Interview with Reid Hoffman—cofounder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI, and Manas AI, Greylock Partners partner, and early OpenAI backer—on how to prepare for AGI, drawing on his book Superagency. Topics covered: why major tech breakthroughs (the written word, printing press, telephone) historically trigger mass fear while technology tends to enhance human agency; human agency as an internal stance toward uncertainty; why adapting to new technology waves requires broad access, an experimental mindset, and flexibility rather than a fixed blueprint; how most jobs will transform rather than disappear; how social norms and ethics (such as individual access to personal data) may need to change; equitable access to AI and the case for private commons; why quantified-self tools may finally become valuable; and the shift from symbolic to sub-symbolic AI as a mirror for how we understand intelligence. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Episode start 00:01:29 - Introduction 00:02:50 - Patterns in how we've historically adopted technology 00:07:02 - Why humans have typically been fearful of new technologies 00:13:25 - How Reid developed his own sense of agency 00:20:08 - The way Reid thinks about making investment decisions 00:29:40 - AI as a "techno-humanist" compass 00:35:30 - How to prepare yourself for the way AI will change knowledge work 00:41:39 - Why equitable access to AI is important 00:45:15 - Reid's take on why private commons will be beneficial for society 00:47:23 - How AI is making Silicon Valley's conception of the "quantified self" a reality 00:52:14 - The shift from symbolic to sub-symbolic AI mirrors how we understand intelligence 01:03:29 - Reid's new book, Superagency # Channel Presentation Observations: "How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman - Ep. 46" ## Explicit Self-Description Evidence ### Show Name and Host - The outro explicitly names the show and host: > "this show is the epitome of Awesomeness... It's not just a show it's a journey into the future with **Dan Shipper** as the captain of the spaceship" - The channel/show is called **"AI and I"** ("smash that like button and subscribe to Ai and I"). - The title convention includes **episode numbering** ("Ep. 46"), indicating a regularly published interview series. ### Stated Content Focus - The outro claims content about **ChatGPT and AI knowledge**: "pure unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT." - The outro claims a blend of **insight and entertainment**: "every episode is a roller coaster of emotions insights and laughter." ## Intended Audience ### Professionals Building with AI - The host explicitly frames questions for tech workers: > "maybe I'm a product manager I'm a designer whatever... how does this change how I think about an Orient to AI over the next couple years" - He references fast-moving AI news ("o3 is coming out soon," "Google just released something today... called Titans"), indicating an audience expected to track current AI releases. ### Technologists and Entrepreneurs - The guest states the book's technologist framing, which the host amplifies: discussion of "co-pilot," "human amplification," "design decisions," and startup/investing strategy. - The host discusses his own experience as someone who "run[s] a media company" and uses tools like Windsurf, ChatGPT, Claude, and an internal incubation called **Spiral** — audience is implicitly people with similar workflows. ### AI-Curious and AI-Skeptical General Viewers - Guest describes one intended audience for the book as "anyone who has any AI curiosity or skepticism," which the show engages through a book-discussion format. ## Claimed and Demonstrated Scope ### Format: Long-Form Expert Interviews - Demonstrated pattern: in-depth conversation with a prominent guest (Reid Hoffman) about his book *Super Agency*, covering history, philosophy, psychology, investing, and practical AI advice. - The host references prior contact: "we may talked about in the previous podcast" and invites a return: "I would love to have you on again" — indicating recurring guest relationships. ### Tone: Intellectual but Accessible - Host uses playful framing ("never argue with people at Davos that's mistake number one," "Wittgenstein is Godfather") alongside serious philosophical discussion — consistent with the outro's "insights and laughter" claim. ### Personal Disclosure as Content - The host shares personal details on-air (having OCD, building a self-tracking app with Whoop/Y-BOCS data), showing the channel incorporates host's personal experiments with AI. ## Notable Observations for Channel-Level Synthesis - **Book-review/promotion component**: episodes are tied to new releases ("you have a new book coming out... called super agency"). - **Outro style is hyperbolic/satirical**: the closing call-to-action ("I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you") is unusually exaggerated, whether sincere parody or a stylistic signature — an observable presentation pattern. - No claims about channel size, funding, or affiliation were made beyond the host's mention of running a media company. # Delivery Observation: "How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman – Ep. 46" ## Format and Setting - **Two-person conversational interview** between a host (Dan Shipper, per the closing) and Reid Hoffman, promoting Hoffman's book *Superagency*. - Opens with a **cold-open excerpt** (the agency/catechism exchange) before the formal welcome: *"Reed Welcome to the show it's great to be here."* - Closes with an **exaggerated, ironic outro**: *"oh my gosh folks you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe"* — a stylistic break from the rest of the episode. ## Host's Delivery Patterns - **Recurring "make it concrete" moves**: the host repeatedly pushes abstraction toward practical advice: - *"I want to make this really concrete though maybe I'm a product manager I'm a designer whatever how does this change how I think about"* - *"arm me with some more practical concrete ways"* - **Long multi-clause questions** with heavy hedging and restarts: *"um it's it's a book about psychology and a certain way because um you have a theory of why we are typically very afraid..."* - **Frequent filler and repetition**, especially "like," "um," and repeated words: *"it's it's it's all external um but it's quite clear to me that that that aesthetic component."* - **Personal disclosure as a pivot**: the host introduces his own OCD tracking project mid-interview: *"I don't know if we've talked about this before but I have OCD."* ## Guest's (Hoffman's) Delivery Patterns - **Extended analogy-based teaching**: nearly every concept is illustrated via analogy — Uber (*"is it a a loss of agency to being driven in Uber or a gain"*), highways, hiking compasses, German vs. Japanese GPS (*"return to the path return to the path"*). - **Historical framing habit**: defaults to historical examples — Socrates and the written word, the printing press, Martin Luther, post-WWII institutions. - **Self-interruption and repair**: *"so we as human beings uh when we get to these new technologies the transition periods of what we get in can be very challenging but that's his you know just some degree that's a that's a opportunity."* - **Hedged, calibrated claims**: *"I don't think that well I can I can I'll do the job goes away too but I think a lot of jobs won't go away I think they'll transform."* - **Concrete anecdote to ground advice**: the ChatGPT investing question — *"how would Reed Hoffman make money investing in artificial intelligence and he gave me the uh the business school professor's analysis that was completely wrong for Venture Capital."* - **Metaphor preference**: compass over blueprint, surfing over resisting: *"surfing is a very good metaphor is to say how do you Embrace uncertainty."* ## Interaction Patterns - **Rapid agreement-and-extend exchanges**: host offers a framing, guest affirms and broadens — *"well I completely agree and actually one of the things that's interesting about the The Arc..."* - **Host supplies pop-culture/philosophical references** the guest picks up: *Princess Bride*, Tolstoy, Wittgenstein (*"every time I thought I was out they pull me back in is Vicken Stein"*). - **Guest occasionally hands the mic back for precision**: *"can you give me an example what that might look like"* — wait, this is the host; the guest instead tends to answer expansively. ## Uncertainty Notes - Speaker turns are not labeled in the transcript; attribution above is inferred from content and the closing credits, and may occasionally misassign lines. - The outro's tone (sincere vs. parodic) is ambiguous from text alone; the hyperbolic register suggests irony but this cannot be confirmed without audio. # Position Record: "How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman – Ep. 46" **Speakers:** Dan Shipper (host) and Reid Hoffman (guest, author of *Superagency*). Attribution below relies on conversational context in the transcript. --- ## 1. Historical Analogies for AI Fear ### Hoffman's Claims - **Printing press parallel:** Public dialogue at the printing press's introduction was "very similar" to today's AI discourse — fears of collapse of trust in human cognition, widespread misinformation, and erosion of knowledge and society. - Yet centuries later we are "deeply indebted" to the printing press: no science, widespread literacy, middle-class institutions, or strong universities without it. - **Qualification preserved:** He explicitly does not smooth over the cost — "there was nearly a century of religious war." Transition periods for new technologies "can be very challenging," but this is "an opportunity not just a notion of fear" because "the world is what we make it." ### On Whether Transitions Are Preventable - **Shipper's question:** Could the Reformation wars have been avoided (e.g., talking Martin Luther down)? - **Hoffman's answer:** "It depends on where your society and culture is at the time" — unclear the Catholic Church would have tolerated gradual reform. He notes post-WWII global institutions and printed records of history may let us steer this transition "much cleaner and much more compassionately." - **Hoffson's explicit qualification:** "I don't think there'll be zero transition. I think that's pipe dream" — listeners should not have that expectation. --- ## 2. Theory of Agency ### Hoffman's Core Position - People experience new technology as a **reduction of agency**, especially institutional leaders, and react fearfully. - Actual path: agency *changes* — some prior agency is lost, but agency has **internal as well as external** components; how you approach and experience it matters. - **Uber example:** Riding in an Uber can be framed as loss of agency (no hands on wheel) but hundreds of millions use it as a *gain* of agency (no car ownership, safer rides home). - **Highway example:** Focusing on other cars as hazards means "you're never going to get on the road." - **Smartphones:** He recalls arguing at Davos with people who saw smartphones as "cybernetic control" — billions adopted them because they are "a massive increase in agency." - **Superagency thesis:** When millions of people get elevated individual agency from a technology, society collectively gains "super agency." ### Shipper's Reading (host position) - Reads Hoffman's agency as an "internal... aesthetic experience of agency," linking it to Dan Dennett's **intentional stance** (Hoffman endorses this connection). - Argues questions about human agency reflect "lack of faith in our ability to change and adapt." - Shipper's own account of **agency cultivation**: he adopted early the catechism of "strength to change the things I can, tolerance to live with the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference." ### Hoffman on His Personal Origin - Attributes his agency sense possibly to **playing board games** — Avalon Hill games, Starfleet Battles, Dungeons & Dragons. - **Explicit distinction:** He preferred dice-based games over chess and Go because randomness "more closely approximated the kinds of circumstances we encounter in life" — life is not deterministic and includes **epistemic uncertainty**, which chess and Go lack. - His life/business/investing strategy derives from "figure out what the nature of the game is," changing what you can and accepting what you can't. ### Limits of High Agency (Shipper's pushback) - Shipper argues the tech meme of "high agency" can be harmful: an internal locus of control over things totally out of your control is "a pretty miserable way to live." - **Hoffman's response:** Examples of beneficial surrender of control — friendship, romantic relationships, team sports, "team sports within companies," and religious experience. --- ## 3. Uncertainty ### Shipper's Framing - Default Western stance (philosophy from Socrates/Plato to Descartes, science's pursuit of fundamental laws, religion's promised certainty) is to **eliminate** uncertainty; grinding against it lowers agency, while "surfing" it works better — the appropriate stance toward new technology. ### Hoffman's Agreement and Additions - Agrees with the broad-brush characterization ("almost Jackson Pollock" generalization). - Humans **delude themselves to over-degrees of certainty** — e.g., we ignore the risks inherent in every highway drive. - Critiques Western philosophy's reductive moves (e.g., collapsing all self-orientation into "selfishness"). - References the unresolved tension between Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics; Einstein's "God does not play dice" as aesthetic resistance to uncertainty. - Distinguishes **three forms of uncertainty**: how the world plays out; our epistemology; how the system comes together. - Entrepreneurship connection: an entrepreneur who believes success is guaranteed is "massively deluding themselves" — though that delusion is "maybe sometimes... necessary to work really hard." ### Surfing Metaphor - Hoffman endorses "surfing" uncertainty as a way of embracing it while taking agency — connecting an arc between his first book (*The Start-Up of You*) and *Superagency*. He notes he "hadn't quite realized" this arc existed. --- ## 4. Compass vs. Blueprint - **Hoffman:** Rigid plans "break fast and uselessly" (invoking "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy"). A **compass** — direction plus adjustment — is more resilient. An AI chatbot functions as an "**informational GPS**." - **Techno-humanist compass:** People call AI "technology" but not cars, phones, laptops, glasses, or books — yet all are technology; familiar tools build a "patina of culture" and get incorporated into our agency. - **Shipper's counterargument:** Isn't a compass "wishy-washy" versus first-principles thinking? - **Hoffman's reply:** A techno-humanist compass *can be* among one's first principles. Anecdote: German GPS systems demanded "return to the path"; Japanese systems recalculated a new route. "If you said first principle is only being Germanic, then you're going to have problems." - Shipper notes Tolstoy's *War and Peace* depicts German generals' strategy the same way. --- ## 5. Practical Guidance for Workers ### Hoffman's Prescriptions - **Iterative development / engagement:** The best preparation is to start seriously using AI now — not just trivial tasks (birthday sonnets, recipes) but "things that you are seriously in Earnest about." - **Personal example:** He asked ChatGPT how Reid Hoffman would make money investing in AI; it returned a "business school professor's analysis that was completely wrong for Venture Capital." But in the same session, asking how to do due diligence on a business plan produced useful items (points "four and seven") he would have taken days to reach. - **Job transformation, not just elimination:** "A lot of jobs won't go away... they'll transform." Customer-service-type jobs (humans "acting like robots") face "higher replacement coefficients," but in many fields "the human will be replaced by a human with the AI" — and "we want as many of the humans to be the humans with AI." - **If your job goes away:** AI itself can help identify adjacent roles (account management, sales, support desk) and how to learn and get them. ### Equitable Access - **Hoffman:** Broad access isn't only fairness — society benefits when "talent from as broad range as possible" is unlocked. --- ## 6. Regulation and Data ### Hoffman's Stance - Self-describes as "**regulatory cautious**" rather than anti-regulation (Shipper characterized the book as "anti-regulation in general"; Hoffman's correction is preserved here). - Regulators often over-assume certainty and "enshrine the past against the future." Recommended sequence: start by **measuring the feared harms**, track them, then let innovation dynamically reduce them. - Acknowledges regulator incentive problem: "if I allow you to take risk and something bad happens, then it's on me" — but "life is risk," e.g., disease cures require it. ### Private Commons - **Hoffman's reframe:** Big tech's data accumulation is better framed as a **private commons** the individual benefits from (Google Maps lets friends find your house), against "surveillance capitalism" critiques. - Corporate incentives are "very pro-social" in general, but where incentives push lock-in, "occasionally in a very specific way" intervention is warranted — e.g., a right to move one's data, which companies "must facilitate." ### Shipper's Personal Example - Discloses he has **OCD** (manageable, not cured). Built an app in Windsurf logging daily Y-BOCS scores, WHOOP data screenshots, and video of himself, aiming to **predict OCD symptoms** from facial, vocal, and physiological data — frustrated that WHOOP's API doesn't expose full data. - Predicts findings will show "thousands of different things" weakly interacting, not one causal variable; claims "Quantified Self" is finally becoming real. - **Hoffman's response:** Supports this kind of portable data; gives example of his doctor reading WHOOP data to tell whether someone is about to get COVID. - Shipper adds that classifying sequences of WHOOP/OCD data is analogous to next-token prediction in language. --- ## 7. Symbolic vs. Sub-symbolic AI ### Hoffman's Background - His undergraduate major was **symbolic systems**, then early **connectionism**: "symbols are important, but if you only had a symbolic theory you're probably going to radically underperform." - **Projection (explicitly tentative):** Over the next 10 years, a "play between probabilistic models and symbols" will be central; the next generation of AI may contain "some stuff" not currently visible. - **Example (hedged as "not saying this is the right one"):** symbols with Bayesian probabilities attached — beliefs held at 80–90% rather than 100%. - On the o1 paradigm: not "unusually different" from other Transformers, but its fitness function over chains of thought might have probabilistic characteristics. ### Shipper's Position - Symbols matter but should be understood as **arising out of a sub-symbolic architecture**; explicit philosophizing has limits. Invokes later Wittgenstein's "therapeutic" stance — finding a philosophy that lets you give up philosophizing. - **Hoffman's qualification:** Wittgenstein himself realized it never ends ("early Wittgenstein: I solved it, I'm done... oh wait a minute"), returning and dying a philosophy professor. ("Every time I thought I was out they pull me back in is Wittgenstein.") --- ## 8. Science vs. Engineering; Reasoning Modes - **Shipper:** AI is turning science problems into engineering problems, shifting toward pragmatism and comfort with "lots and lots of little correlations" over fully explicit causal explanations. - **Hoffman's addition:** We're moving from **deduction** toward **induction and abduction** (abduction = best theory modeling the evidence, requiring a creative/prior-driven leap). "When we're good thinking beings we apply all of them." - **Shipper on moral theories:** No hole-free moral theory exists; effective altruism "is a great idea but then you take it too far and you become SBF." Advocates a diverse, mostly implicit set of moral theories — "fundamentally philosophically unsatisfying" but "kind of beautiful." - **Hoffman's agreement:** Theories of world, morality, and self should be treated as **dynamic and updated** — through new data, learning from each other — "and by the way that's how science progresses too." --- ## 9. Advice to Technologists (Book's Second Audience) - **Hoffman wrote for two audiences:** (1) the AI-curious and AI-skeptical general public; (2) technologists, urging them to treat **human agency as a design principle** — individual and collective "super agency" as fitness functions guiding design and deployment decisions. - **Concrete examples:** - ChatGPT's iterative deployment (GPT-3.5 existed ~a year; ChatGPT made it accessible and engaging). - Prefer **co-pilot / human amplification** ("amplification intelligence," per his book *Impromptu*) over defaulting to human replacement. - **Hoffman on amplification across the board:** AI "raises the bar" for those with fewer resources (no elite school, no ghostwriter) — but also amplifies the already-advantaged (the ghostwriter using ChatGPT), and "amplifying across the board is actually a good thing." - **Shipper's lens:** AI lowers the cost of intelligence services (e.g., ghostwritten copy) so people who can't afford them gain the leverage the wealthy already have. --- ## Unresolved Tensions (Preserved) - Whether religious wars following the printing press were preventable — Hoffman: "it's unclear." - Whether zero-difficulty AI transition is possible — Hoffman: no, "pipe dream." - Shipper's challenge that "high agency" ideology can cause misery — partially reconciled via Hoffman's surrender-of-control examples, not fully resolved. - Hoffman's tentative 10-year probabilistic-symbolic projection is explicitly hedged ("I'm not saying this is the right one"). - Disagreement over framing: Shipper calls the book "anti-regulation in general"; Hoffman corrects to "regulatory cautious." # Speaker & Provenance Observation Record **Video:** How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman — Ep. 46 **Video ID:** `01a0f15a-e753-7b3a-b14a-364f3f4a6eb9` ## Speakers & Roles - **Host / Creator — Dan Shipper** (identified by name in the closing promotional segment: *"a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship"*). Conducts the interview, references his own media company, his OCD self-tracking project, and his reading of *War and Peace*. Referenced as "Dan" by the guest. - **Guest — Reid Hoffman**. Interviewed about his upcoming book *Super Agency*. Explicitly identified in the video title and addressed as "Reed" by the host. Self-identifies as an investor, former symbolic systems major, and author of prior books (*The Startup of You* described as "book one," *Impromptu* also referenced). - **Promotional narrator voice (unattributed)** — closing segment; see Promotion below. Note: No curated metadata was supplied; identities are inferred only from in-transcript evidence. ## Referenced Sources & Third-Party Claims ### Works cited/discussed by speakers - **Reid Hoffman's book *Super Agency*** — forthcoming at recording time; central subject. - **Hoffman's *The Startup of You*** and ***Impromptu*** — cited by Hoffman and host. - **Socrates** (on the written word), **Martin Luther / the Reformation**, **printing press history**, **Sun Tzu** ("no battle plan survives contact"), **Einstein** ("God does not play dice"), **Dan Dennett's intentional stance**, **Wittgenstein** (early/late philosophy), **Tolstoy's *War and Peace*** — historical/philosophical references made in dialogue. - **Alcoholics Anonymous "Serenity Prayer" / Christian catechism** — paraphrased by Hoffman. ### Third-party companies, products, and claims - **ChatGPT / GPT-4 / o1 / OpenAI**, **Google "Titans"** release, **Sierra** (AI customer service), **Windsurf** ("cursor competitor"), **Whoop** (health data, host's claim that a doctor can predict illness from Whoop data), **Claude**, host's internal incubation **"Spiral"**. - Claims attributed to **Sam Altman** (AGI remarks) — reported by host, not verified. - Host's personal claim: uses AI tools to build an OCD-prediction app combining Y-BOCS scores, Whoop data, and facial/vocal data. ## Promotional Segments > "folks you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to Ai and I... Dan I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you" - **Flagged:** Closing call-to-action segment promoting the channel ("AI and I"), including like/subscribe solicitation and praise for the host. Appears to be an appended promotional voiceover, not interview content. - The host also notes he read *Super Agency* "professionally I have to say that" — an implicit disclosure of professional interest in the book, not flagged as paid promotion. ## Availability & Limits - **Comment availability:** Not stated in transcript; no metadata supplied. - **Timestamps:** Not present in the provided transcript; quotations above cannot be time-located. - Speaker attribution of individual early lines (before explicit naming) is based on dialogue flow; roles are otherwise explicit in the source. I think there's many times when you're encountering an external circumstance if you approach it as this is taking my agency you're essentially throwing yourself under the wheels right whereas you go oh here's how I can use this to transform my agency to extend and enhance my agency in various ways then it becomes much better one of the core parts that I read in that is you talk about agency as a sense internal kind of like aesthetic experience of agency I think one of the things I picked up from fairly early in my childhood was was realizing that old catechism that's pretty good which is you know the strength to change the things I can the tolerance toiv the things I can't and the wisdom to know the difference I came to love that catechism later because had early got to that sense of that's how you should navigate the world wow how'd you do that maybe it's like playing a lot of board games I mean it's just kind of like like it's kind of a sense of hey these things are under your control and these things are not under your control you have a couple of like specific way ways of thinking about that that I think are really interesting I want to make this really concrete though maybe I'm a product manager I'm a designer whatever how does this change how I think about an Orient to AI over the next couple years arm me with some more practical concrete ways to instantiate this compass in how I approach my life Reed Welcome to the show it's great to be here and great to be doing this in person yeah I I love that um it's just it makes it a much different experience just to like be face to face we're actually very close to each other exactly well and actually even philosophically yeah definitely um so I'm excited to have you for a number of reasons but one of the big ones is you have a new book uh coming out by the time this is out it may be out it's called super agency um I read it I actually really liked it um it's part of my uh like professionally I have to say that but also I really but but happens to be true yeah it happens to be true and the reason I like it is um I think it's it you're you're writing it in response to um the you know there's a prevalent fear of AI and maybe AGI socially um and I think you're uh you're examining this moment and saying if we want to understand what to do in this moment and how things might play out a good way to do that is to look at history and look at other um historical technology changes to see like um how we reacted and whether we were wrong or not and you go much further than that in the book but I want to start there cuz I love I love that history angle because I think we forget how many of the things that we're familiar with now uh used to be really really scary I wonder if you could go into some of those uh so we can understand it a little more well um it goes all the way back to the written word with Socrates um although there are some different scholarly interpretations of the the socratic remarks that or the uh challenges so why don't we start with the printing press great um and you know when the printing press was introduced a lot of the public dialogue was very similar to the dialogue we have around artificial intelligence um this will lead to the collapse of um our trust in human cognition um it'll lead to uh widespread misinformation it will lead to U the collapse of the solidity of our knowledge and Society and what we're doing and so there and who knows what people are going to do with this technology that could really erode things and you know on one hand you know here um many centuries later we are obviously deeply indebted to the printing press we can't have science without printing press because you can't get to that spread of information you can't have uh widespread literacy and education you can't have the progress of knowledge U middle class institutions universities Etc all of which well universities existed before the printing press but getting to the the the many universities of vigorous and strength required the pr printing press now so all of that shows that it's great despite all the fear now that being said the other thing the the thing to track with the printing press is U there was nearly a century of religious War so we as human beings uh when we get to these new technologies the transition periods of what we get in can be very challenging but that's his you know just some degree that's a that's an opportunity not just a notion of fear because it's like the world is what we make it so let's make this transition much better than the earlier transitions do you think that because because one of the one of the you know overriding points in your book is um these kinds of transitions we have some amount of control over them but we don't have total control so and and we can get more into like all the nuances of what that means but I'm curious about um do you think we can prevent you know like let's say uh we went back to the printing press days uh you know is there something we could have said to Martin Luther to be like hey like this Schism thing is in the Reformation like it's great to have a personal relationship with God but like maybe cool it a little bit on some of this stuff because it's going to lead to a lot of War um or is that sort of inevitable well I think it depends on where your society and culture is at the time um it's unclear that even if Martin Luther had said let's do this gradually and have a set of discussions that the reigning Catholic Church would have tolerated that and allowed it I think he did like I think he was trying to go within the system for a long time before he did the the door pounding thing exactly so it's unclear but one of the things we hope in having built you know great Global institutions post World War II Having learned from what they the massive amount of tragedy is when you get in that kind of amount of conflict yeah that and by the way of course we have the uh we have various Technologies not the least of which is printed books to remind us of our histories and to learn it that maybe we can do this one much better and that's part of the reason why in you know as you know from having red super agency it's part of the reason for for doing the book for doing podcasts and other things to say hey if we actually steer the right way we can minimize the transition difficulties I don't think there'll be zero transition I think that's pipe dream and and moment should have that expectation but we can actually get through the transition much cleaner and much more compassionately and humanely than we have done in earlier Transitions and get to the amazing benefits that that is always the other side of these M these massive new technology leaps that makes sense I think one of the um one of the places to go from there is it's it's the book to me is not just a history book it's also um a little it's a book about psychology and a certain way because um you have a theory of why we are typically very afraid of new technology that runs through all new techn technological advancements I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that so um you know part of kind of our fundamental concept of our place in the world and our you know dignity our meaning Etc comes down to a notion of agency um and it's both agency as individuals and agency as groups and agency as societies and so most often and you know back to like the earlier referred printing press what people experience the new technology as is reducing the agency um for you know kind of uh you know key people who are leaders in society you know heads of institution participants in institutions the institutions themselves and and so they they react because they go oh this is going to be a change in agency therefore reduction and therefore bad therefore destructive society and the actual path that happens is yes agency changes so some things that you had agency in before you no longer have agency in but when you begin to look at agency it's not just a set of external factors it's internal factors it's how do you approach it and so for example like let's let's use a very mod an example that people can think about so is it a a loss of agency to being driven in Uber or a gain an agency to being driven an Uber and obviously you're like oh my God I don't my hands aren't on the steering wheel and who knows what this random human being is doing and and d d d then you're like oh my God it's enormous loss of agency and yet of course you know hundreds of millions of people are doing it because they realize it's a gain of agency it's I I can I can I can not have a car and get somewhere I can have gone ooh I drunk too much I'm going to get home this way much more safely etc etc etc and so it's a question of how we approach it and how we experience and how we choose our own agency that doesn't mean it's completely separate from external effects but it's a combination of that internal and external where it's really appropriate and then what happens as we like we first encounter technology like like I remember arguing at Davos with people about um are smartphones these kind of humanity reducing you know kind of um like almost like cybernetic control of human beings you know never argue with people at Davos that's mistake number one it's you're you're making me think about uh Princess Bride right your first mistake uh and uh and then uh obviously part of the reason why we have billions of people with them is because actually in fact it's a massive increase in agency and matter of fact it quickly gets to you know kind of the thesis of the book of super agency is what happens when millions of people get all elevated in their agency with a new technology and then all of a sudden we collectively get uh super agency both as individuals and as societies yeah I think um one of the one of the core parts that that I read in that that I want to pull out is you talk about agency but then you talk about as a sense which I read as like a internal kind of like aesthetic experience of agency um which I think most people when they when they think about agency like it's it's it's all external um but it's quite clear to me that that that aesthetic component is a huge part of it and um and and I think a lot of the the questions about human agency um they reflect almost like a lack of faith in our ability to change and adapt and then also lack of understanding of like how that aesthetic sense arises how it you can bring it to any experience um to some degree like the the history of literature is like about people in like pretty dire circumstances feeling like they have some agency um which is not to say that external conditions don't matter um but a lot of it is internally driven I'm curious like how you got there like what influenced that how how did you start to think about this well some of it may be uh philosophical background and and the highlighting the aesthetic is also very interesting I think maybe when I was writing I was also thinking of like Dan dennett's intentional stance like it's a stance that we have towards the world like a mental stance a worldview and obviously there's an aesthetic stance too so I think that's a great uh highlight and you know I think part of it is that you know it's like using the Uber example and there's and using the I the the smartphone example um I think that there's many times where um when you're encountering an external circumstance including of course Technologies if you approach it as this is taking my my agency then you are um you're essentially throwing yourself under the wheels right whereas you go oh here's how I can use this to transform my agency to extend and enhance my agency in various ways then you then it becomes uh much better so for example think about just driving down the highway you go hey I have I'm in this car I have an ability to slow down speed up Drive Etc well there's a lot of other cars on the road too if you say oh my God my agency is is taken away because these other cars are slowing down or or potential hazards etc etc well then you're never going to get on the road right yeah and and that I think that points to like um agency is to some degree it's a it's a way of looking at the world and where you put your attention so like if you push your attention to oh my God all these other cards of course that that sense of agency is going to go down if you push your attention somewhere else that sense of agency is going to go up and again it's not it's not only your attention like there are external things but like to some degree there's there's some sense of control and I'm curious um for you how how do you notice your personal sense of agency fluctuating dayto day and in your life like have there been period have you always felt um this connection with a sense of agency have there been periods where you haven't and like how has that played out for you great question you know it's interesting because I think one of the things I picked up from fairly early in my childhood was realizing that kind of that that that old catechism that's pretty good which is you know the something like the strength to change the things I can the tolerance to live with the things I can't and the wisdom to know the difference yeah it's like the alcoholic an anonymous prayer thing yes exactly and I think it comes from a uh a Christian Catholic catechism and and I and I paraphrased it did you grow up Catholic no no no no just uh it wasn't so much that as much as I'd adopted that I I came to love that catechism later because I had had early got to that sense of that's how you should navigate the world wow how'd you do that I think it just maybe it's like playing a lot of board games I mean it's kind of like like it's kind of a sense of hey these things are under your control and you can affect them and then you can affect that outcome and these things are not under your control and overly like tearing your hair out about the things that are out of your control is not helpful to you or to anyone else right so you go you know like um uh the fact that there's suffering in the world if you go oh my God there's suffering in the world then of course you're going to get crushed there's going to be suffering in the world you should of course always feel for people suffering but the fact that there is like children dying around the world today it's really really sad we should try to do things about it but we're not going to going to stop all of it today it's an ongoing process and so so there's things out of your control and then there's things in your control and of course that's where your ability to navigate it um and so it's kind of like whether it's um you know maybe it's kind of simple like who you're friends with when you're in school and and you go oh you know like you know do you have friends that you treasure and then that's really great and maybe there other people that you wanted to be friends with weren't as interested in you that's fine too but kind of navigating that within kind of child circumstances I think where I where I started and then from there I think that the um that became kind of how I approached each new challenge that I was getting and you know part of how like I think I got a sense of good strategy in life and strategy for me strategy for what I did in school strategy for what I did with company strategy for what I do with investing all came from this kind of uh like figure out what the nature of the game is and what are the things that were within your ability to change and then accepting the things that you can't while uh like changing some really interesting things and so and it sounds like um that came from board games what board games were you talking about well so um a whole set um some uh and there's less board games Dungeons and Dragons so I was I was doing that which there seems to have been some resurging on which is cool uh but also what probably most people don't track these days these Avalon Hill board games I did a bunch of um and then a a variety of others and and one of the things about it being multiple is that you're learning all of them um and actually one of the things that people frequently say know I did play chess and I did play go um I wasn't as attracted to those games because part of the thing with when you're playing like the Avalon Hill board game games or also like Starfleet battles was another one I did um by having some Randomness with dice rolls it actually more closely approximated the kinds of circumstances we encounter in life because um life is not like chess life is not like go it is not deterministic that way there's uncertainty variables that you have to you have to play into and and an epistemic uncertainty sometimes that you have to play into and and both go and chess have no epistemic uncertainty and so uh uh adopting your strategies to those were really important I think that's those are those are the initial mindset that makes sense I think um there's this there's a meme in Tech right now about being high agency like high agency people which I think is great it's good to be high agency but I think um we tend to think of agency as always good and generally if you if you want to be like generally I think it's good to have agency but for example in in the in the um uh in the example you gave of there's suffering right if you think of yourself as high agency and have a high locus of control internal locus of control for things that are totally out of your control um it's actually a pretty miserable way to live yes um and it definitely doesn't make you more effective and so there's a there like I think what you're saying is there's a certain range of things within which you want to be high agency and have an internal locus of control and then there's also a whole set of other um experiences in life that are important that are about completely giving up control and recognizing um control and those are some of the most recognizing your lack of control and those are some of the most meaningful experiences that people have like Transcendent experiences um curious what what that Sparks in you well I mean I think the obvious ones are in Friendship romantic relationships and other things is part of what you're doing is um is essentially uh giving yourself over to not being in completely control of how a relationship's playing and those are obviously some of the places where as we learn and become you know kind of wiser more compassionate more evolved people um that's actually in fact I think one of the the really Central thing things it's also by the way sometimes um people encounter that playing in uh team sports of various sorts it's there's team sports themselves there's also of course team sports within companies in terms of how company's operating the shared controls the shared agency um becomes I think uh you know really key and obviously some people find that within a religious experience too yeah how is that um worked for you as an investor obviously because you're you know you're investing in companies you care about the outcome deeply but also uh you know you don't want to be to in control in a lot of ways uh there's a lot of trade-offs to control there how's that worked for you well I think one of the things that um so start with something kind of enormously simple pragmatic heris um one of the things questions that I ask myself on an investment is would I do this investment and walk away and say call me in five years because um almost like call it 98% of good Investments you will accurately have that sense not to say you wouldn't try to help and work with them because well like part of it is you think as an investor you know I can spend maybe if I'm spending a lot of time on investment I might be able to spend four hours a week on the investment because as an investor I have a portfolio of Investments I've got other things I'm doing and so the person I'm investing in uh she or he um you know the the CEO the founders um you know how they may out May all play out they're in this presumably 80 plus hours a week maybe 100 plus hours a week and so if they're not capable of carrying the game themselves it's almost for sure you've made a bad investment now sometimes the exception is where you go oh what I really need to do is help them get this one deal or help them hire this one person or help them with this one strategy element and then everything else will be fine then that's okay and I will sometimes do that investment but one of the mistakes that investors frequently make is they go well you know they they'll tell themselves that they're more important than they are in in the kind of the in the the judgment and then they'll get too much in involved in it and they'll actually be messing it up yeah because iatrogenic investing yes because truly if you think your 4 hours is more important than the person's 80 to 100 hours like like you probably invested in the wrong person yeah yeah or you have a m ego problem yes yes or both probably um yeah so I I think one of the things that um that that came to me as like as part of this book is your is your tracking agency as this like psychological experience an intentional stance and aesthetic stance um and that one of the things that um seems to affect our sense of agency is how we approach uncertainty and the more we kind of grind against uncertainty to try to like um eliminate it uh the the lower our agency is because you can't eliminate it um and the more you like you work with uncertainty um and have that sort of stance of like surfing through it um the better things go and that's the appropriate stance for like dealing with new technologies and the thing that of course for me like the thing that I'm thinking about is well I think our default stance in the west to uncertainty is to try to eliminate it and you can like read that the history of philosophy um which is like um you know uh Socrates and Plato to decart trying to make knowledge that is like clear and explicit as epis um and it's the same thing in science right like you want to boil things down into fundamental laws so you can predict things in advance um laws that are explicit religion I think is also in a lot of ways about dealing with uncertainty by trying to eliminate it um maybe uh the world of the senses is totally uncertain but there is a world to come that is like totally certain and is definitely going to happen and and will be amazing um and and not to denigrate any of those things because I think those outlooks are actually quite useful in certain circumstances um but in particular um uh when it comes to technology um that way of thinking about things can lead to trouble I'm curious if you have the same reading or or how you would respond to that well I think it's definitely the case that we and I think there's the the the generaliz ation uh which you know is kind of a very broad brush almost Jackson poic you know you know quick quick quick quick uh description of the stuff but I do think that the notion that we as human beings try to um delude ourselves to over degrees of certainty like we don't for example realize that every time we drive somewhere on the highway we are taking a certain amount of risk we're taking a risk about our own competence we're taking a risk on our vehicle we're taking a risk on weather conditions we're taking a risk on other folks and of course once again just like agency if you dwell on all that maybe you'd never get into a car but then you would never go anywhere right and never be able to benefit from you know significant portions of modern society and so um and so part of it is to think about how do we live in a heris sixs of managing uncertainty and managing various forms of uncertainty like there's a form of uncertainty about well how does the world actually play out there's uncertainty about our epistemology and how we know the world and then there's uncertainty about how the system comes together and um you know it's one of the things that's really Central to entrepreneurship because any entrepreneur who persuades themselves that they guaranteed success in what they're doing is massively deluding themselves right which maybe sometimes is necessary to work really hard in order to do something but you you know there's always like uh encountering and navigating a world of risk is actually in fact uh very important and and so I think now I think part of and actually I think that it's a true line of where frequently philosophy um you know kind of like the Western philosophy actually we should probably I this too um you know frequently is overly trying to get to like human nature is X like you know frequently they'll say human nature is selfishness and you're like well there's a lot of different ways in which which human beings um are self-oriented but there's a diversity of them and sometimes you say Well when this person's really committed to their family or really committed to their society well that's just the way they're expressing their selfishness well but that's not exactly what you mean by the word selfish so there there's a whole bunch of different self orientation and that that spread is actually really important and the same thing is true for understanding uncertainty well which of course is part of the reason why we're still struggling to resolve um you know uh Einstein's theories of Relativity and quantum mechanics and you know Einstein himself was quantum mechanics can't be right because God does not play dice with the universe yeah I mean I think that I think that's a really another example of like um how aesthetic sensibilities guide what we see and guide um our decision-making in like supposedly like really rational truth oriented Endeavors and that's why I think I'm sort of keying on this aesthetic sense because I think when we talk about dealing with uncertainty um there's a way in which like you can try to eliminate it you can try to manage it which is sort of still like we'd rather we didn't we weren't uncertain um and then there's a way of like sort of playing with uncertainty and like you use the phrase like Bloomers like sort of using that to flourish which I think um in a lot of ways like that is uh that is a way to look at life um and I think that perspective going back to the aesthetic sense is often embodied in entrepreneurs and artists who are often Guided by by an aesthetic sense um and I think um those two outlooks where you're like yeah I'm I want to like face the blank page or I want to like um change how people see the world how the world Works um even though I know it's like highly uncertain is seems to me um somewhat core to the to to working with technology well I completely agree and actually one of the things that's interesting about the The Arc that you're highlighting in your call it philosophical aesthetic reading of super agency is um the actual ties between my first book the startup riew and this because the startup review in part was trying to give advice you give to entrepreneurs but to individuals for their lives and part of it was like multiple of the chapters are navigating environments of uncertainty because that's what entrepreneurs must do and must do it intelligent and preserve their sense of agency while doing it exactly and so it's an interesting I hadn't quite realized between book one and book six that there was kind of an AR there was the kind of an arc from it and I do think that part of the thing in surfing is a very good metaphor is to say how do you Embrace uncertainty in a way that you're taking agency and that you are leveraging it to having a better life to working better to making decisions better uh to creating better right in terms of the the the artist side and and well many things but artists especially and uh and then leveraging that to a feature not a bug M yeah totally I think um the the the the wave metaphor is is really is really interesting to me because you can like try to like stand in front of a wave and stop it um or you can surf it and the surfing like you're you're working with the dynamic context so it's not like you're um uh you're not totally in control but like you are in control within that sphere which is sort of what you're what you're going for um which which I think go gets to your point about um the way our stance toward uncertainty is what um what guides whether or not we feel agency and you have a couple of like specific ways of thinking about that that I think are really interesting so like um one of the um one of the dichotomies you you bring up is like some people try to make like a real like a blueprint or like a like a plan or like a specific theory about the future um and then um uh but use the metaphor of um a compass or um or you say cognitive G GPS um or another another um term which I don't think is in the book but I think is really related as wayfinding so it's like um you have a you have a sense of the direction you're going but you're pretty open to the details I'd love for you to talk about that so um exactly right and part of the thing whether or not almost everything if you're making too concrete of a plan and like your earlier you know we were kind of talking a little bit about sunzu and no battle plan survives contact with the Enemy um plans that are rigid break fast and uselessly and so you can make flexible plans but one of the most easy ways to make a flexible plan is to have you know kind of a compass and the compass might be like for example like well I need to hike from here to here and there might be multiple trails and sometimes one of them washed out and everything else well you can get from there to there with like and maybe there's no Trails if you have compass map information as a way of doing it and you're you're adjusting your plan as you go and as you discover what the terrain and the conditions look like and it's a good metaphor for also a wide variety of things because as you think about for example well we're making decisions about like what jobs we might take what careers we might take where we might go on a holiday where we um what we might be doing you know Friday night all of those are informational space questions and again a compass is a good way to do that and so that you think about what is an AI chatbot helping you with it's almost like it's a compass helping you with these informational decisions hence informational GPS and it's resilient is if you suddenly discover something really changes the world isn't as you expected the world changed you change like you're like well I thought I was in mood in the mood for watching a movie but I'd actually rather just like to have a quiet conversation with my friend well oh hey there's a cafe down the street let's go that we discovered that from you know uh the the compass and part of um you know what in writing the book as you know we described as the techn humanist compass and the reason is too often when people think about technology they think about the thing that is new and therefore not really fully adjusted into us so they go oh a AI That's technology whereas our cars aren't technology our phones aren't technology our our laptops aren't technology our glasses aren't technology like our books aren't technology they're all technology yeah and what happens is we uh we we get familiar enough with them that we naturally um uh include them in our existence include them in our agency they build up like a patina of culture exactly in our psychology yeah and that's what we want to be doing with this in order to embrace it and that's why giving metaphors and it being techno but also humanist in the compass one of the things that the compass makes me think of is um like a counterargument would be like isn't that a little wishy-washy like one of the big um uh one of the other big memes or uh viewpoints in is like you got to be first principles thinking on some of this stuff you got to go back to First principle and and and so you're not going to like just change your mind based on like the latest like where the wind is blowing right so how do you how do you square those two well to some degree I think a techn humanist compus can be amongst a first principle right because the question on principles are what are the set of kind of uh navigational truths that you're using to to make decisions to uh incorporate information and change belief States action States Etc and a and using a compass as a means of a metaphor versus for example a um you know saying well that we only can can be in one route I think the first principles thing is a very good thing that I myself and I think you as well Embrace from a Viewpoint of Cl Clarity of thinking about things but like like as a metaphor um when the earliest uh GPS navigation systems for cars played out I had the entertaining observation between the German and the Japanese systems I drove a German one which when I left the path was like return to the path return to the path return to the path and the Japanese one was like oh you want to go a different way here's your new set of directions for for what you're doing and I think the question is is if you said first principle is only being Germanic then you're going to have problems yeah yeah yeah yeah uh it's so funny cuz I was telling you before we started recording that I I was reading War and Peace over over Christmas and uh that's literally exactly how Tolstoy talks about how German generals do strategy so I'm glad it made it all the way into their GPS all the way into their modern GPS system although I think they've now since learned some from the Japanese ones and they're both like oh when you didn't turn there maybe you had a reason for not turning there we're going to recalculate A New Path um I want to bring this like I want to make this really concrete though because like let's say so we can we can talk about Compass what we want like how do we fill that out in for a person who's like okay maybe I work in Tech maybe I'm an engineer maybe I'm a product manager I'm a designer whatever and I'm seeing all these changes happening um how does this change how I think about an Orient to Ai and think about okay over the next couple years oh3 is coming out soon like Sam Alman saying like hey like we pretty much have got AGI um Google just released something today like called Titans that's that's really cool and seems like a really interesting step in that direction um so give me arm me with some more like practical concrete ways to like instantiate this compass in how I approach my life so you know another uh Concept in the book is iterative development which is part of actually how we get broad-based um networks of inclusion what we also refer to as consent to the Govern by customers by you know kind of uh theorists and commentators by government Etc uh by press the whole way of feeding back into the system and it starts with individuals experimenting with it right like engaging and I think one of the reasons why when you think that we're in the cognitive Industrial Revolution and you think oh there's a new set of tools by which like for example I can't be a professional and say I don't use computers I don't use smartphones every professional job requires that kind of information uh connectivity processing analysis consumption generation Etc AI is just the amplification of that and so every single profession is going to require how am I deploying AI how am I engaging with multiple agents in order to do my work um and so and you say well how is that exactly do I read a book right now it's like no no the best way is just start engaging with it engaging with it in some seriousness so it's fine for example to go to chat BD and say give me a sonnet for my friend's birthday or my kids you know birthday or whatever that's great you know what ingredients can I have that I can make into a meal for my lunch great do that but also use it for things that you are seriously in Earnest about and you may find that some of them it's not ready yet but you'll find that some of them it is I'll give a personal example so when I first start sat down with uh chat gbt I asked it uh how would Reed Hoffman make money investing in artificial intelligence and he gave me the uh the business school professor's analysis that was completely wrong for Venture Capital it sounded smart I you identify large total addressable markets you understand which products and services would actually what what Le yes and she was like nope I I'm still I still have a very unique skill set for doing this relative to these things but on the other hand if I then said oh it's useless for investing then I wouldn't have have noted the things that it's good for for example same session I sat down and I put in a business plan and I said what how should I do due diligence on this business plan and you know the list of things it came back with were not necessarily none of them were surprise but items like four and seven I would have gone oh yeah I would have thought of that in a few days and it's useful to have it now for figuring what to do and so so engaging with it is really important because we will see a lot of jobs transform and the way they'll transform some jobs customer service other places where you're essentially trying to get human beings to act like robots there'll be much higher replacement coefficients but a lot of jobs like the human will be replaced by a human with the AI and we want as many of the humans to be the humans with AI so be learning it in adjusting with it what is so then like let's let's go deeper into that so what is an agency preserving way to approach the question which is what happens if my job goes away because of AI so first is I don't think that well I can I can I'll do the job goes away too but I think a lot of jobs won't go away I think they'll transform and so the question is are you adapting and transforming with them you know at sufficient speed in in advance which is one of the reasons to start playing with AI now um and AI by the way can help you with that right CU AI can go oh well um here is the new way that we can be accelerating how we understand what a good marketing message would be how we would test it how we would generate options for it how we do think about what that goes and AI already today can help with a bunch of different marketing tasks and doesn't mean it we'll do it decisively and say oh we just plug it into the machine and we press play and look that's our marketing because um like I've used gbd4 and gpd1 for this and it's really helpful but it's a co-pilot right for these things so um now in a replacement circumstance like say for example customer service so you get you know companies like Sierra and others who are um kind of Designing a how do you have the a the AI agent be the first customer service agent and that may reduce a lot of different customer service jobs and you say oh my customer service job went away well AI can still be helpful to go okay here's what my skill set is here's what I think I'm capable of learning what job should I now go look for if there's now far fewer customer service jobs and you might go well there's these things in account management there's these things in sales uh there's these things in uh support desk there's these things in and that kind of thing May in fact go okay and then how do I how do I learn those jobs how do I get those jobs how do I do those jobs AI can actually help with all of that yeah and that gets to another point that you make in the book which is that um one of the really important um agency preserving approaches to new technology is the idea of Equitable access um can you talk about that so one of the things that's uh really key I think for kind of answering this question about look how do we we bring as many people along in society how do we make sure it's not just beneficial for Rich individuals Rich uh companies but as broadly as possible is to have it in as many people's hands as possible and when you do that um not only do does it obviously create a better chance of fair and just participation in the new jobs that do uh career paths Etc but it also makes Society a whole lot better because when you get uh Talent from as broad range as possible being unlocked to be to do work to be creative to be to create maximum benefit all of the rest of us in society benefit from that too and so Equitable access is not just the question of kind of like all is it fair for everybody which it is it's important to have but also that it's also better for all of us yeah another another uh extension of that that you talk about that I I feel really uh tied to connected to is this idea of um uh like generally I'd say the book is like anti-regulation in general um competition will regulate itself that that kind of stuff um but one of the places where um you seem a little bit more open to the idea of regulation in some form is um uh the idea of um private Commons the way that we treat our data in a world with AI maybe should shift in certain ways um so like the the personal data that I accumulated let's say in Facebook and Google and all that kind of stuff um becomes tremendously more valuable to me as an individual um when uh I have I have gp4 to go through it and be like here are some patterns I found and that changes how we might want to think about the private Commons and then therefore like the regul regulatory landscape or whatever like for example maybe everyone should be be able to download their data you know like St stuff like that talk more about that so first just the general thing is I tend to be call it more regulatory cautious than regulatory uh anti-regulation anti-regulation right um because it is generally true that when you get into oh well I should act as a regulator you then I I I got over degree of certainty that I can issue a you shall do this and not this and actually enshrine the past against the future and there's all kinds of benefits to get into the future and that's why regulatory cautious so I tend to say look when you start having the impulse that maybe there should be regulation you should start with well how do we measure the questions that we're worried about as harms because if we can get those measurements then we can track it and see do we really have those harms are they really increasing and then maybe what kinds of Innovations might might bring down those harms relative to our benefits and then allow that Dynamic progression of innovation and invention and risk-taking all of which is very important and a lot of regulators go if I allow you to take risk and something bad happens then and it's on me and it's like well but like life is risk and by the way by taking some risk we can figure out things like cures for diseases and and other and we need we need to be figuring out the cures for diseases so um so anyway that's first general stance and regulation NE next is private Commons which is you know part of what we actually seeing in these build of buildup of these big tech companies counter a bunch of you know surveillance capitalism and other kinds of critiques is is actually these I like that you included that in the book by the way yeah exactly cuz cuz like look it's again it's almost like framing like if you frame it as the agency is oh it's surveilling capitalism versus it's no no actually it's building up a private commment that I benefit from and enables me right because you go well like Google Maps allows other people to figure out where your house is and by the way Google Maps allows my friends to figure out where my house is and come visit yes right so um so that kind of framing I think is very important and then the data Commons then are a kind of a micro instance of how super agency is created not only because you know I have a private Commons you have a private Commons your private data sources but then as it learns from these together you get automatic tagging on your pictures and you can go oh this picture I took a Dan I can share it with him you know etc etc and all this stuff adds in a lot of important human connectivity framework uh richness to our lives ability to make decisions or find things in good ways and um now that being said we want to enable that private common as much as possible so you go well look in general most of the incentives for these corporations is very pro-social Pro like being good for society because it's like oh I'm building all these features that engage you cause you to uh take pictures cause you to store them Etc and it's like great but on the other hand some of my incentives are un do them only with me and you don't do them with anyone else it's like well actually maybe occasionally in a very specific way we intervene and say no no um part of my rights with my data is when you are uh storing a whole bunch of my data I have the right to move that as I like and you must facilitate that yeah totally I'm I'm about to go off-roading because you're making me think of something um which is uh like a more specific example that I think you might be interested in about like how this how this um might play out and I'm Cur I'm curious for your take on so um I don't know if we've talked about this before but I have OCD um and the treatments for OCD like you can you basically like manage it like it's it's fine um but like it's still not great you don't cure it right and um one of the things I've been doing recently is I just have you used wind surf wind surf is like a cursor competitor and it they just has like an agent thing you can just be like build this build this thing and it'll build it it's the coolest thing ever um and so it just makes weekends a lot like really fun because I'm just like oh I have I have an idea so I I had this thing that I've been doing where I just I built a little app in Wind Surf and um every day I take a ybox test which is the OCD assessment um and then I upload a screenshot of my whoop data and then I also take a little video of myself and I just do like a daily log where I don't talk about like how I'm feeling I just like talk about my day um and I upload it and there's an a there are some apis where it it embeds my face in my voice vocal tone and what I'm trying to do is see if I can predict my OCD symptoms from my facial vocal and whoop data um and uh and like that's something that like whoop for example they have they API but like it doesn't really give you my like full all my data and I need that in order to like make this work um and and this is the kind of thing where uh there's a whole there's like thousands of typ of diseases or conditions or whatever where um if you enable people to do this we would make so much more progress on like solving them like I don't know what I'm going to find when I when I figure this out and and I think what I'm what I'm likely to find which gets into my whole like soap boox about science uh which which we've talked about before um is is that there's not one variable where it's like this makes your OCD worse it's like actually there's like thousands of different things that like interact together and different combinations that like I should pay I should probably pay attention to but there all like weekly interacting and yeah I think that that kind of thing is like it's so important to the Future and it it makes me feel like um there was this whole like Quantified Self movement in in Sil and Valley for a long time and it's like I feel like Quantified Self is like it's it's going to happen finally it's like a thing now um what do you think well so I do think that it's precisely this kind of data that if you have the ability to have kind of to shift it around as you need and want as an indiv idual can create great things so I think you know whoop is one version of Quantified Self glucose monitoring is another one the you know things that you do with the various watches is more and I think that we are going to have all that and actually by the way having that um stream of data that you can then index to other data that you might have for example what did you eat for lunch um are you traveling where did you go how did you uh like did you Planes Trains automobiles Etc and and I think being able to query that together really really matters and and so I think it's a um a we are moving uh we are moving I think we're at this point decisively moving more and more towards Quantified Self but um you know part of it is is that enabling of of of what I can do with it and therefore how it can really benefit me and by the way like for example when you get to it like one of the things that uh one of my doctors noted is that he can uh if he has access to the whoop data and sees what's happening he can look at someone's um you know whoop performance of the last I forget how many days some number of days he can tell whether or not you're about to get Co right yeah yeah yeah yeah right and so that's the kind of thing or it's actually that's really useful yeah it's so important and there's probably you know there maybe there's one thing that he's looking at but it's probably like he just sort of Squints at it and gets like an intuitive sense of of of what it is which is a thing that AI is like really quite good at because like predicting a um a sequence of let's say whoop data or predicting uh or like classifying a sequence of whoop data or let's say predicting a sequence of OCD data where it's like you know uh here's what I did today and here's my ybx score or whatever I think that that problem is incredibly similar to predicting the next token in a in like in language and we're we're just getting to the place where we're starting to like apply that in other places um so you know I think that there's this really interesting um shift that that happened in AI that I think you can sort of start to see it in first in philosophy where um we're going from uh like a search for like Universal truths and Universal definitions in philosophy starting with like Kant really um you're starting to say like okay there's a limit to like our our ability to like grasp things intellectually and then there are all these like different flowerings of that so like there's you know the transcendentalist and the American pragmatist there's like the later Vicken Stein like there's there's the whole Continental philosophy and like you know postmodernism or whatever uh which regardless of what you think of that it is sort of is all in that all in that vein um and I think you can see this that same shift in the history of AI where um we started in a very like um um Socratic platonic aligned um mode in symbolic AI um where we're trying to Define um the underlying theory of intelligence and defining it as a set of symbols and their relations and each symbol has has some sort of semantic meaning and what we found is like that doesn't really work like it's very brittle like it works in certain well Define circumstances but it's really brittle and It suffers from um computational explosion you have to have a frame of reference to start with before you can like start manipulating symbols otherwise it's it's it's um too expensive and then we shifted to like sub symbolic AI um and uh where we're we're just basically fuzzy matching patterns and and and and uh bringing to Bear many many thousands of different rules um based on the context uh partially fitting them based on the context and I think that that it's possible that that shift will also occur in other areas of the world where we're sort of doing the equivalent of like symbolic AI because there's nothing better um and now we can use data and Ai and that kind of stuff to like to to yeah to to make progress well I think you know and we may talked about in the previous podcast that my undergraduate major was symbolic systems yes I do know that yes and um part of when I was doing that because the theory was we are symbol processors that we reason and think in symbols we we consume it through you know languages and books Etc all of which is very interesting and a bunch of different parallels between different symbolic systems um but I was also uh you know kind of within that very early movement which was called connectionism which was kind of this notion of well symbols are important but if you only had a symbolic Theory you're probably going to radically underperform your modeling of what our intelligence is your ability to construct tools or intelligences Etc and so that subsymbolic Ai and like for example what is what are the things that lead to us becoming like getting a Mastery of Concepts um or since we you know mentioned binstein following a rule in language is I think uh really key now I think part of if I project if I project out the future for the next 10 years I think a major part of this is is going to be this kind of like play between probabilistic models and symbols and with the current llm Transformers we have one but I think we're going to have more kind of as a where Technologies um mathematical description skill sets about how probabilistic modes and symbols can come together and I think that's among the things when you say what is currently not visible within the next generation of AI I think there's going to be some stuff in there can you give me an example what that might look like well a simple one that's out of the past and I'm not saying this is the right one but is like um using symbols but with beian probabilities estab you know kind of Applied so you say oh well I have the belief that we are uh that that that we're having philosophical Insight you know in this podcast but it's probably 90% right versus probably 100% right you know like you know that kind of thing only 90% D well I'm just giving some range for humility and all the rest um and so um but you might also say like I have the I have the belief that the weather tomorrow will be good for taking a hike and I believe it at 80% is the 01 Paradigm a example of this like like um training it on um like math Pro like any any kind of problem where uh it's it's Bas based on discrete steps that can be verified um I don't think it's unusually that from a lot of the Transformers but I do think that the question is is you know you do these chains of thought you have a fitness function on the Chain of Thought and you're making a prediction not just the next token but is this Chain of Thought out of multiple chains of thought which of these ones are the right one and that Fitness function itself might have that probabilistic characteristic yeah cuz cuz I don't want to um I like to cast dispersions on symbols with symbols I might add with symbols I love symbols to cast those dispersions but that's mostly because I it's like um it's sort of obviously like a little bit rhetorical like uh because I think we're so symbol heavy um and how we think about things um and I guess my at least my model right now and that's open to revision is like symbols are important but they are important when they arise out of a Sub sub symbolic architecture um and so uh all that means is that when you're when you're doing something like for example um trying to pick apart your thought process um there's a limit to that like picking apart where you're getting down to the like the symbolic level for yourself but underneath that are like there's you know thousands and thousands of sub symbolic things you're not going to be aware of and know and realizing how the symbolic level arises out of the sub symbolic level is like a really important um uh way to approach the world especially if you're someone who has a tendency to philosophize because you're like it's the sort of Vicken shinan like therapeutic approach to philosophy which is like you need to find a philosophical stance that allows you to give up philosophizing yes although I think even maybe he realized that it wasn't that it was never ended and you gave up cuz you know obviously early vicenin I solved it I'm done I'm G to go teach oh wait a minute talk about ego I got I got to go back and redo this talk about agency yes exactly which is the reason why he you know died as a philosophy Professor yeah um every time I thought I was out they pull me back in is Vicken Stein um Vicken Stein is Godfather yeah um let's see what else what else I have to talk about with you um we've gone a little bit into um we've gone a little bit into science versus engineering which I do think like um when we talk about Dynamic tensions um you could probably think of everything post Newton as like the era of science um and I think there's a way of looking at the era of um of AI that is starting to work as like turning science problems into engineering problems and that it may usher in more of an era of engineering um or like lean us more in in that um in that direction which has a bunch of other like um Jackson Pollock like you you can like twist the knobs on other Dynamic tensions in this sort of engineering Direction which is like we're a little bit more pragmatic um we're a little bit less concerned with um uh uh maybe with like fully explicit causal explanations for things and maybe uh more okay with um uh lots and lots of little correlations um stuff like that by the way I obviously love the Jackson Pollock um and I would also add since you've done that one already another metaphor which is thinking about or framework thinking about like we're actually moving less from thinking about these thoughts as deduction and more as induction and abduction yeah what is Abdu abduction I never remember oh it's the best theory okay it's kind of theory that models the evidence interesting okay interesting um so but it requires like uh some sort of creative process to come up come up with the theory rather than like coming up with it from the data itself yeah little bit like if you if you induction and abduction induction is I I look at all the data points and I model the curve and abduction is based on some um other information about the world or priors I go here's a model which might actually be different than what you come up with in induction it's one of the reasons why I actually think both like frankly all three but part of when we're good thinking beings we apply all of them yeah that's that is that is the thing that I love about about um AI is like you don't have to decide which way to approach problems it just like figures out it has many different approaches and it just figures out the one that's that's best um or uses many different ones at the same time which I I think is sort of like the failure point of like a lot of philosophizing so like coming up with um uh a like moral theory right like we've never found one that like has no holes in it like um and and when we do think that we found it um you you end up with all these like weird things so like um uh effective altruism is a great idea but then you like take it too far and then you like become SPF like it's yes um and so but but then it it feels really wishy-washy to be like well I applied the moral rule that like made the most sense in this circumstance but that's how language models work um uh for for Lang languages or solving problems and and I think um having some sort of um uh diverse partially explicit but like also mostly implicit set of like moral theories or or whatever you want to call it um is probably for the best it's probably the best way to to to be in the world which is like fundamentally sort of philosophically unsatisfying from the perspective of trying to make everything explicit but is also kind of beautiful and and um uh goes back to the stance towards uncertainty the like sort of artistic entrepreneur entrepreneurial stance toward uncertainty yeah look I think it's critical that we're deriving theories of the world theories of morality theories of ourselves theories of what the what we should be doing with our lives and work but it's also critical to think of those theories as Dynamic and being updated and part of the updating is not just you know kind of oh look I got some new data that's important too but also the way we think about it the way we learn from each other and all of that leads to kind of a you know best judgment kind of circumstance and by the way that's how science progresses too yeah so people are uh you know they they've listened to this discussion um they're they're familiar with with some of the ideas of the book um and they're probably thinking about like should I go should I go get it um and I'm curious like um yeah are there other are there any other like takeaways that you think are really important for people to know about about what your stance is on these topics well so in a sense I wrote the book for two audiences um one audience is anyone who has any AI curiosity or skepticism because the thought is here's a set of lenses to think about the reason why this is very humanism and Humanity positive and why it is important to have a a kind of a theory of agency that is this is what we can accomplish this is what would be really good and how to work towards it and so whether you're a skeptic or whether you're curious all of that I think plays into it now I also wrote it for technologists because I wanted technologists who are inventing this to be thinking about human agency as almost like a design principle to think about you know individual agency Collective super agency as ways of ah if that's one of the fitness functions and goods of what we're trying to do that uh may make certain design decisions deployment decisions much more effective much more humanist how does that work because I think a lot of the framing that we've approached agency with so far is a is a much more like we've talked about it as like an internal aesthetic sense rather than something that you can build into a product so how would that how would that change um a technologist Fitness function for what they're building well that was a little bit of the reason why we highlighted the chat gbt iterative deployment as an example because you know gbd 3.5 had existed for like a year before chat gbt and yet you launch gbt and all of a sudden people could access it they could do stuff with it they could make it happen and so it's making that kind of uh affordances available to people so they can engage with it and that they're interested in engaging with it and that they're easy to do an iterative pattern of engaging is one of the things that comes out of that I also think that you know if I were to uh you know be able to say hey everyone make sure you're doing this as well as this is obviously when we build a lot of Technology we tend to think about the easiest simple path is a form of human replacement so you go okay we don't need customer service agents we'll just do this what I think it's also super important is to think about like that co-pilot that human amplification and making it more as per the book impromptu amplification intelligence I think that that um that's also something to be thinking about with a kind of a super agency design lens yeah one of the things that that I think about as as a lens for for trying to figure out places to build AI that increases agency is that it um reduces the cost of certain um intelligence services that people pay for right now that use humans um so that not so that they don't use humans that other people who can't afford them um can get the same thing so like a really simple example is I run a media company uh I don't write all of the like YouTube headlines and all of the like um uh descriptions and and all that kind of stuff like I have a grocer writer that I work with who's super talented um but if you're just starting out like you can't afford that um and but you can use chbt or CLA or we have an internal incubation we did called spiral that does this and so it lowers the cost for people to like have a lot of the leverage that I get because I have more money in the whole organization there are lots and lots of areas like that that go beyond Creator stuff that I think are are really important and will be really useful for people yeah I think part of the thing I think with AI and its amplification intelligence is I think it raises the bar like raises the capability of the folks who have less like I don't have access to lead school I can still learn I don't have access to a ghost riter I can still write some marketing copy but by the way it also raises the well you have a ghost riter who really good that ghost riter learns to use Chad gbt and then also can do that in a much stronger and better way and I think that's good like I think amplifying across the board is actually a good thing yeah totally um let me think about if there's anything else for us to discuss well I'm sure there will be I'm sure there will be um this is great um thank you so much for doing this uh I had a great time I can't wait for the book to come out and I can't wait for another one I would love to have you on again Delight I look forward to our next conversation oh my gosh folks you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to Ai and I why because this show is the epitome of Awesomeness it's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard but instead of gold it's filled with pure unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT every episode is a roller coaster of emotions insights and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat craving for more it's not just a show it's a journey into the future with Dan shipper as the captain of the spaceship so do yourself a favor hit like smash subscribe and strap in for the ride of your life and now without any further Ado let me just say Dan I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you