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- [00:01]
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- [00:41]
Kara Swisher
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- [01:54]
Reid Hoffman
It'S on.
- [02:05]
Kara Swisher
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media podcast network, this is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. Today I'm interviewing Reid Hoffman live at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. Reid's Twitter bio says he's an entrepreneur, investor and strategist, which is both accurate and a massive understatement. In 1997 and I actually met him back then, Reid created SocialNet, an online dating site that was arguably the first online social network. He was one of PayPal's first employees, which makes him part of the so called PayPal mafia. And that includes PayPal founders and early employees like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. But Reid was one of the good ones. He really has been one of the most important and influential investors and entrepreneurs entrepreneurs around and he's moved himself into the political space. After he co founded LinkedIn, he was again a founding investor in OpenAI and a co founder of Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleiman, whom I recently interviewed. Go back and listen if you haven't already. He sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for over $26 billion in cash. He sits on the board of Microsoft and is still a VC partner at Greylock Ventures. In his spare time, he's an author and podcaster, and he runs the Masters of Scale Events and podc. Of course, Hoffman is now one of the biggest and most influential Democratic mega donors. He's been contributing to Democratic candidates and causes before former President Trump ran for office, but he ramped that up significantly once Trump came on the scene. He even helped fund E. Jean Carroll's legal battle with Trump and has been noticeably outspoken about the threat posed by Trump, something many other business leaders have not had the courage to do. He's also got a very big influence among Silicon Valley, especially young startup leaders. Everyone talks about Elon, but I think Reid is one of these people that also has equal influence, just in a different, kinder and more decent way. He is a decent man and I really like talking to him. We disagree on a lot of things.
- [04:05]
Reid Hoffman
Including his continued support for Peter Thiel many, many years. That has changed recently. But he's willing to take a debate.
- [04:14]
Kara Swisher
And I really appreciate that and I hope today will not disappoint. Our expert question for Reid comes from Teddy Schleifer, a journalist who covers billionaires and their influence in American politics at the New York and I should note, an excellent reporter I hired at Recode when he was just a young and upcoming reporter.
- [04:32]
Reid Hoffman
Now he's in the big time. Let's get to it. It is on. Sit down. Oh, hi everybody.
- [04:51]
Kara Swisher
Thank you.
- [04:51]
Reid Hoffman
I'm so excited we're going to put this on the on podcast. Just so I've asked Reid to be super pithy because I've only got a short time. So let me start talking about. We have to talk about the election. We're going to talk about AI and blah, blah, blah. But I think it's impossible not to talk to Reid. He's one of the most significant mega donors. I think that's what they call you people for the Democrats. I call them backstage the anti elon. And I think it's true. Actually, Reid is sort of the very opposite of. Couldn't be more opposite in many ways. But you penned, you know, I like him, but it is still a very low bar in any case. So you.
- [05:33]
Kara Swisher
This truth is so subtle.
- [05:36]
Reid Hoffman
It's you and Satya Nadella down there with Tim Cook every now and then. So you penned an op ed for Bloomberg where you said American business and commerce rely on the rule of law. Companies can't thrive where erratic, vindictive, autocratic influences our courts and Justice Department. I'm assuming you're talking about Donald Trump. But. But he gets plenty of support among the business community. He recently spoke at the Economic Club of Chicago, got applause even though he spewed a lot of nonsense when he attacked the press and they said there was a peaceful transfer of power in 2020. Explain the appeal to business leaders despite chaotic autocratic tendencies. He's just talking about getting rid of income tax. He's talking about tariffs. Every economist is like, this is a disaster waiting to happen.
- [06:18]
Teddy Schleifer
So I think there's a good and there's a bad, and I don't mean good that I think that zero of them should support Trump.
- [06:25]
Reid Hoffman
Right.
- [06:25]
Teddy Schleifer
The reasonable is kind of the question of, look, I haven't really studied the history of fascists or the history of how these things break. And so I come up with self justifications. Like one of the things I've heard from some of the people who are supporting Trump is like, oh, yeah, he's talking about tariffs, but he won't do that. He's just talking about that as part of doing it. And that's the classic, like what Hindenburg said about Hitler.
- [06:47]
Reid Hoffman
That's correct.
- [06:48]
Teddy Schleifer
Which is like, oh, no, this is just the populist. He's not gonna do any. It's like, no, no, generally speaking, you should take someone seriously. So that's the good side. The bad side is, you know, grifter crony capitalism. It's I'm buying something for myself.
- [07:02]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [07:03]
Reid Hoffman
And he is the greatest coin op president in history in that he's viable and they can do what they want. What do they want?
- [07:09]
Teddy Schleifer
Yeah, what they should do is now when they have a dictionary reference of bagman, it should say C reference. Donald J. Trump.
- [07:17]
Reid Hoffman
Right. So why does that get them something? What do they want? Precisely. And some of them have many, many billionaires in tech and financ spoke out against Trump after January 6th. They reversed themselves. Steve Schwartzman comes to mind. You've said that business leaders who spoke out against Trump but support him don't have integrity. But they need to address their flip flopping. How do you get them to do that? They just say, I need the money or more money.
- [07:42]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, in terms of getting them to say, well, why did you agree that January 6th was a kind of a treasonous prompting an incitement of insurrection? And now you're like, blithely, ignoring it, address it. That's what truth and integrity is. You might say I've now changed my mind for the following reason. I'm explaining why I've changed my mind versus I'm buying my way into a position of influence.
- [08:09]
Reid Hoffman
They go quiet. The ones that don't agree go quiet. They tend to go quiet. And what do you say to them? Even if, you know, I mean, just recently, Bill Gates has apparently given $50 million to Kamala Harris. Jamie Dimon, somehow it leaked out that he's for Kamala Harris. Somehow. The leak's name is Jamie Dimon, in case you're interested.
- [08:28]
Teddy Schleifer
I think by definition, that's not a leak.
- [08:30]
Reid Hoffman
But, yes, private people say. I was like, give me a break. He called up the reporter. That was it. I'm giving you the secrets of the trade here. So then we have people like Ben Horowitz, who made a big deal about donating to Trump, now is donating to Harris. What happened there? And do you think he's hedging his bets, or he actually is trying to help Harris win, or he's hoping that he'll be on both sides of the trade?
- [08:54]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, I think there are people who are hedging their bets and are being very public about it. I don't actually think that's not Ben. I think Ben is being principled. I think he has a. Because I've talked to him, he has a set of legitimate concerns about the application of rule of law and process to crypto, which he believes that the Biden administration has not done a particularly good job of. He was dismayed by Biden's performance in the first debate, but now that it's Harris, he's known Harris for a long time, and so he's following still his principles about what is good governance. And to his credit, it isn't. Most people, once they make a public declaration, they just kind of stay there. Versus take the. I am switching. And I think that's to Ben's point.
- [09:42]
Reid Hoffman
Of honor, I would say she has a lot of big tech leaders. It's not just. I mean, I think when you think about it, Trump's got Elon and Peter Thiel, who are very arguably fantastic entrepreneur, fantastic investor. And then the cliff falls off and you get to Winklevoss rather quickly. Right. So you do. Let's be clear with you guys. It's you, it's Gates, it's Melinda Gates. It's like, it's a lot of Reed Hastings.
- [10:06]
Teddy Schleifer
Reed Hastings.
- [10:07]
Reid Hoffman
You know, it's all kind of Vinod Coast A players. But what does she need to do to shore up her support in the tech industry? I think she probably has a lot. I've told you backstage, I find her conservative actually, compared to a lot of Democrats.
- [10:19]
Teddy Schleifer
Look, I think she has a lot of support. I think that articulating, kind of. And by the way, she's the first presidential candidate in history who in her acceptance speech referenced the importance of entrepreneurs and founding. Right. That is a great thing. That is very noteworthy. I think that's the first step on. Well, look, I care about a broader society. I care about what happens with people across the entire country and all communities. But I also recognize that the creation of new businesses and new industries and new technologies is part of how we improve it for everybody and what that engagement is. And look, she is on path to doing that already. She obviously hasn't had a tremendous amount of time during the campaign because what do I and everyone you just mentioned want? We want her to win the election.
- [11:10]
Reid Hoffman
Right?
- [11:10]
Teddy Schleifer
And then, well, and then look, for example, the process that she led with the executive order on artificial intelligence was a great example of intelligent governance. First call on the set of the relevant companies and push them very hard to a set of voluntary commitments. Oh, what do you want to do? It's like, no, can you do more? Can you do more? Could you do something with this? Could you do something with this? Then once you get those, you look at them and say, okay, now which of these can we then make the rule of the road for the industry and then make it very focused, not an amorphous like, oh, here there'll be some penalties for if you do wrong, which is very innovative. But instead, no, no, you must have red teaming, you must do the following kind of monitoring. You must have some of this kind of reporting and you must be in dialogue with us so we can learn about what are the right things to do to prevent bad things. That would be what I would expect on the kind of regulation front, right? And then in the. Okay, how do we help all American industries? You know, because the tech industry is one of our great global exporters. How do we have that industry help all of the American industries to help our country be more prosperous and more jobs.
- [12:21]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [12:31]
ServiceNow Ad
Support for this episode comes from sas. How is AI affecting how you learn, work and socialize? And what do you need to know to make responsible use of it as a business leader, worker and human in the world? Find out when you listen to Pondering AI, a podcast featuring candid conversations with experts from across the AI ecosystem. Pondering AI explores the impact and implications of AI for better and for worse with a diverse group of innovators, advocates and data scientists. Check out Pondering AI wherever you get your podcasts.
- [13:04]
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- [13:35]
Kara Swisher
Support for on with Kara Swisher comes from Anthropic. You can probably benefit from incorporating AI into your daily workflow. It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur trying to get a new idea off the ground or the CFO of a multinational corporation, AI is a powerful tool worth harnessing. But exactly how do you get started? Claude from Anthropic may be the answer. CLAUDE is a next generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonet, can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data, and more. Whether you're brainstorming alone or working on a team with thousands of people, all at a price that works for just about any use case. If you're trying to crack a problem involving advanced reasoning, need to distill the essence of complex images or graphs, or generate heaps of secure code, Claude is a great way to save time and money. Plus, the Anthropic leadership team was founded in AI research and built Claude with an emphasis on safety. To learn more, visit anthropic.com Claude that's anthropic.com Claude.
- [14:43]
Reid Hoffman
So one of the things you got a little bit in trouble for was this idea that you wanted Federal Trade Commission chair Alina Khan out. She's not helping America in her job and she's doing, I would hope Vice President Harris would replace her. Talk about Oddly enough, JD Vance is someone called a conservative.
- [15:00]
Kara Swisher
He likes her.
- [15:01]
Reid Hoffman
And talk about what happened there with the FTC thing. I don't think it's wrong for you to ask for what you want, but it was sort of spun into you're demanding it as a condition.
- [15:10]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, so the reason I made a comment is I wanted to make sure that when I talk, as I always do but in this case, talking to the business community about making the argument about why Harris is unequivocally the better president for business out of these two choices, that I wasn't just arguing a partisan playbook that I actually recognize.
- [15:33]
Reid Hoffman
Read the progressive.
- [15:33]
Teddy Schleifer
Yes. And so it was like, look, I think in one particular thing in tech M and A and so forth, Lena Khan is actually being pretty destructive to American industry. And, you know, because her actions quell venture investing, which then means there's less startups that are doing competition, et cetera. Said from a viewpoint of a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur, not as, you know, progressives who wanted to say, oh, it's a, it's a pay for play, it's a person on the Microsoft board who's opposed to it. It's like, no, actually, in, in fact, I never speak for Microsoft on these things and it's Silicon Valley. So I made that comment once on one business television program, never to anyone in the White House, including Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or any of those to kind of say, look, I'm a truth teller. And when I'm telling you that actually, in fact Harris is much better for business investment, it's because it's true. But then of course, it got blown into a whole story because it's like, well, it's making a condition for his support. And I'm like, well, since they don't know about it, other than your news program, it's a pretty bad condition.
- [16:48]
Reid Hoffman
No, you should have done it quietly, in other words. Right. That's how you.
- [16:51]
Teddy Schleifer
What if I was actually having a condition?
- [16:52]
Reid Hoffman
Yeah. That's not your image from my perspective. But the idea of that's something you would push for, Lena, being.
- [17:01]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, look, I actually rarely push for things and I try to never push for anything that has anything to do with my own economic advantage because I think that's corrupt governance. I think that's grifter capitalism. I think that's crony capitalism. It's precisely the reason why I am resolutely opposed to a Trump administration.
- [17:25]
Reid Hoffman
If you paid him enough, he'd probably do that for you.
- [17:28]
Teddy Schleifer
I've literally never argued for anything that. Because it has an economic advantage to me. Now, if I'm asked about what one should be doing in an FTC position around antitrust, I would give very different advice than what Lina Khan happens to be doing. And who are they?
- [17:48]
Reid Hoffman
Has she asked you?
- [17:49]
Teddy Schleifer
No.
- [17:50]
Reid Hoffman
No. She hasn't asked you yet.
- [17:53]
Teddy Schleifer
Would be surprised.
- [17:54]
Reid Hoffman
Would you want to be in a Kamala Harris administration?
- [17:57]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, I wouldn't want to be, frankly, in any administration just because I think I'm a better use to society as an investor and a creator and all the rest. And the government job has bureaucracy constraints. That is a little bit more difficult for people like me.
- [18:16]
Reid Hoffman
Right. So no Postmaster General for you.
- [18:18]
Teddy Schleifer
Ok, yes, Well, I think that would be the definition of going postal, but yes.
- [18:25]
Reid Hoffman
Yeah. That's not you they're describing. It's someone else. Old friend of yours. Speaking of which, speaking of another old friend of yours, Peter Thiel, one of your fellow PayPal co founders, you and I have long had arguments about him. I'm like, he's not your friend, Reid. And of course you're like, oh, I'll be nice to him. I'm like, don't be nice to him. He'll like you. It went on for years. Finally, he took my advice. You no longer talk to him because of his support for Trump, which you consider immoral issue. You actually said this in Allen & Co. Conference in front of Thiel himself. Elon attacked you and essentially said you were on Jeffrey Epstein's client list and insinuated the real reason you support Harris. Can I give you a quick line?
- [19:01]
Teddy Schleifer
Sure.
- [19:02]
Reid Hoffman
Every accusation is a confession with these people. Okay, got it. Just use it. Okay, that's true. It's so true. It works perfectly on many things, but David Sacks also implied that you're somehow to blame for the Trump assassination because you've made an unfortunate.
- [19:19]
Teddy Schleifer
I repeated Peter's word at a private conference. Yes.
- [19:22]
Reid Hoffman
Yeah. And what is it like when they're resorting to personal attacks? What is going on with all of you? Like, you didn't really.
- [19:29]
Teddy Schleifer
You didn't really agree with all of you.
- [19:31]
Kara Swisher
I mean, not you.
- [19:32]
Reid Hoffman
You didn't do it, but, you know, I'm rubber, you're glue kind of thing. But what is happening instead of arguing about you is why are they doing this to you and what impact does it have on your life? And I'm not even beginning to say, you know, Elon's attacking you, Peters. David, you know, the third banana, David Sacks is attacking you that way. I'm being generous with their banana.
- [19:55]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, look, I think what makes American democracy special in history and special that we want to return to is essentially peaceful transitions of power. It's, again, another reason why I'm completely opposed to Donald Trump, who, like, incites January 6th insurrection, who exhibits a denialism about 2020, which, according to any person with any honesty and integrity, was a fair election. And all of this as kind of part of the problem. And part of what folks don't realize is you want to be speaking against any violence in politics whatsoever, right? And so one of the problems that you get when you become the target of a bunch of, you know, kind of MAGA crazies who are spreading, you know, basically lies and defamation around Epstein or other things, is you get a bunch of, like, crazy people sending. Sending you hate mail and threats and other kinds of things. And that is the end result. And the real question for the people who incite it, whether it's, you know, Elon or other people, is how much are they doing it knowingly and how much are they doing it kind of ignorantly?
- [21:12]
Reid Hoffman
Have. Oh, no, stop. They're so nice. They're not doing it ignorantly. They know just what they're doing, just FYI. But come on, at some point you have to be like, maybe this person's just an asshole. So you did. But how much responsibility do those tech companies have when it comes to weaponized disinformation that you're talking about, including it yourself and whoever you recently called out, Elon Overt on X this week on Meta, you had the word Hitler. You got thrown off the service for a second because they still haven't figured out content moderation yet particularly well.
- [21:45]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, I mean, this is one of the. You use scale AI systems and so forth.
- [21:49]
Reid Hoffman
I get it. They actually threw my wife off for saying Hitler's a bad guy. She's like, I stand by my feeling on this.
- [21:57]
Teddy Schleifer
And of course, it's a controversial position.
- [21:58]
Reid Hoffman
I know. Well, they got freaked out when they realized it was my wife they actually threw off because it became a thing. They're like, oh, no, the wrong wife. But what responsibility do tech companies have for this?
- [22:11]
Teddy Schleifer
So, one, I think we do a very good job at LinkedIn, just to be clear. So I think it's possible to do well. And then two, I tend to think, look, what we need to do is we need to say that one of the key things, especially in democracies, is you want your media ecosystem to be a learning ecosystem by which you learn things that are true. So if someone's, for example, spreading information willfully and badly about, like, vaccines are terrible and aren't effective and da, da, da, da, which we know that vaccines, flu, other things are actually extremely effective and are part of how we have instituted our longer lives. Now you want to make that not endemic and easy to assault a civilian populace through information warfare. And so the question is, how do you do that?
- [23:09]
Reid Hoffman
Right?
- [23:10]
Teddy Schleifer
And by the way, I think it's a problem we need to work on. You know, one of my.
- [23:14]
Reid Hoffman
They've been working on it for years.
- [23:15]
Kara Swisher
They keep getting it wrong.
- [23:16]
Reid Hoffman
Like how did that become controversial is the thing or that they want it. They seem to be backing away more than leaning forward in this.
- [23:25]
Teddy Schleifer
My point of view is that. And I think there's intelligent argument around this, but my point of view is that any. And I think the same thing applies to social media companies. All shoes should apply to like cable news.
- [23:39]
Reid Hoffman
Absolutely.
- [23:40]
Teddy Schleifer
Shoes, shows and so forth. Is that to say, look, you should have a. Here is what our principles of information and truth are. Here is how you can hold us accountable to. And so if you're actually signing up for accountability and you violate what you say you signing up for, then you're legally accountable.
- [24:02]
Reid Hoffman
Well, Rupert Murdoch paid a billion dollars.
- [24:04]
Teddy Schleifer
Yes, exactly.
- [24:05]
Reid Hoffman
But Facebook didn't.
- [24:07]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, but Facebook was not saying we're signing up for saying that we are a source of true information.
- [24:13]
Reid Hoffman
But they are. They're a source of information.
- [24:16]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, but there's a source of information. But like they're like if they could say, look, as you know this as well as anyone on the planet, they say individuals are signing up for what they're saying themselves. We are simply the conveyors of that.
- [24:29]
Reid Hoffman
I've heard that, I've heard that argument once or twice. Once or twice. But they're more than that. Would you agree?
- [24:34]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, my view is if I. In an information source, you don't want to say, look, if someone's out there spreading, let's take an easy one like destructive anti vax information, then you should as a platform, it's not legally required to do this but you should as a platform try to essentially make that less of a meme across your platform because it's destructive to the health of the group and it's wildly inaccurate.
- [25:05]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute. Support for the show comes from Range Rover Sport. What makes a leader is a tough question. But one thing's for sure. A true leader leads by example and a true leader takes risks. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example and who approach life with a palpable passion, there's Range Rover Sport. This is a car that leads by example. It's also pretty cool. Each model offers a dynamic, sophisticated take on sporting luxury. Intricate refinement meets visceral power. The Range Rover Sport offers drivers focused on road performance and world renowned off road capability. You can experience its adaptation. Adaptive off road cruise control which monitors ground conditions and acclimates to the present terrain. Plus it has dynamic air suspension, which lets you drive with agility, control and composure and with adaptive dynamics. It reduces unwanted body movements, allowing for smooth riding and handling. It's time to experience a comfortable, collected drive. You can rise to every occasion in the Range Rover Sport. Build your own Range Rover Sport at Land Rover. Support for the show comes from into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice produced with Vox Creative. Former President Donald Trump has made voter fraud a key talking point in his 2024 presidential campaign. Despite having no evidence of widespread fraud historically, claims like this can have a tangible impact on ordinary voters. In a new three part series, host Ashley C. Ford talks to Olivia Coley Pearson, a civil servant in Douglas, Georgia who was approached by a first time voter who had questions about how the voting machines worked and so she showed them. Because of this, she was arrested for voter fraud four years later. According to Coley Pearson, what happened to her was less about voter fraud and more about intimidating black voters.
- [27:04]
Reid Hoffman
I think people need to know that people are black people, people of color. They are afraid to get out and.
- [27:11]
Teddy Schleifer
Vote because some of the things that.
- [27:13]
Kara Swisher
Have been going on Hear her story and subscribe to into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast.
- [27:25]
Teddy Schleifer
Fox Creative.
- [27:27]
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- [27:34]
Ian Mitchell
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- [27:44]
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- [27:59]
Ian Mitchell
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- [28:20]
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- [28:34]
Ian Mitchell
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- [28:57]
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- [29:08]
Reid Hoffman
One of the things that you're thinking about is Trump might win, in fact, and I'll ask you that, and then I'm gonna get to AI. But you, it may be the administration of JD Vance, or as Rachel Maddow calls him, Peter Thiel's failed intern. You. You donated money to help Vance's opponent. What do you, you know, he may be the president, too. There's a lot of chance that that could happen. So what do you imagine would come from a Trump administration? Are you personally worried about your fate?
- [29:39]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, I think, I mean, look, you have a president who in his first term demonstrated a willingness to use the instruments of state for his own political power, whether it's anything from threatening to withhold aid from foreign countries unless they produced probably false information that would advantage him politically or retaliatory against companies that he felt weren't sufficiently laudatory. And with his program, which is a classic kind of fascist maneuver. And now you'll have potentially a second administration. So you'd think that the abuses of the instrument of state, which we as Americans should be completely and morally politically Americanly opposed to, will get substantially worse.
- [30:31]
Reid Hoffman
So are you worried personally?
- [30:33]
Teddy Schleifer
Yeah, I would say I have the unfortunate expectation of various of the magists being abusing the instruments of state to be retaliatory.
- [30:45]
Reid Hoffman
So it's you in Cuban, right? I guess, yeah. You in Cuban? Mark Cuban. Every episode we get an expert question to answer a question. This is from Teddy Schliefer, who covers billionaires like yourself and political influence like yourself.
- [30:56]
Teddy Schleifer
Hey, Reid, it's Teddy Schleifer here from the New York Times. When you got really involved in politics after 2016, I had heard you really felt like the party was just too outdated, too slow, the tech stack was too weak. I wonder, you know, now eight years in what kind of grade you would give the Democratic Party's kind of technologist donors at fixing those problems. Do you think that you've done an A plus job, a B plus job, a C plus job? Because, you know, some people today fear that the Democratic Party is backsliding and that Republicans in some way or another are at least leaping the Democrats with things like TikTok and influencer content. How is the party doing on tech and digital?
- [31:39]
Well, as one of those people and giving myself a grade, I give myself a B. I'm still working towards the A A. I give myself a B. They give us a B.
- [31:48]
Reid Hoffman
Right.
- [31:49]
Teddy Schleifer
But we're working.
- [31:49]
Reid Hoffman
What are they missing?
- [31:51]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, among other things, I mean, we do. We have some efforts going in the various social media areas. We have some efforts going on kind of how do you organize a coherent set of relationship campaigning and having accurate databases if you send someone a knock on a door that they're actually somebody that wants to talk to you, et cetera, that kind of stuff. I think we're still working on it. And it's one of the places where if you're more top down fascist control, it's easier to do it better when you're more inclusive on the Democratic side, which is a good virtue. It's slower and harder to do.
- [32:30]
Reid Hoffman
Slower, harder to do. Although as you said, the Dave Bautista art thing was fantastic.
- [32:34]
Teddy Schleifer
If you haven't seen the Dave Dave Bautista ad on Trump, go look at it at YouTube. I laughed out loud.
- [32:41]
Reid Hoffman
All right, two very quick questions on Ann and we'll finish up. The last time we did an interview, you were asking the questions. Thank you. I said that AI companies are shoplifting and they scrape copyrighted material to train their models without paying for. And you said basically like someone reading a book. Please expand on that. Clearly a lot of copywriters like myself disagree. And there's evidence to suggest if genre models are like people who read books when it comes to write or create, they might also be poorly disguised plagiarists.
- [33:07]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, if they are doing plagiarism, that's a different issue than the training side because that's a question of what gets reproduced. And so if things get reproduced that say, hey, here is writing from Kara Swisher that you can have for free for me versus paying for. That would be a problem. If you said, and here's something Kara Swisher said, when it's lying about what you said or hallucinating, then that can be a problem. And those are problems. That there should be accountability. That's a different issue than should computer processes that have legitimate access to a digital copy of a particular piece of work and read it. Should they be able to do that? I think the answer is yes, the same way that a human being can. But. But those are three separate issues. So two of them. I have strong agreement on the general reading of things. Now, of course, if you say we have A new copyright law. And the new copyright law has a robots. Txt file, and the robots text file says a robot can't look at this without approval of mine, then fine, but the law needs to say that.
- [34:17]
Reid Hoffman
So, last question about AI. You recently wrote the Digitalist, the digital paper, and it used GPS systems as a metaphor. Two things give me a really contrarian view you have about AI. Right now, I'm neither an alarmist nor a cheerleader. I would say I'm kind of wait and see. I'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best, I think, is the way I look at it. But let's end by explaining the metaphor and spell out your vision for AI as an informational gps.
- [34:46]
Teddy Schleifer
So one, I think we're in a cognitive industrial revolution. I think the same way the industrial revolution gave us physical power, transport, motion, manufacturing, construction, et cetera, AI is giving us cognitive powers. And so the metaphor to try to make that is like a cognitive gps, which is how do you navigate a landscape of learning or doing work or communicating and that kind of thing? And that becomes an aid. Like a GPS is an aid, like the way that we, like. Literally everyone in this room has used GPS on their phone with the maps to figure out how to get somewhere, how to get back, et cetera. And it's that kind of thing, but in a broader mental space. And then what I would say for a contrarian view is maybe in this audience, because contrarian always is contrarian. Against what? Actually, in fact, I think human institutions change more slowly than technologists expect them to. So the. Oh, my God, all these jobs are going to change in two or three years. I don't think it's going to be like that fast.
- [35:47]
Reid Hoffman
And the last question, obviously, how confident are you about the bet you've made versus the bet Elon Musk has made with the presidency?
- [35:57]
Teddy Schleifer
I mean, confident that I'm. That I'm making the right bet for the country. 100%.
- [36:04]
Reid Hoffman
Okay. And confident of the outcome of that.
- [36:10]
Teddy Schleifer
Well, reading all of the polls and everything else, it very much looks like a jump ball. So my, my advocacy is everyone, you know, call whoever you know in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, et cetera, and get them to vote.
- [36:28]
Reid Hoffman
But you will not be behind Kamala Harris on a stage jumping up and down. Is that correct? Like a dipshit.
- [36:34]
Teddy Schleifer
As Tim Watts says, I'm happy to provide entertainment, but differently.
- [36:39]
Reid Hoffman
Okay, not a dipshit. Thank you so much.
- [36:51]
Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro Roselle Kateri Yokum Jolie Myers Megan Burney and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's Executive producer of Audio. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher and Claire Hyman. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you clearly have a voting plan and you're dragging someone else along, do it. If not, look up your polling place now and get there. It's a privilege to vote. It is a privilege and an honor and do it or else I'll be very angry at you. Go Wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.
- [37:43]
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