Speaker 42:55 So, you know, [clears throat] whether it's, uh, alge- I mean, there's so many interesting things in math-

Reid Hoffman 43:01 Yeah

Speaker 43:02 ...if you want to help people, like, kinda learn abstraction or search for truth.

Reid Hoffman 43:06 Yeah.

Speaker 43:07 Um, you know, look, there's gonna be some role for science and a few people will be drawn to it- But think of the last 20 years. We've been, as a society, "STEM, STEM, STEM. Learn to code."

Reid Hoffman 43:19 Yeah.

Speaker 43:19 "STEM, STEM, STEM."

Reid Hoffman 43:20 Yeah.

Speaker 43:20 So I just think that as everyone sees that coding is overdone, um, my guess is we'll see that STEM is overdone. Um, and the kinds of things that you do with a biology background will be done so much better and faster by AI that it'll be hard to compete for jobs in that space.

Reid Hoffman 43:40 So shifting to another thread, one of the things I think AI will do is it will break us a little bit of the industrial model, which is the industrial model tends to be the, you know, go to high school, go to college, learn, now go work. And learning then, now work. And I think ongoing learning will be one of the key things. Do you think that will also be part of it? Not just like I have this one learning period, but it's like I'm constantly interweaving learning with what I'm doing.

Speaker 44:07 Absolutely. So, you know, trying to think through the ongoing skill acquisition, you know, by, by learning things has probably, you know, been important for a long time because the stuff you learned in high school be- changes so much, and the knowledge in the field changes so much. Um, and that's only gonna continue. So certainly learning will need to be for people who w- wanna make a living intellectually constant. But I don't think that's a... It's like a more of the past-

Reid Hoffman 44:36 Mm

Speaker 44:36 ... because that's been true for a while.

Reid Hoffman 44:38 Mm.

Speaker 44:38 It's just gonna be even more true-

Reid Hoffman 44:39 Mm

Speaker 44:39 ... uh, you know, in the, in this new world.

Aria Finger 44:42 So we learned earlier that you were the one that said Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, we define entire epochs of humanity by the technology that they use, and so we're entering the AI age. Do you think even more than previous ages, that now if you are left out of the AI age, either personally or sort of as a country, like that, that now is the time that some folks might actually fall behind, and there's gonna be a bigger divergence between those who embrace the AI, AI age and those who fall behind?

Speaker 45:13 Well, I don't know that just embracing it, like if you're a small country in Europe that has a glorious past-

Aria Finger 45:19 [laughs]

Speaker 45:20 I don't think it's whether you embrace it or not that it's gonna change the outcome. I mean, you know, you gotta try to figure out a strategy-

Aria Finger 45:27 Mm-hmm

Speaker 45:27 ... because, um, you know, it's gonna be dominated, you know, by China and the US. Okay, how does the middle powers like Canada, you know, thrive? Um, and I think we owe, you know, uh, we're part of that, uh, thinking and solution to be able to build a world that we all wanna live in.

Aria Finger 45:46 And so what would you do for these middle powers? Like they don't wanna live in a world where it's just the Chi- just China and the US.

Speaker 45:54 I don't know that they have much of a choice.

Aria Finger 45:56 Yeah.

Speaker 45:57 So I think it's... I mean, what they're doing is linking up together.

Aria Finger 46:01 Yep.

Speaker 46:01 You know, and I think that probably makes sense.

Aria Finger 46:03 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:03 Um, and certainly, you know, they'll embrace using, you know, American AI-

Aria Finger 46:09 Sure

Speaker 46:09 ... 'cause they'll, they'll need to.

Aria Finger 46:10 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:11 And you know, maybe they will be able to get some local things going-

Aria Finger 46:14 Yeah

Speaker 46:14 ... or they'll do it by treaty, where, you know, where they get they're not gonna get shut off.

Aria Finger 46:18 Right.

Speaker 46:19 But think of it as AI's gonna accentuate income gaps-

Aria Finger 46:23 Mm-hmm

Speaker 46:23 ... both in the US-

Aria Finger 46:24 Right, and within countries

Speaker 46:24 ... and between the US and, and other countries. Um, so you know, it's going to create tensions-

Aria Finger 46:31 Mm-hmm

Speaker 46:31 ... just like it does in one society-

Aria Finger 46:33 Yep

Speaker 46:33 ... it does between societies.

Aria Finger 46:35 Mm-hmm.

Reid Hoffman 46:36 I do think that one of the things, and I think you would agree, that, that, that actually having an active AI strategy for the countries, for the industries, et cetera, is actually in fact really important. Um, I think it's less important to be going-- It isn't that, you know, so-called digital sovereignty isn't also important, but the most important thing is to actually be modernizing your, your kind of industry, your countries, your companies, your workforce. Because it's a little bit like the Industrial Revolution. Like one of the things I put in "Superagency" is that, you know, England, quarter of the population of France, tenth the population in China, multi-century indus- uh, and did not invent the Industrial Revolution, but multi centuries empire because they embraced the Industrial Revolution most robustly early. Would you also think that when you get to thinking about this from a country's or indust- or industry's or company's perspective, that they should adopt that same thing of like we have to have an active strategy in being there early?

Speaker 47:41 Well, your example's interesting. So you said the UK, which led industrialization, so that-

Reid Hoffman 47:46 Yeah

Speaker 47:46 ... that's kind of the equivalent of America today, right?

Reid Hoffman 47:49 Yes.

Speaker 47:49 Um, so you didn't really phrase it as, you know, what should Argentina do-

Reid Hoffman 47:52 Yeah

Speaker 47:53 ... w- about industrialization, which is a very hard challenge because-

Reid Hoffman 47:56 Yeah

Speaker 47:56 ... the UK did everything in its power to keep Argentina from being able, country, to industrialize, to maintain their strength of their power. So if you are a middle power like Argentina, should yous have an industrialization policy? Sure, probably that makes sense. Will it work? Not clear at all, because the power imbalance in the UK was so high. So they would, they were laws preventing, you know, looms and various things from being in India. So the cotton, you know, from India had to come and then get processed in the UK, and they enforced those laws with their military. Uh, so I, you know, it sounds all great that, uh, Belgium should have a, you know, an AI policy. And Estonia is a small country that's done a lot on, say, digital ID-

Aria Finger 48:43 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 48:43 ... and do good government tech.

Aria Finger 48:45 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 48:46 Um, so I, I guess that's better than not doing it, but I don't know that it's actually much of an answer for a middle power country.

Reid Hoffman 48:53 Mm.

Speaker 48:53 I mean, I think the challenges for a middle power country are quite substantial, and I, I don't have a good solution, but I think, you know, in them linking up and in doing things and working well. And I hope that the US, as the Western leader of that is, you know, embracing in a very, in a very important way, you know, which is not the current America first policy. But I think it's much more in our long-term interest to have long and strong allies.

Aria Finger 49:21 So earlier you said that you think AI is gonna usher in this great era of abundance and, you know, whether it's 10 years or 20 years, you know, when, when sort of AGI gets here. Like, what are the things that need to happen for that to be true? Are there conditions that need to be met now for that to happen? And did you mean just in the US in terms of the abundance, or could it be global abundance too?

Speaker 49:43 Depends kind of how the IP is shared-

Aria Finger 49:45 Yeah

Speaker 49:46 ... or the rewards of it, but I think it'll be pretty global. So just like you saw in the industrialization, it l- it really did lift all boats.

Aria Finger 49:52 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 49:52 You know, it, it's at a different level than in the host country.

Aria Finger 49:56 Yeah.

Speaker 49:56 Um, but, uh, so let's take nuclear fusion, you know. And if we, uh, can actually make it work, you know, which will be assisted by AI-

Aria Finger 50:05 Mm-hmm

Speaker 50:05 ... um, you know, then we've got a tremendous energy source.

Aria Finger 50:08 Yeah.

Speaker 50:09 If through it we're able to bring down the cost of solar, you know, or invent new types of batteries and storage, you know, it could really revolutionize-

Aria Finger 50:17 Mm-hmm

Speaker 50:17 ... um, energy usage and production, which then brings us to, you know, age of abundance.

Aria Finger 50:22 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 50:23 So in early, in early nuclear we were a little bit naive-

Aria Finger 50:27 Mm

Speaker 50:27 ... and we thought electricity would be too cheap to meter.

Aria Finger 50:30 [laughs]

Speaker 50:31 Okay? So, you know, we're probably not gonna get to that.

Aria Finger 50:34 We got that wrong. [laughs]

Speaker 50:35 Um, but you know, that's the kinds of thinking for abundance that we wanna do. So if you think about housing and, you know, it's very expensive to build. What if it was robots building it, you know, 24 hours a day?

Aria Finger 50:48 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 50:48 So then you got, okay, you've got carpenters not working, so that's a negative, but you've got, you know, low cost, very custom beautiful housing.

Aria Finger 50:55 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 50:55 So that would be, you know, another example. Um, so you know, I think in each industry we're gonna see much lower costs-

Aria Finger 51:03 Mm-hmm

Speaker 51:03 ... um, for doing things, and then incredible amounts of inventive energy, 'cause maybe we don't need to build a house that way. Maybe you just print it, you know, in some giant-

Aria Finger 51:12 Totally

Speaker 51:12 ... 3D printer. So there'll, there'll be both tech revolution in that way, which again would be like nuclear fusion.

Aria Finger 51:19 Yeah.

Reid Hoffman 51:19 I'm gonna shift to one other zone of subject, 'cause I think this is something that people frequently misunderstand. What do you think are-- Why is so much of this innovation happen in Silicon Valley? What are the things that make Silicon Valley kind of a unique creator of these kinds of technologies? Why is it half of the NASDAQ is within 30 miles of where we're currently sitting?

Speaker 51:42 Well, I think if you look at the s- financial city of London or you look at New York or you look at Detroit for cars, um, this is not something specific about tech. Um, you get very positive reinforcement when you've got a whole lot of talented people that can switch jobs and not have to move, and then they move the ideas. So in the US, we don't have very high protection against the ideas walking out the door, so it makes it-- can be very hard for a given company-

Aria Finger 52:12 Right

Speaker 52:13 ... because they feel like, "Oh, my secret spread." But it makes it very productive for the economy and for the ecosystem that those ideas do spread. So I think of it as liquidity in employees changing is probably the key ingredient, which is a combination of things like LinkedIn, of I wish we had non, non-employer based healthcare.

Aria Finger 52:36 Mm.

Speaker 52:37 Um, so if you had it, you know-

Aria Finger 52:38 Amen

Speaker 52:38 ... in some other ways than employer based, you'd have more liquidity. The less we do non-competes, the better. It's one of the things I think that the Biden FTC had right-

Reid Hoffman 52:47 Oh

Speaker 52:47 ... making it easier to compete with existing companies, um-

Reid Hoffman 52:51 Yeah

Speaker 52:51 ... by eliminating non-competes. So those are the-- that liquidity of movement I think is the most important thing.

Aria Finger 52:58 Yep.

Reid Hoffman 52:59 So one of the questions, maybe a, a last question before we get to rapid fire, on jobs is, obviously the general discourse is loss of jobs, you know, and kind of other sorts of issues. But there's way insufficient discussion on wages.

Aria Finger 53:14 Mm.

Reid Hoffman 53:14 Because even though, in fact, you know, action backed I think there will be a lot of creation of jobs, a lot of translation of jobs and so forth. But what will happen, a little bit like the earlier comment in radiology, is there will be a, "Okay, which of these jobs are super valuable?" Compensation goes up. "Which of these jobs become less valuable?" Compensation goes down. Have you had any thoughts, 'cause you're a systems thinker, on the wages effects? What countries, companies, industries, but specifically also individuals should be doing in kind of navigating what will be happening within wages?

Speaker 53:48 Well, let's see. You describe as some jobs as valuable, but like, you know, teachers are very valuable and not paid very much.

Reid Hoffman 53:55 Yes.

Speaker 53:55 So I don't think pay follows value very much.

Reid Hoffman 53:58 Yeah.

Speaker 53:58 It follows shortages in demand and supply.

Reid Hoffman 54:01 Yeah.

Speaker 54:01 Okay? So the question is, for wages, what jobs will be sh- in shortage?

Reid Hoffman 54:06 Yeah.

Speaker 54:07 Um, and I think it's all those jobs that are emotional that computers are not very good at, because we'll, we'll have a lot of need in those. And the jobs that are more administrative-

Reid Hoffman 54:18 Mm

Speaker 54:18 ... you know, those are gonna have lower wages because you're competing with computer-

Reid Hoffman 54:22 Mm

Speaker 54:22 ... uh, who c- who could do that job. Um, so again, it's really where AI does a job well, it, it's cost done by a human, or its pay will be less.

Reid Hoffman 54:33 Yeah.

Speaker 54:33 And where it's super hard for, uh, the AI to do, it'll be, you know, continued high wages.

Reid Hoffman 54:38 Mm.

Aria Finger 54:39 I feel like a lot of people are telling people that the solution to that is trades. Everyone's like, "Oh, become a plumber, HVAC, electrician," because those are in shortage right now. Obviously, like the big question there is like how soon robots will catch up. Like w- what do you th-- Like it matters if that's gonna be five years or 20 years or 40 years in terms of people getting wage premiums from the trades. Like what, what would you tell people in that respect?

Speaker 55:00 Okay, so let's look at electric cars. So 2007 we had self-driving-- Sorry, I s- I should say self-driving cars. 2007 was the DARPA Challenge-

Aria Finger 55:10 Mm-hmm

Speaker 55:10 ... and it was like it actually did work-

Aria Finger 55:12 Yeah

Speaker 55:12 ... in self-driving cars in a limited lab. And now 20 years from now it pretty much works.

Aria Finger 55:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 55:19 Okay? Uh, but the percentage of miles, uh, driven-

Reid Hoffman 55:23 Right

Speaker 55:23 ... self-driven by the machines by high-end Teslas and by Waymos, it's gotta be less than 1%-

Reid Hoffman 55:28 Sure

Speaker 55:28 ... of global miles.

Aria Finger 55:29 Easy.

Speaker 55:30 That's after 20 years.

Aria Finger 55:31 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 55:31 So we're not even-

Aria Finger 55:33 Mm-hmm

Speaker 55:33 ... to the stage of that DARPA Challenge. That is, we don't have a demonstration-

Aria Finger 55:37 Right

Speaker 55:37 ... in the home, okay, that can do all these things. So think of it as in 20 years, robots will do maybe 1% of the plumbing.

Aria Finger 55:46 At most, right.

Speaker 55:47 Okay? So it just takes a super long time-

Aria Finger 55:51 Yep

Speaker 55:51 ... to build, deploy, and then to get them to be lower cost, higher safety than others. But I think over 50 years-

Aria Finger 55:57 Sure

Speaker 55:57 ... it will happen. So that's still gonna be a, a great field for the next-

Aria Finger 56:01 Absolutely

Speaker 56:02 ... 20 years, uh, if we're talking plumbing specifically.

Aria Finger 56:04 Mm-hmm. Thanks.

Reid Hoffman 56:06 So now to rapid fire, unless there's another question from David.

Speaker 56:08 Let's do it.

Reid Hoffman 56:08 All right. Is there a movie, song or book that fills you with optimism for the future?

Speaker 56:14 There's a cool movie I watched recently, The Queen of Chess, and it's about a Eastern European 1980s who- guy, family, who raises his three daughters to get out of poverty via chess.

Aria Finger 56:26 Huh.

Speaker 56:26 And they all three become grandmasters and get to a middle class or better living through this, uh, dedication. And so, uh, it's a situation where there's no reason they should have had hope, being in 1980s, you know, Romania, uh, and yet they did, and they worked towards a future that has been great. Uh, so it's a... I love a documentary like that.

Reid Hoffman 56:48 Yeah.

Aria Finger 56:48 All right, I gotta check that out. What is a question that you wish people would ask you more often?

Speaker 56:53 I think people focus a lot on business success, which I've been, you know, super fortunate on, and less on joy.

Aria Finger 57:00 Mm.

Speaker 57:00 And so I think the question would be, um, what gives you joy? How do you increase joy in your life?

Aria Finger 57:07 All right. How do you increase joy in your life? Let's hear it.

Speaker 57:10 I would say that I'm trying to do more on the mindfulness and on-

Aria Finger 57:14 Mm

Speaker 57:14 ... the appreciation, noticing. Much of my work life was relatively frantic, uh, kind of lots of email, short burst stuff, and I think I could have integrated more mindfulness into that busy time.

Aria Finger 57:29 Mm.

Speaker 57:29 But certainly now that I'm retired, I can.

Aria Finger 57:31 Love it.

Reid Hoffman 57:32 So where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry, let's call that tech entertainment, that inspires you?

Speaker 57:40 Um, definitely medical work. I mean, the amount impr- improvement in cancer therapies, health, understanding insulin resistance, I mean, it goes on and on. What we're slowly learning of the brain... of the body, and then the brain's, you know, even slower, but making some progress on that.

Aria Finger 57:59 All right, our final question. Can you leave us with a final thought on what is possible to achieve in the next 15 years if everything breaks humanity's way, and what's the first step to get there?

Speaker 58:10 Well, if everything breaks human, humanity's way, it's because AI has unleashed human flourishing, and we find the political mechanisms-

Aria Finger 58:20 Mm

Speaker 58:20 ... to share that across, within our country, across different income groups, and then between countries. The world as a whole is, uh, enhanced. And a first step for that would be to realize how interconnected we are between people in our country and then between countries, and trying to get away from win-lose, uh, to win-win.

Aria Finger 58:42 Totally. Amen. Thanks so much.

Reid Hoffman 58:45 Reed, always a pleasure.

Speaker 58:46 Indeed.

Reid Hoffman 58:48 Possible is produced by Pallet Media. It's hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reed Hoffman. Our showrunner is Shan Yang. Possible is produced by Thanasi Delos, Katie Sanders, Spencer Strasmore, Emu Zu, Trent Barboza, and Tafadzwa Nemarundwe.

Aria Finger 59:03 Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Sayida Sapieva, Ian Allis, Greg Biado, Parth Patil, and Ben Rellis.