Best of the Pod: How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman

Our podcast is on hiatus for the month of August, so we're re-upping some of the best interviews we've done on AI & I. Today we're featuring Dan Shipper's conversation with Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, author, and venture capitalist. (He's also backed Every.) They get into the psychological patterns of how we adopt new technologies, the notion of human agency, and Reid’s take on the next decade of AI. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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AGI is coming. Reid Hoffman just wrote the book on how to prepare.

According to Reid, every major tech breakthrough (the written word, the printing press, the telephone) triggered mass fear. But, contrary to our worries, new technology tends to enhance human agency—even more so, if you know how to use it well.

In his book Superagency, Reid examines how we’ve historically adopted new technologies and focuses on AI’s potential to increase our agency—the ability to make decisions that affect outcomes. He wrote the book for two audiences: anyone who is curious, or even skeptical, about AI; and technologists who are building in AI, with the hope that they will think about human agency as a design principle for their products. As someone who straddles both worlds, I read the book and really liked it.