
Amol Rajan speaks to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman about using AI to transform work.
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Amol Rajan
Hello, I'm Amol Rajan and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC people shaping our world from all over the world.
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I want to get freedom. I like that. Freedom. A gender equal world would be a
Reid Hoffman
better world for men too.
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These companies don't really.
Amol Rajan
They don't care what governments do.
Reid Hoffman
This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end.
Amol Rajan
For this interview I met tech billionaire Reid Hoffman. He's co founder of the largest professional network in the world, LinkedIn. He's also a huge investor in AI and a democratic Party donor. You're going to hear about how he transformed the world of work through his social network LinkedIn, but also how he thinks the use of AI can transform the world of work. Again and lead to a new Industrial Revolution akin to the Industrial revolution of the 19th century.
Reid Hoffman
The change that we're going to happen with AI does mean that there's going to be some really difficult challenges and times ahead. Why I'm optimist about this isn't because there isn't that difficulty about what we're navigating, of course, by the way, like we're going into a compressed speed cycle of the Industrial Revolution. Like that'll be challenging. But the question is, how do we get to both navigating those challenges as humanly and as gracefully as possible and how do we get to the same kind of benefits of the amplification we got with the Industrial Revolution?
Amol Rajan
You'll also hear his thoughts on billionaires and tech bros. And you're going to hear me ask him about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Reid Hoffman. In a conversation I recorded last month. You've changed the world and you've done it a few times. You've changed the world of work, specifically and massively through LinkedIn. You know that the world of work is going through another revolution because of AI. And revolutions can be very bloody, but they also create winners. What is your priority for making sure that this revolution creates more winners and than bloodied losers?
Reid Hoffman
The change that we're going to happen with AI does mean that there is going to be some really difficult challenges and times ahead. Why I'm optimist about this isn't because there isn't that difficulty about what we're navigating, of course, by the way, like we're going into a compressed speed cycle of the Industrial Revolution. That'll be challenging. But the question is, is how do we get to both navigating those challenges as humanly as and as gracefully as possible, and how do we get to the same kind of benefits of the amplification we got with the Industrial Revolution? Because nothing in our current society would be like it is without the Industrial Revolution. We wouldn't have a middle class, we wouldn't have public education, we wouldn't have most people's ability to take a cab or to transit somewhere. All of these things are the positive benefit of the Industrial Revolution. We were now doing that again. Now I call it the cognitive Industrial Revolution.
Amol Rajan
One of the big things that you keep coming back to is the importance of being able to pivot. So for instance, people may not know there's a lot of mythology around the so called PayPal mafia. These remarkable individuals. You're one of them who were at PayPal at the beginning. As far as I can remember, PayPal was about encryption on cell phones or mobiles, as we now call them. PayPal wasn't about payments, financial payments online. It sort of pivoted in a very, very big way, if you're really honest. And maybe the honest answer is the good one, or maybe it's the humble one, or somewhere in between. What was the founding ambition for LinkedIn?
Reid Hoffman
Well, so the founding ambition for LinkedIn was after social and after I'd been part of the kind of founding team of PayPal. So I had a lot of experience already with startups. And so LinkedIn is an unusual one for its ambition, actually, in fact is where it more or less got to.
Amol Rajan
So it was, I was going to say, because my next question is going to be, what did LinkedIn get right? Did LinkedIn get right? Because your whole ethos as an entrepreneur is that you've got to learn from your failures. Did LinkedIn get very right? 1.3 billion people later get very right? The thing you intended for it to.
Reid Hoffman
Yes. Which is, in work, the thing that's most helpful to you is life is a team sport, not an individual sport. So how do you collaborate easily with other people that you know and like and trust? Some of them are colleagues from current or former jobs, but some of them are also mates from university. Some of them are family members, some of them are just friends and friends of friends. How you help each other navigate the world of work, especially job opportunities, but also, like, expertise and like, hey, I want to learn about this AI thing. Who can I talk to to learn about this AI thing? That was essentially the idea behind LinkedIn. And it was like, everyone's going to have a public professional identity. Everyone's going to have a set of people that they ally with, that they connect with in terms of navigating it. And their help is anything from the very big things, which, of course is what LinkedIn is heavily used for, because that really matters, like, what's my next job opportunity?
Amol Rajan
I mean, LinkedIn's a very particular network because it's professional. The promise of social media. If you think about those heady days when Twitter was Twitter, when Facebook was Facebook was of giving everyone a voice, generating economic value, helping you forge these connections that increase, not just in your professional life, but your social life, joy and productivity and social media more broadly these days, particularly, I think, because of Twitter X and what it's become gets a bit more of a bad rap. It's this idea that it amplifies extreme voices, it fuels polarization and it makes smart people do dumb stuff. What's your sort of scorecard for social media 15, 16 years on? I mean, what's your feeling about whether or not it's delivered on the original promise, albeit very different platforms are doing very different things?
Reid Hoffman
Yeah, well, first at the outset, the obvious thing is LinkedIn almost never gets any of that criticism because it's designed in a much more civil way.
Amol Rajan
Yeah, but how do you make sure it's democratic? I mean, what are the criticisms that you feel have been made of LinkedIn that stick and hurt, including people saying it benefits some people more than others? How have you tried to change LinkedIn to accommodate the criticisms that can be sometimes made of it?
Reid Hoffman
I'd say the principal thing that is true for all Internet properties that's still a work in progress for LinkedIn is to make sure that it's as safe for women as it is for men. And what I mean by this is a woman goes on, puts her professional profile on, puts a nice looking headshot and starts getting marriage proposals from random people on the Internet. Because it's a global service that, like some country in, you know, Continent X, I'm not going to pick on any particular ones. I'll leave this exercise to the reader. Says, hey, if you're a woman with your headshot on a, on a profile, you must be available for marriage proposals. And we try to contain that as much as possible. And so, because that's not, you know, an environment that women feel is safe and so forth. So that kind of thing, I think is still a work in progress, but it's a work in progress. We do it much better than most places on the Internet. Right. I have heard from a number of my women leader friends that like LinkedIn is the only place they can post on social media without being attacked. Right. So we do a reasonable job, but there is a lot more to still do.
Amol Rajan
Let's talk about jobs. You've transformed the world of work over the past 25 years and you're arguing that it's going to transform very rapidly the next five years. One of the questions which everyone, including on your own podcast, asks you to ruminate on is which jobs are most vulnerable to AI. I think it's better to approach this question by seeing jobs as bundles of tasks and therefore the question to you is which tasks are most vulnerable to AI?
Reid Hoffman
So I'll actually answer both questions. I think the task analysis is great. McKinsey, by the way, has Done a whole bunch of detailed analysis on tasks and lining them up. Jobs and what percentages of jobs will actually go away completely automation, which ones will be transformed, etc.
Amol Rajan
And which ones, which we can't know, might be invented.
Reid Hoffman
Yes, exactly. So the simplest one is all of the jobs whose composition of tasks is a human following a script. Right? Like trying to get the human to act like a robot. Customer service jobs, as a kind of a classic one. Those are largely, completely going away the way they are because they're mostly composed of the, you've called me, I pull up the little script, I say, what's your problem? I navigate the menu trying to do it. I'm told, what to answer. The AI already does that a lot better.
Amol Rajan
Toll booth operator, as Richard Thaler, the Nobel Prize winner, came on this show and he said, you know, it wouldn't be such a bad thing if toll booth operators no longer did that job. And by the way, they weren't soon yet.
Reid Hoffman
Yes, exactly. By the way, AIs are smart. So it's very broad on the scripts. And so you got companies like Sierra and Parloa and others kind of already doing customer service as a, you know, AI as a front end. And by the way, one of the predictions I would make just on this is I think within a small number of months you'll have customers calling in, going, please put the AI on. Because the AI gives me better, quicker responses to navigating the issue that I'm on versus a human who's trying to go, oh, wait, wait, what does this menu say? Do I have to call my supervisor now? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, as ways of doing it and all the way. It's also more human because in a customer service thing, most times when customers call, they're irate. Some people, when they're irate, are very abusive. And so some of the poor customer service operators have to deal with people who are yelling at them, calling them, calling them names. AI doesn't care.
Amol Rajan
There are some people who are going to hear this and say, here's a guy who's done really well, has made a bit of money, who's needlessly optimistic and sunny about this, and they say, actually, Reed, what's going to happen is AI is going to create a new aristocracy. It's going to exacerbate existing inequalities and injustices, and it's going to do it in several ways. First of all, it is going to create wealth without work. Secondly, that wealth is going to go to very, very few People, particularly if the companies are private rather than public. And the third thing is, what about the tax revenues? What about what happens if you do lose some employment? What if you don't replace them straight away and you don't have the jobs that create the taxes on which poorer people are disproportionately dependent because public services are used by poor people? Isn't there a danger that AI not only causes disruption, but actually makes some of the bad things about our current world significantly worse? So first you'd say plan for it.
Reid Hoffman
Well, in part, and look and adjust to the turbulent waves and weather as you sail. Will a bunch of people, including current AI companies, make a bunch of money with new technology? Answer is yes, they will make a bunch of money. I'm not saying that's not the case. And part of what I said earlier is I'm not articulating a point of optimism to try to like, as it were, sing my own book on this. I think I will do very well with AI, but I think there's a bunch of other people who are going to even do better. That's fine, doesn't matter. And I think there's a whole range. But like, for example, let's take as a focus on entrepreneurship now, with AI, many, many more people can be entrepreneurs. It is a great enabler. Right. And so part of what I think we want badly as a society, part of the reason why I created LinkedIn, part of the reason why I do media and everything else, is how do we unlock as much of the talent in the world and the billions of people as we can to enable them to do their best work? Because when they're economically elevated, it doesn't just benefit them, it's. It also benefits their communities, our society, et cetera.
Amol Rajan
That's a case for mass participation. And that's about spreading ownership and I'm
Reid Hoffman
sure you would say spreading ability to use it to create value.
Amol Rajan
And is there any evidence that that's really happening now? The evidence of the last 15 years is that we've created one of the biggest asymmetries of wealth and knowledge and power in human history. They would, some people would argue, and secondly, that we've just given far too much power to far too few people. That essentially there's a few people. And you happen to know these people individually, I don't. But there's a few people, doz men, mostly American, on the west coast of America, that have completely disproportionate control, really, over the future of humanity.
Reid Hoffman
We've always had pillars of power and asymmetry in that power. So, Lisa, we didn't have the tech leaders. We had banking leaders or energy company leaders or politicians and presidents.
Amol Rajan
Isn't there something worse this time?
Reid Hoffman
I don't think so. Like for example, if you said, would I rather have Wall street bankers or technologists as kind of elite power, I'd rather have technologists. They're creating things that actually can make a difference for everyone. They're creating health apps, they're creating Wikipedia, they're creating, you know, search. There's a whole bunch of things that actually flows down to the average person. Like one of the things you, when you look at technology, you go, you know, your Uber driver and Tim Cook have the same iPhone, right? So it's like that kind of flow down is one of the things that comes out of technology. Even though Obviously Apple, Tim, etc. Make a whole bunch of money.
Amol Rajan
You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.
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Reid Hoffman
I really
Amol Rajan
hope you're enjoying this conversation with Reid Hoffman, co founder of LinkedIn, a huge AI investor and a donor to the Democrat Party in the United States. Now, as you remember at the beginning of this episode, I said that I would be speaking to him about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender. And just to give you a little bit of context before you hear that exchange, it's worth your knowing that before 2025, he Reid Hoffman acknowledged that he had limited philanthropic contact with the financier. He said that he knew Epstein primarily through fundraising for the mit that's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. He said that contact ended around 2015, and he acknowledged meetings, he expressed regret, and he said the relationship was transactional and brief. But then, towards the end of last year, Hoffman's name surfaced in the US Investigations and hearings into Epstein's vast networks. Reid Hoffman began publicly calling for full disclosure of the Epstein files. Hoffman then acknowledged in a post on X that he did have more meetings than previously stated, including contact between 2016 and 2018, both in person and remotely. And of course, that was after Jeffrey Epstein's conviction for soliciting sex with a minor. With all that in mind, let's return to my conversation with Reid Hoffman. We did get lots of questions also about Jeffrey Epstein, including some from women. The tenor of the questions that I got was at core, why did you keep a relationship with him years after his known conviction for offenses related to sex with minors?
Reid Hoffman
So I actually met him only after those convictions. They were part of his past.
Amol Rajan
They were in the public domain then.
Reid Hoffman
They were in the public domain. Look, I asked the then director of the media lab, look, I've never engaged in something like this. You're trying to fundraise. Does MIT headquarters like, is this fine? Someone's done their time? Has justice been served? And they I got a yes. And I was like, okay, My ignorance was I should have done my own work there.
Amol Rajan
But so you or you sort of, as it were, tried to vet him and get a kind of clearance from someone else, that he was someone that you could do business with?
Reid Hoffman
Yeah, because, look, we believe in the fact that people can serve time, have been served justice and then have rehabilitation. Right? That is a possibility that we want for members of society. So that was the question. I was like, I hadn't paid that much attention. I hadn't gone and gone Google. I hadn't realized that. That most of that there were so many victims who were just as. Hadn't been served. Like. Like none of that was apparent to me.
Amol Rajan
And it is possible with retrospect, in hindsight, to say this is all true. But is it also true to say that your relationship was mostly about fundraising because, you know, you stayed at his New York apartment, you stayed with him in the Caribbean. Was it about that? Or was it also about things like advice for dignitaries who he should meet and him getting to know other people in the world of technology that you knew, what did he want from you?
Reid Hoffman
Well, so there's what I wanted from him. That was what he wanted for me for what I wanted from him was fundraising for mit. And by the way, fundraising is a friendly activity. You don't go, hey, give us money. And that's the only thing, like, you know that, that, that, that's not what you do.
Amol Rajan
So you caught him. So the tone of the email, which I'm sure are embarrassing now, the tone of the. On in, give us some of this.
Reid Hoffman
Be friendly. Yes, exactly. And. And he was always dangling the, oh, I might be willing to give some money to this, this scientist who's having difficulty raising money because the work could be important. You know, maybe I would do that if you introduced me to some people. It only took retrospect to realize what he was doing, that it was essentially like I was being an idiot and a fool and he was playing me
Amol Rajan
and his fundraising a reasonable defense when he had a conviction that was known in public.
Reid Hoffman
Well, that was. I thought I already talked about, which was the fact that someone has a conviction. We believe in rehabilitation and re agreement in society. It's one of the things we want for everybody as a possibility. So I'd asked, gotten a positive answer, hadn't done my own work, big mistake. And once I started paying attention, going, wait a minute, maybe this wasn't like atonement. Maybe this wasn't actually justice served. That's when I essentially went to the sure, sure. I'm like. And he kept trying to build a relationship with me, introduce me to so and so, like, there's an email saying, well, I'll come to this conference if you have the courage to meet with me. Because I'd stopped, like, responding to anything, you know, like, years earlier. Right. And I'll just say one thing about this discussion that I think is really important in the public discourse. Like, so much of this is like, a discussion about, you know, person X who had a relationship with Epstein. I had a fundraising relationship with them. I regret it. I obviously have apologized a lot. The important thing is justice for the victims. The important thing is doing the right things for the victims. And as I kind of realized that what I've been doing is trying to help them, so I help them fund an advertisement to pressure Congress to release all the files, all the rest. That's where I actually think the discourse should really be. And so just because we're on this topic, I want to make sure that I've emphasized that.
Amol Rajan
I totally hear that. I've got one final question. Of the emails which you mentioned, there's one where you sort of say that you might want to help him with the press. Is that the one which is most kind of mortifying, or you look back on, you think, what was I doing? I mean, hindsight's an easy thing, maybe, but can you look back on, you think, actually this is one person who didn't need help with the press?
Reid Hoffman
Yes, mortifying. It's actually much simpler. Everyone takes this one sentence, and then, like, when they have a conspiracy, what is the context? So the context is, Joey called me and said, epstein is. Has all these really bad Google search results. Do you think you could help him?
Amol Rajan
That Joey is Joey Ito.
Reid Hoffman
Joey ITO FORMER DIRECTOR OF the MIT Media Lab and then I said, sure, but my idea was a very simple one, which is, go find a credible journalist, tell your side of the story to credible journalists, like how you rehabilitated, et cetera, et cetera. And then that goes to the top of the thing. It's the same advice I'd give anyone who had any kind of negative thing. It was like, sure. Like, this is what you need to do, which is the thing I said, right? In a fundraising conversation. That's it. I wasn't aware of any other context. Like, people say, well, but you knew that, you know, one of the victims had come forward. Then I was like, no, I wasn't aware of that. And by the way, it isn't anywhere in any of the, like, all of the emails have been made public. It's not in any of those things. I wasn't told that it was Just like, oh, he has this problem with his Google search results. What is the normal answer? Go find a very credible journalist and do a long story.
Amol Rajan
I think the reason the Epstein scatter beyond, as you rightly say, the justice for the survivors and victims, the reason people are interested in it is partly because it speaks to a broader issue about the state of capitalism today. And it's really interesting as you're here as someone who spent what, 40 or more years in capitalism, and I think I could describe you as a. As a proponent of capitalism, someone who believes it's better than the alternatives, as Churchill said of democracy. I think one of the underspoken stories or the elements of the Epstein scandal and horror is a feeling that basically rich people and super rich live according to different rules, that the system is rigged in their favor. To what extent, based on what you have seen of the lives of the very rich, is that actually true?
Reid Hoffman
Well, it's at least partially true, although it's not necessarily new. Right. Like, if you go back to human history, kings live by very different rules than peasants or, you know, townspeople, you know, and it's kind of the whole history of powerful people. Usual history is powerful men have different things. Part of our, I think our invention of modern society is to have a rule of law that applies equally to everyone. And that's part of the reason why this feels, you know, more offensive when it's places of, oh, you're doing crimes and you're getting away from it. And obviously we should do our absolute best to have rule of law apply equally across all people. Now, a wealthy person can afford a better lawyer, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You can't eradicate it completely, but you put in a lot of energy. And this is one of the things I love about, like, this country, Magna Carta. All the rest, like. No, no, the. The basic rights and dignity of every person. Now, of course, when that started, it was every man. We've since made progress, and now it's every person, not just every man. Right. But that kind of thing, I think is very important.
Amol Rajan
Final question. What's the big thing that our listeners need to understand, particularly about AI but where the puck is going and what they need to do to get ready.
Reid Hoffman
So what I will say to listeners, the same thing I say to my portfolio companies and entrepreneurs, which is don't build for how AI is today. Build for how you expect AI to be six to 12 months from now, because that's part of where the puck is going. Now, by the way, can Anyone know with any degree of certainty where it is? No. There'll be some things that'll be better and some things that'll be not as good as you think. So you have to have a certain amount of flexibility in that same thing as individuals. Start using it intensely now. Use it for things that matter to you, not just like, oh, rather than looking up on Wikipedia, I'll ask Chatgpt, do that too. That's fine. Or take a picture what's in my fridge. What could I make for dinner tonight? Fine, do that too. Make a sonnet for your kid's birthday.
Amol Rajan
Great.
Reid Hoffman
Do that too. But do it for things that matter to your work, that matter to how you operate and you'll start learning, oh, it's really good for this. Maybe in six months it'll be better. But to have some sense and be engaged in that learning loop and what you're doing. And by the way, that's what I recommend to everyone. I recommend it to my parents, I recommend it to companies I work with. I do it myself. I cannot be more unequivocal in that recommendation.
Amol Rajan
Thank you for listening to the interview. You'll find more in depth conversations on the interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with the entrepreneur Emma Greed, CEO of Otter AI Sam Liang and first lady of Sierra Leone Fatima Bio. Until the next time. Goodbye for now.
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Amol Rajan
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BBC World Service | Host: Amol Rajan | Guest: Reid Hoffman (Co-founder of LinkedIn, AI Investor, Philanthropist)
Original Airdate: June 2, 2026
Duration: ~25 min of core content
In this episode, Amol Rajan sits down with Reid Hoffman, renowned tech investor, LinkedIn co-founder, and influential voice in both Silicon Valley and Democratic politics. The conversation explores Hoffman's perspective on the disruptive and transformative power of AI for the future of work, the social responsibilities of tech leaders, inequality, and his personal controversies—most notably, his connections with Jeffrey Epstein. The tone is candid, energetic, and occasionally personal, with Hoffman defending his optimism about technology while tackling criticism about tech, wealth, and power head-on.
(Relevant timestamps: 03:01, 04:16, 09:10, 09:36, 12:08)
AI as a Cognitive Industrial Revolution
Optimism Tempered with Realism
Inequality Fears and the Case for Mass Participation
Advice on Adapting to Change
(05:16, 05:47, 06:15, 07:42, 08:03)
LinkedIn’s Founding Ambition and What It Got Right
Learning from Failures and Adaptation
LinkedIn’s Relative Safety and Ongoing Challenges
(07:05, 07:42, 08:03)
A More Civil Platform?
Addressing Criticisms
(09:10, 09:36, 10:21, 11:20)
Which Jobs/Tasks Are Most Vulnerable?
AI as a Superior Solution for Routine Work
(13:13, 13:52, 14:03, 14:05, 14:45, 24:13)
On Tech Wealth and Power Concentration
Do Rich People Live by Different Rules?
(17:02, 18:35, 18:41, 19:07, 19:35, 20:15, 20:40, 22:02, 22:22, 22:37, 23:31)
Hoffman’s Contact with Epstein
Regrets and Retrospect
Motives and Interactions
Broader Implication: Rule of Law and Social Justice
(25:22, 25:30, 26:12)
The exchange is frank, clear, and often reflective, with Hoffman striving for transparency, particularly on sensitive issues. Amol Rajan asks direct, sometimes pointed questions, prompting candid self-assessment and ambitious, if occasionally defensive, optimism from Hoffman. The conversation is accessible but unflinching in addressing both the opportunities and the dilemmas facing technology and leadership in 2026.