In this season of On Being and those to come, we are going to train the core human questions on the emerging “generative AI.” Beyond the hype and the doom, what is this new technology calling us to as human beings? What is our agency to shape it to human purpose, and how might it bring us — literally — to our senses? This inaugural conversation with Reid Hoffman is a wide and deep beginning foundation. He and Krista venture into unexpectedly relevant places, like the nature of friendship in human life, and what it would mean to create “contained, boundaried AI” — and Reid's use of words like “delightful” and “elevating” as qualities we can impart to this technology which, as we're hearing again and again, is going to change everything.

Reid Hoffman is co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, and a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. He's known by some as the philosopher of Silicon Valley. He is currently on the board of Microsoft and was an early investor in OpenAI, which brought ChatGPT into the world. His latest book, which he co-wrote together with GPT-4, is Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI. His newest venture is Inflection AI, the creator of Pi — “a supportive and empathetic conversational AI.” He is a host on the podcasts Masters of Scale, Greymatter, and Possible, which will launch its second season this fall.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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