And, This Is Why Reid Hoffman Doesn’t Fear Artificial Intelligence

Summary

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Podcast Summary: This Is Gavin Newsom

Episode: And, This Is Why Reid Hoffman Doesn’t Fear Artificial Intelligence
Date: June 19, 2026
Host: Governor Gavin Newsom
Guest: Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder, investor, podcaster, AI entrepreneur)

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Main Theme & Purpose

Governor Gavin Newsom hosts entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman for a candid, wide-ranging discussion about artificial intelligence (AI), the future of work, technological optimism versus public anxiety, the role of regulation, and the intersection of politics, tech power, and wealth. Throughout the conversation, Newsom and Hoffman explore why Hoffman remains fundamentally optimistic about AI despite mass uncertainty, and they engage openly about the social, economic, and political disruptions stemming from the AI boom and broader shifts in technology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI, Jobs, and Economic Anxiety

• Main Concern: Anxiety over AI’s impact on jobs, with headlines and tech leaders amplifying fears about a "white-collar bloodbath."
  • Hoffman's Take: Current pains (job loss, college grad unemployment) are mostly due to overhiring during COVID, remote work experiments, trade wars, and economic volatility—not AI (04:13–07:38).
  • Quote (05:13):

    “If I was like, oh, I overhired and I mismanaged, it’s my fault. No, no, I’m strong. I’m taking advantage of AI. AI is replacing jobs...I'll take door B, thank you very much.” — Reid Hoffman

• Impact Level: AI’s role in job loss is often exaggerated in the media, with Hoffman insisting it’s a minor factor so far—“if it’s a percentage from AI, it's like 5. It's not, you know, it’s not 30 or 50.” (06:55)
• Advice to Young People:

  “Crisis is opportunity...You can be the AI generation. You should be using it. You should be going, hey, Company X, you need people to help you AI-ify your company. I can be the person doing it. You shouldn’t be trying to opt out. It's a disaster for you.” — Reid Hoffman [20:01]

2. Acceleration Versus Caution in AI Development

• Hoffman's Position: Opposed to AI development “pauses,” arguing that bad actors won’t wait, so ethical actors need to move faster and shape outcomes.
• Quote (10:00):

  “Say you issue a call for a pause and you have two groups of people. The group who pauses, and the group who doesn’t. The people who don’t pause keep going. So what kind of AI is built? Not good. That’s why I'm vehemently opposed to this kind of pause.” — Reid Hoffman

• Good Guy Model: Hoffman advocates for AI development rooted in humanist principles, inspired by “the Pope’s awesome encyclical...keeping human beings at the center.” (10:14–11:09)

3. Trust, Transparency, and Tech Leadership

• Low-Trust Landscape: The public's trust in institutions, including tech, is low (“we’re in a very low trust environment overall” – 12:02).
• Transparency as Trust-Building: AI companies should be transparent, making their guiding principles public.
  • On constitutions for AI: Uses the analogy of the American Constitution as a “sacred document,” but maintains that having explicit, transparent principles is key. (13:04–13:44)

4. Regulatory Capture & Incentives

• Regulatory Capture: Massive tech wealth leads to disproportionate influence on government and regulation, leading to public resentment and cynicism. (46:35–47:20)
• Incentives: Even good actors are trapped by competitive and financial incentives.

  • “In any incentive system, you’ll get some good effects...and some bad effects...How do we tune the incentive system so that the major incentives mostly align with good outcomes?” — Reid Hoffman [16:34]

5. The American Stack & Global Competition

• AI as National Strategy: Hoffman and Newsom agree on the importance of “the American stack,” i.e., ensuring the U.S. remains a global leader in AI via values-driven innovation. (18:52–19:26)
• Quote (18:52):

  “We want AI to be American intelligence.” — Reid Hoffman

6. Managing the Transition: Policy, Data, & Social Safety Nets

• Policy Recommendation: Policymakers should gather solid data, monitor real impacts, and make evidence-based decisions, not react to media-created panic (“That’s not the way to do it” – 21:50).
• Job Transformation: Hoffman foresees a “transformative tsunami,” with many jobs transformed—some replaced, some augmented. Human workers will increasingly manage teams of AI agents (24:28–27:35).
• AI as Solution: Advocates using AI to help displaced workers retrain and find new opportunities—proposing that AI be used to match, train, and support those navigating career transitions. (28:44)

7. Origin and Trajectory of the Modern AI Boom

• Historical Perspective:
  • Hoffman began his journey studying AI in the late 1980s, but the modern AI boom traces to breakthroughs in compute scale and data availability.
  • The 2013–2014 “revolution” was kicked off by DeepMind’s realization that “scale compute” could create scale intelligence (34:16–35:29).
• Hoffman’s Personal Story:
  • Motivated by fascination with human thought, not just technology; interdisciplinary background in psychology, linguistics, philosophy. (33:14)

8. Tech Titans, Rivalries, and the “Mafia” Factor

• Tech Power Players: Candid discussion of personalities (Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Peter Thiel, etc.), their motives, incentives, and the narrative of “good” and “bad” actors.
• On Elon Musk:

  • “Elon became a narcissist... He lies through his teeth constantly… It was pathetic and pitiful.” — Reid Hoffman [56:12–56:39]

9. Data Centers, Compute, and Energy

• AI’s Energy Impact:
  • Data centers are under fire for driving up utility bills and receiving government subsidies. Hoffman proposes making large data centers provision extra power, benefiting local communities. (62:05–63:51)
  • Data centers “are getting subsidies on their bills and we’re socializing an increase on everybody else’s.” — Newsom [62:49]

10. Bubbles, Market Dynamics, and Tech Competition

• On Bubble Concerns:
  • AI is as transformative to the economy as electricity, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t excesses or volatility. True bubbles “just kind of falls down and it has domino effects to other things.” (65:29–67:17)
• Competition:
  • AI competition is fierce, but Google’s attempts to price out competitors with lower token costs haven’t undermined OpenAI or Anthropic so far. (68:05–69:11)
• Responsible AI Rollout:
  • Discussion of “Mythos” and responsible handling of potent technology—Hoffman notes responsible actors are sometimes punished for not bowing to political directives (69:51–73:07).

11. Physical AI and Robotics

• Future of Robotics: Within years, every knowledge worker will have teams of AI agents; physical AI will drive revolutionary changes in industry, transportation, and manufacturing (75:22–79:06).
  • Human role shifts from direct contribution to orchestration and management of intelligent agents.

12. AI for Social Good: Health, Law, and Education

• AI in Medicine: Hoffman co-founded Manus AI to drive “a drug discovery factory with AI,” giving humanity a credible shot at curing cancer and other diseases (82:13–85:27).

  • “AI has the best shot in human history of curing all cancer. If we could deliver even a percentage of that—That’s huge.” — Reid Hoffman [85:26]

• Democratization Need: Argues AI assistants (medical, legal, educational) must be available to all, not just the wealthy, democratizing expertise and opportunity (87:01–91:27).

13. Wealth Inequality, Democracy, and Taxation

• Mounting Inequality: Newsom and Hoffman discuss how technology and regulatory capture lead to concentrations of wealth and power, fueling anger and populist backlash (91:28–92:49).
• Progressive Taxation: Supports higher, smarter progressive taxation—but only if implemented sensibly, without driving job creators out of state.

  • “The net effective rate for wealthy people is well below 50... This we should be fixing.” — Reid Hoffman [114:35]

• Critique of California Billionaires Tax: Both discuss how punitive, poorly framed taxes drive high earners out, hurting state revenue.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Overarching AI Hype:

  “What people hear is, ‘Hey everyone, I have this really great technology that’s going to like, ruin half of your lives. And good for me and sucks to be you.’ That’s not what you meant to say, but that’s what they hear.” — Reid Hoffman [08:08]

• On Humanism & AI:

  “It’s not just self declaration. ‘I am humanist.’ No, that’s nice…What is it to be humanist? To say, look, I have a theory about why the work I’m doing will cause a much better result for call it at least 80% of humanity.” — Reid Hoffman [44:04]

• On Tech Figures with Power:

  “The question is, where do they go as they get more power, more sycophants around them…Elon became a narcissist who…I think he was a small narcissist, and now he’s a big narcissist” — Reid Hoffman [55:58]

• On AI as Public Infrastructure:

  “We want in short order, is at minimum three assistants given to every citizen, state, country, etc. One medical, one legal, one educational. And we want them to be very competent and…essentially equivalently free…take the kind of medical thing that only the ultra wealthy have…and make it democratically available.” — Reid Hoffman [89:41]

• On Political Corruption:

  “We’re living in the greatest kleptocracy of your and my lifetimes.” — Reid Hoffman [61:06]
  “Someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto. You’re bought. Period.” — Reid Hoffman [98:29]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• AI’s role in current economic disruptions: 04:13–07:38
• Overhyping AI’s negative job impacts: 07:38–09:27
• AI regulation & transparency: 09:46–13:44
• AI leadership personalities & motives: 14:35–21:50
• Advice to young people/jobs of the future: 19:47–21:12
• Origins of modern AI boom: 33:33–38:52
• On Musk, power, and tech’s moral character: 55:58–57:51
• Data centers/utilities/climate: 62:05–64:59
• Froth and bubble discussion in AI economy: 65:04–67:17
• Physical AI and robotics: 75:22–79:06
• AI for medicine, legal, education (AI democratization): 82:13–91:27
• Wealth, kleptocracy, regulatory capture: 91:28–98:29
• Progressive taxation and the right way to tax wealth: 112:02–117:34

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Conclusion

This episode offers a lively, unfiltered look at the opportunities—and turbulence—surrounding the AI revolution. Hoffman’s optimism is grounded in a belief that technological change, if properly stewarded by ethical leaders and robust policy, can serve as a tremendous amplifier of human potential and social good. Yet both Newsom and Hoffman recognize the urgent risks of inequality, regulatory capture, and public mistrust. Practical suggestions for technological governance, transparent AI development, and democratized access to its benefits are accompanied by sharp critiques of current economic and political dynamics—and an insistence that change must be managed thoughtfully, not fearfully.

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Transcript

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Corruption.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, we're living in the greatest kleptocracy of your and my lifetimes. Someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto, you're bought.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Period.

[Reid Hoffman]

So the question is, where do they go as they get more power? And the answer is Elon became a narcissist.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

This is Gavin Newsom.

[Reid Hoffman]

And this is Reid Hoffman.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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[Governor Gavin Newsom]

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[Reid Hoffman]

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[Reid Hoffman]

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[Cindy Crawford]

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[Governor Gavin Newsom]

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[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Well, welcome.

[Reid Hoffman]

My pleasure to be here. First time in the Governor's match.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

It is not bad, right?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, not bad.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, it's, you know, it's, you know, not. I don't know it's not. But it's, you know, we're blessed to be here. Yeah, but I'm blessed to be here. Look how many books you written. Six. Six best selling books.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Two podcasts.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

One's not enough.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. You know everyone. It was getting to the point where everyone Had a podcast so I had

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

to have to the most, you know, I mean you've been, you've been around sort of og, started a few companies. You're part of this mafia, this mob called PayPal.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. Although I try, you know, everyone likes the mafia kind of thing of it. We didn't do Anything criminal. It's PayPal network.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Well, I'll get to, I want to get to. You know, you guys obviously have embraced that a little bit.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you know, we'll also talk about, you know, it's kind of broken apart a little bit.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

The old, the PAL version.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Of the mafia pain on pals. Started this company, LinkedIn.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you currently, though not maybe for long. We'll talk about that on the Microsoft board. And you've got a number of AI companies that you've started up and you also invested, seems like everywhere in the AI space and you're doing a lot of angel investing. So all of that and you haven't even turned 60 years old.

[Reid Hoffman]

Nope. Coming up. But not quite.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

It's not quite. But I really wanted to get you read to talk about the AI in the broadest sense because we've, look, we're just, everybody's wringing their hands. The doomers, the gloomers, it's going to take our jobs. The anxiety is boiling. You're seated in representative polls and just anecdotal feelings. People angry about data centers. People are furious that their kid who went to Stanford and got this unbelievable degree is not getting as many interviews as mom and dad expected their perfect child to get. But you have a different take on all this. You're a little bit more optimistic about this.

[Reid Hoffman]

So I mean first you got to acknowledge people are in pain, having difficulties. Right. I mean, and yes, there's difficulties with entry level jobs and if you listen to the press, including by the way, a bunch of the AI people who make, you know, foolish statements like white collar bloodbath and other kinds of things, they go, well, it's AI's fault. And it's like actually, if you actually look at it thus far, it's not AI's fault. Doesn't mean there won't be an impact from AI and all that stuff and entry level jobs. But the pain that's being felt right now is over hiring from COVID is tariffs, you know, screwing our economy and business planning and when and when all of that kind of stuff happens, businesses go, I going to do no hiring until I figure out what's going on. Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So you're saying Some of those big headlines that we saw box and others that somehow suggested or at least added in the press release maybe a number of factors including AI. And then the mainstream press runs with AI. Overhyped.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, well, overhyped. But it's a natural reason for a CEO to say that. Because if I was like, oh, I overhired and I mismanaged, it's my fault. No, no, I'm strong. I'm taking advantage of AI. AI is replacing jobs. I am just being a really good CEO and manager of my shareholder capital. Which CEOs are smart people. Pick which one you want, Door A or door B. It's like, I'll take door B, thank you very much.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So what do you make then of the college graduate and the unemployment rates? Legitimately, at least numerically, statistically. What's the caus of that? What, what would you, what's the factor that, how would you factor AI in that respect? Or what do you think more broadly is the reason that those numbers are higher?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, I think what is factually case is that a wide range of businesses are like, we don't know if we should be hiring new entry level people right now. Some of it's like, well, we're doing layoffs because we hired too many people during the pandemic and, and, and then did this whole remote work thing which is not really working out and we're refactoring it and da da da da da da da da. And then there is, oh, and now we've got trade war going on with global tariffs which are increasing costs to consumers, cost, the businesses cost. And so like, like, and we got volatility central. Like, hey, it's July, we're starting a new war, right? Like, you know, so it's like, like in all those cases, what businesses do, the very first thing they do is let's not incur any new expenses. It's, let's not hire any new people. Accept the very clear people we need entry are usually like, oh, these are people we need five years from now. Well, we don't know what we need five years from now. So let's not do that. It's also, let's not do a new lease. Let's not like, it's like, let's, let's just chill. So that's the primary driving actual factor. Now that being said, and by the way, there are a few places which are AI related. Like for example, the meta layoffs are we need to free up costs for spending on compute and so we're going to do. So it's not that there's zero, it's just that the broad brush, you know, kind of college grad, is not actually, in fact yet, like, if it's a percentage from AI, it's like 5. It's not, you know, it's not 30 or 50.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So you talk about, I mean, some that have used some pretty aggressive language about a white collar blood math. But I mean, you. And I don't know if Dario said that or not, but I mean, it was not surprising on the basis of the question I'll ask, which is, I mean, obviously he's. Because of his emphasis and he put a numeric. About 50% of white collar jobs be eliminated, at least new white collar jobs in the next, well, five years, less than five years, by 20, 30. Again, hyperbole from your perspective. And you're a guy who's, you know, you're a fan of Dario.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, I'm a huge fan of Dario's. And look, Dario Fruchlin gets criticized that he's doing it for, like, kind of promoting his own technology. And this is how important my technology is. And no, Dario is very principled. He's like, look, I think that there's a real worry here, and it's not on, like, society should be ready. I'm trying to help society figure out getting ready. So I appreciate Dario's principle, his motivation, et cetera. Now, after he said that, I called Dario and I said, look, what you said is not heard the way you think it's heard. Right? Because what people hear is, well, if that's going to create a huge bloodbath and that's the outcome, why are you building AI so fast? Why are you doing all this stuff? Right? Is it just to make yourself rich? Right. Because what they hear is. They hear the, hey, everyone, I have this really great technology that's going to like, ruin half of your lives. And good for me and sucks to be you. That's what they hear. That's not what you meant to say, but that's what they hear. And so, um. And so I was like, look, I think the. I said, Dario, the better thing to say is we're going to have a lot of job transition and there's a lot of uncertainty what's going on, and it could have a really quick, massive impact and we should be figuring out what to do on it.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Reid Hoffman]

Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And is that so? I mean, you've talked about it in the terms of a cognitive industrial revolution, and you talked about not being Poland, rather be England Take advantage of this. And that's. And you've done that in the context of making the case that we, you know, we should be accelerates though probably with the notion of a steer.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So you're not naive sometimes you slow

[Reid Hoffman]

down on the curve and slow down on the curve.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But vehemently opposed to the sort of precautionary principle framework. This notion of this is, you know, we've just got to put a damn pause on all of this.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. So. So let's start with the pause because it's simple, which is say you issue a call for a pause and you have two groups of people. The, the group of people who pause and the group of people who don't pause. The group people pause. Oh, I hear you. The humanist stuff really matters.

[Cindy Crawford]

Care.

[Reid Hoffman]

So I'll pause. And then the people go, I don't give a shit. And they keep going. So then what kind of AI is built right. Not good. It actually has a negative impact. That's the reason why I'm vehemently opposed to this kind of pause and things. And it's like, well, what if we can get everyone to pause? Well, what's your plan to get everyone to pause, including China and everyone. Is this at all realistic? So my strategy tends to be how do we keep like, you want the good guys to win, eg, the things that are pro. Humanist, human. The Pope's awesome encyclical, kind of like keeping human beings at the center, keeping a notion of what is a positive to society, by the way, positive societies over years. That doesn't mean that there won't be massive transformation. Things that will be painful and difficult to get through. But having a. This is how society is better with this as where we're going.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So when people hear that, I mean the good guys, I mean tech is getting slaughtered in the context of public opinion. People just don't trust anybody. Whole issue of truth and trust obviously has been accelerated social media. But now obviously with AI, deep fake this, deep fake that voice and we get to even your own interesting avatar in that space. But this notion of trust and you know, someone may be listening.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Go.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Okay, yeah, read. This is easy for you to say, you know, sitting on the Microsoft board and obviously investing in all these places. You got two of your own AI companies, you know, Come on, man.

[Reid Hoffman]

So I am not of the view that like frequently what it is, is like just trust us. Right? Like, like, like, you know, it's like, look, we're in a very low trust environment overall.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, right.

[Reid Hoffman]

Low trust of Almost every institution, even mixed trust of historically great trust institution, doctors and so forth. So it's like, so there's an overall thing, so they just trust us. But then you have to say, it's like, okay, well, you have to prove my trust before you do anything. Well, that doesn't really work. And it doesn't work in any of these places. Right. So the notion is to say, well, do the things that ultimately are building trust over time. And then when people really investigate and like, ah, you're doing something that's fairly trustworthy. So, like, we were talking about Dario. One of the things that Dario did is he said, okay, we're going to build AI with a kind of a constitution. I actually don't think they should have used that word. But, like, you know, could be a. It could be a set of principles, like, you know, whatever, you know.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What offends you about constitution, sir?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, I for one, am a huge believer in the American Constitution. It is our thing.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But I'm a little old school like you. I appreciate that. We'll get to that a little bit later.

[Reid Hoffman]

Like that, that is our religion is the constitution. Right. So, like, we stay with that. And it's a little bit of saying, oh, implying that this is a constitution is not really like a constitution is a sacred document for me. So it's more simple as that. Yeah. And so. And so the. But here's. Here's how we're going to build trust is. Here is the document that is central to all of our training, of our AIs. So you can read it, you can comment on it to us, you can suggest changes, you can understand where we're going, what we're trying to do. That's the kind of thing that I think needs to be there.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Transparency.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. That's the beginning.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And that's along the lines. I mean, you and I've had these conversations over the years, and California's regulatory framework, SB53, which we advance, was around this issue of transparency for frontier models, these large language models. What about this? You know, I think from your perspective, it'd be interesting to hear your perspective about some of those contours. I mean, we talk about Dario as the, you know, the good guy and is. And for a lot of folks, that's through purely political lens because of some of the issues he had with P. Hexic and the Department of War issues around Mythos, which I'm interested, your take on Mythos and the fact that he pulled that back, what that means or what that suggests. But it also has the origin story that played out very publicly with Sam Altman, with Elon Musk, all those origin stories of which you had a front seat, sir. Front seat.

[Reid Hoffman]

Front seat. And participation in some of an actual

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

board seat as it relates to OpenAI.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly. So look, most of the people creating AI are like kind of unique human beings.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes.

[Reid Hoffman]

So, you know, and part of it's because, by the way, geniuses frequently are.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. And so, and usually, you know, with folks who like, it's pretty easy to attack anybody. I mean, you've had that experience. I've had that experience. It's like an attack by a negative person who is willing to invent shit or build on what is a small thing. To make it into a huge thing is one of the things that kind of. Flo Zeus. Now I have the, you know, the fortune of knowing all of the head, like every head of all these labs. And so I have a pretty good sense of what their actual moral characters are and what the things are. And many of them are good human beings. That doesn't mean they're perfect.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

But they're good human.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But it's a nice. I mean, I want to pause on that because, I mean, objectively, from your perspective, many are good human beings.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Because they've been. I mean, these guys really have been vilified across the spectrum.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you know, and perhaps more so even today with the first trillionaire being minted, et cetera, and all that issue

[Reid Hoffman]

which I want on that. I didn't say all were good human beings

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

specifically to that human being, but this notion that most are good human beings, but they're also trapped by incentives. Right. I mean, we're all creatures of incentives. And this notion of the incentive, as you suggest, to accelerate at peril, if it's not us, it will be someone else. Wouldn't you rather the American stack in the context of what Jensen talks about in Nvidia, this notion of the American stack with the American values, to the extent possible. But what I mean, those incentives aren't necessarily even good people for good behavior.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. So in any incentive system, you will get some good effects of it and some bad effects. No, incentive system is only good effects. Right, Right. So. So, you know, for example, you have an incentive system to try to make more money while you try. Like it creates jobs and productivity, but you also do a whole bunch of other things. So it's a blend. Right. And you get people selling cigarettes and other kinds of things. And so I think the incentive system, what you have to do is say, how do we tune the incentive system so that the major incentives mostly align with good outcomes. Now, part of the reason why is you already noted the England versus Poland in the Industrial revolution. If we are the society that kind of has, call it the primary pole position and how AI does this next industrial revolution, which I think is going to be bigger than the previous Industrial revolution, then we can sort out how the economics and society works. If you say, well, we have the massive economic benefit accursed to our society and like, well, but it's only these seven companies, well, we're in a society, we can broaden that out some and say, well, any company that has, you know, profitability of above X per employee now has an extra tax that's used to pay for all the rest of society. And if you own that industry, you can do that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

If you don't own that industry. It's a little bit like when people, you know, say, hey, I hate these social networks. And by the way, there's some real social network issues. Although I always, to my own defense, point to LinkedIn, one of the few,

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

if not the only social network that actually had. No, I mean, right, Yeah. I mean, kids are doing fine on LinkedIn. Yes. If they're on that.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. Like, LinkedIn works just fine. So it's doable. But if you said, hey, we ban social networks, Even ignoring the LinkedIn questions, like, well, would you want it to be only Chinese social networks? No, no, you'd rather have the social networks here and have our ability to shape them. Now, of course we need to. There's the political melee around it and all the rest.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

But you want it to be a US property that you're shaping and the same thing with AI. And that's part of the reason I'm an accelerationist. It's like one of the things I was saying a couple years ago was we want AI to be American intelligence.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

So it's like it matters. Right. And that doesn't mean at any cost. Nothing is at any cost. Right. Like if you said, well, like, it would destroy an entire generation of children. That's a horrific. Like, can we avoid that and still be acceleration? It's. The answer is, I think, yes. But it's like, okay, what are the things we do in order to do that? Now I do want to wrap back to one of the things before because I think this is very important given, you know, we've seen, you know, you know, American college students going, I hate AI. Right? Booing.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I Mean, have you given. Did you do a commencement? You probably smart enough not to do one this year. Who needs that?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, well, because you're showing up to try to offer something to help you Thumb. Yeah, right. Like the usual protest and commitment speech is sleeping. You just sleep.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

That's. But what do you mean? What do you mean? But it reinforces the anxiety.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. No, no. And I get it.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Highly educated people that have played by the rules.

[Reid Hoffman]

And I feel. I. Look, I understand. I feel the pain. Right? So. But the question is, and this is why I think it's so important is, look, it is completely legitimate for college graduates to be going, hey, the older generations, the boomers, et cetera. You've really fucked it over for us. We got all this shit going on, and this is on your watch, and you suck. I get it. And I think it's a legitimate gripe. But in crisis, this is the thing I really want the kids to hear. The college kids. Crisis is opportunity. And by the way, you can be the AI generation. You should be using it. You should be going, hey, Company X, you need people to help you. AI ify your company. I can be the person doing it. You shouldn't be trying to opt out. It's a disaster for you. Right? And I'm saying it for them. Like, I don't have any stake in them. Like, the entire current graduating class could all say, we refuse to use AI. It makes no difference to me, but it will be terrible for their lives. Right? And so it's like, look, embrace and figure out how to make it useful to you, and then have that help amplify your career and life path, and

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

you continue to make that point. It's about amplification. It's about having a co pilot. But this notion, back to turbulence, this idea that the transition. So talk about the transition, the context. Look, if Dario's over stating the short term, are we understating the long term? Or is it just, you know, modest fits and starts, a scale, scope, speed? Where are you in all that? How do you calibrate all that? If you're a policymaker sitting in this seat, how do you begin to anticipate where that stress, where that friction, where the real turbulence is going to come?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, some of what I thought you guys did that was really smart with SB53 was get data, start monitoring, start asking questions. Like, because it's like, okay, what's really happening here? Not, oh, I watched a. Like, like some journalist wrote a story about one case, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that's not the way to do it. That's. That's like, like the dumbling. Oh, my God. We should restrict airplane travel because it's unsafe. It's like, no, no, no. It's the drive to the airport that's unsafe. The plane is actually so much safer per mile, per minute. Everything else is like, no, the plane is much better. So it's like making policy decisions based on data. And we should be getting the actual data, not the hysteric kind of responses. And start. There is actually, in fact, really important. Now, that being said, as a rough template, we want to be thinking of, okay, AI is this transformative tsunami that's coming. And within a small number of years, jobs, there will be a large number of jobs that will be completely transformed. Some of those jobs will be. They're just all done by AI. Some of them will now be clerical jobs.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What kind of jobs? These people have their theories of this and of course Anthropic puts out literally the pie chart.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Of what kind of jobs are most likely to be impacted. What's your theory of that case?

[Reid Hoffman]

So those pie charts are usually limited in that they say if the tasks of doing the jobs are only the ones today and that there aren't new tasks, this is what it looks like.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

There you go.

[Reid Hoffman]

There will be new tasks. Now, that being said, for example, I think that there's a relatively small n number of years before a customer service person, a customer calling customer service, says, please put the AI on. It's a lot more helpful. Right. Because you have a human being trying to follow a robotic script by looking at the screen. And so the AI is going to do that so much better. There's rules for human beings, but they're like looking at what's going on with the pattern of AIs and trying to reimagine that's not the bulk customer service jobs. So, like, that's one I think there's a lot of, like, there's whole classes of sales jobs that I think will be much more AI. And you begin to get to this weird sci fi story where the AI salesperson, the sales agent, calls the company AI agent to listen to the AI sales agent. And there's a whole thing that kind of navigates through it. It's a whole weird, weird universe that will happen.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. And years. And not three, maybe 10, like not 20. Right, right. And so. And so those will be like kind of swaths of jobs. But here's the thing, and it's that new task thing that was Mentioning earlier, which is basically there will no longer be. There'll be very few human jobs that are just humans by themselves. We will all have teams of agents that are working with us and doing. But actually, in fact, what you can see from the pattern of already looking at it is you actually get to some pretty incredible increases in performance where the human brings in the things that the AIs don't have. And look, one of the questions is, will the AIs not have those for a long time? Will they get them quickly? We don't know. It's all coming right. My bet would be we're very adaptive. Like, this whole human beings will be replaced and we'll have our cognitive faculties. Goes all the way back to the printing press and writing. Like, I actually think there's areas of where we make good judgment. Like, people say, oh my God, look at cla. Look at Claude code. Like, there's no need for engineers anymore. Well, I actually talked to a whole bunch of people who use Claude code, and I've used it myself intensively, and I've used Codex and OpenAI, and I've used, you know, Microsoft Copilot. And by the way, some of it is just amazing. Like, amazing. Like, if you had told me, like, you would ask me even, like, say five to eight years ago, would I be seeing this? I would say, no, no, no, no, that. Not. Not yet. They're like, yes, here it is. That's amazing. On the other hand, it breaks on weird shit, right? And so part of the human thing is like orchestration. It's like, okay, like, for example, how does coding work at OpenAI? Well, they have a big screen and, and they have multiple agents working, and they're like, oh, oh, that one's stuck. We got to get that one unstuck, right? Dah, dah, dah. Okay, this. And. And it makes them hugely more productive. Now if you thought, well, it makes them hugely more productive. They're just doing all the work. We don't need anyone else doing all the work. It's like, look, there's infinite work. It's like, now maybe there will be. Say, for example, tech companies may more naturally be at, you know, call it 50% of the current engineering crew. That doesn't mean that those engineers is like other engineering firms, start more competitors, et cetera, et cetera. It's just the productivity of how you operate. It's like the humans aren't replaced in all cases by AI, they're replaced by humans using AI. And so you want to be the Humans using AI. And then this gets back to, I think this is a central point is like, well, what's the thing you should be thinking about is one is monitoring and then the other one is how do we help AI be part of the solution? Because the thing that's driving it at scale and speed is AI. We need solutions that work on the same capability set. So for example, okay, how do I help AI? How do I have AI helping people make job transitions? I want to be seeing that.

[Glenn Washington]

Right?

[Reid Hoffman]

So one of the things you could do right here at the mansion is you could say, hey, great, you know, California is the center of the AI revolution in the world. It's part of the reason why 53 mattered. Hey, I want you guys to all come by and tell me about how AI could be useful in helping people. All ranges. I want to hear about blue collar, white collar, multiple industries. How does that help those people, you know, find the right work, do the right work, you know, have pride in their work. Just, we're going to have a, we're going to have a day here in the mansion. You're going to come talk to us about it. Because I want to hear you thinking about it. Right? Yeah, because, because by the way, ultimately if you're not delivering on this, then I have to apply more pressure because like my responsibility is to the citizens of the state. And look, I'm very happy that we have the AI revolution and the economics flowing in from that and all the rest, but I care about all my citizens, so tell me what you can do for them.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, interesting. I mean this notion of using AI, the thing that has displaced that worker to help find and place that worker.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

In a new opportunity, a new career. That's not quote unquote, just training per se in the old sort of black and white movie, community college construct. Yes, but I want to, if I could, I want to, I want to get back. There's so many areas on compute and issues limit limiting issues in that space and what's going on with data centers, etc. And, and where we are in terms of the competitive landscape. But you, I, I was, I didn't know this. You, you were at Stanford back in the talk about black and white movie one that it wasn't just a couple of years ago, but way back when.

[Glenn Washington]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you were studying what simplistic solution. What the hell is this?

[Reid Hoffman]

Simplistic solutions, symbolic systems.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What the hell is this?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, it's artificial intelligence.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

A burst pipe, a dead water heater, the AC calling it quits who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now. Go to HomeServe.com podcast for 50% less your first year. That's HomeServe.com podcast savings compared to renewal price void in Florida.

[Glenn Washington]

I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment from kqed. Every week, Snap drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once with everything on the line. What do you believe? What do you want and what would you risk to get it? Find out Snap Judgment new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone Paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But that's weird.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] I'm no web designer,

[Cindy Crawford]

but WIX Harmony kind of makes me feel like one. It's an AI website builder where I just describe what I want and it builds the entire site for me with all the business tools I need. My favorite part, I get an AI agent named Aria who helps me think things through or get stuff done. WIX has been pioneering website tech for 20 years and they've done it again. Try it for [e-mail] Harmony that's wix.com Harmony.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So.

[Reid Hoffman]

So I. I was part of.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

You were part.

[Reid Hoffman]

As an undergraduate, I had an AI degree.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

You had an AI degree?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

When no one had ever heard of this nonsense.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, not no one. It was. Most of us never heard of it. Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Even though we started realizing we all had it and we've all been using it for decades. But this notion of Gen AI became the thing that we, we kind of conflated.

[Reid Hoffman]

That was what's new.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes. And so you. So it. Was it just a natural inclination? I mean, did you see the future then? I mean, was it just a major that started to present itself? No one else was in the class and you figured I get an A

[Reid Hoffman]

on this one The. No, it was so what people assume. People in my kind of role. Yeah, I know many, many people in my kind of role are fascinated by technology. I'm not. I'm fascinated by human beings. Okay, right. And so what I was interested in was human thought and human language. And so how do we understand ourselves? How do we understand each other, how do we communicate, how do we get to a better understanding, talking to each other, et cetera, et cetera, etc, and that was what most interested me. And so, like, I looked at, you know, do I do anthropology or psychology? Like, I was looking at the whole range, but I was like, what's the thing that in doing this I could actually make the most interesting things? And I've always had a belief that we evolve ourselves through technology. Like, this is a, you know, these glasses, these are a piece of technology, this podcast, like, and that's actually how we evolve our state as human beings and who we are and so forth. And so I was like, okay, this AI thing, that's interesting, right? So I'll go do that. And I did it. Symbolic system is a multidisciplinary major, so it included psychology, included linguistics, included philosophy. So, you know, did all of that as part of it.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you went to Oxford and got philosophy as well?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, because, well, what I concluded at Stanford was none of us understood what thinking and speaking was. Right. So here we are trying to build AI and we have no sense of what that is. Maybe philosophers did, went to Oxford, included. Philosophers didn't either.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And so give me. I mean, this is. What year were you studying this stuff?

[Reid Hoffman]

Roughly 1985 to 1993 in both Oxford and Stanford.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And so AI as we know it today, in the context of the vernacular of this sort of notion of gen AI, etc. I mean, the origin story, they tend to lazily go back. It's sort of like the beginning of biotech may have been 79 with Genentech or something. There's a lazy punitry to that. But is that pun entry accurate to suggest somehow in the minds, deep minds of Google that sort of. The origin stories started to take shape early 2013, 14 range? Or how would you, how would you describe what we are addressing or dealing with today in the context of that origin story? Where to really begin at a scale that we're now more accustomed to?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, so by the way, like many technological revolutions, including modern ones, there have been multiple, like, oh, in five years we'll be having AI invent new science. And that goes all the way back to the 80s.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Goes back to the 80s.

[Reid Hoffman]

80s, yeah. So then here we are, we're there because what happens is some achievement happens and then people go aha. So like we beat human grandmaster at chess. Yeah, that was the hard problem and now it'll be inventing physics and you're like not so much. And so it's like cycling through it. And that was actually part of my conclusion at Stanford was like no, none of these current technological approaches will work. So what's the thing that got me back in AI was a three hour meeting with Demis Hasabis, the CEO and co founder of DeepMind. And what I realized that he had, that he had like he is the, I think the, the he and his co founder is the original kickoff of DeepMind.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And not, I mean again it's not Microsoft, it's not anthropic OpenAI, it's not SpaceX. I mean it's, that's the, I mean if you really want to start to understand and unlock and understanding.

[Reid Hoffman]

And what Demis realized was we have scale compute and with scale compute we can create scale intelligence. Now his original idea has been less of the important thing which is self play. So he had Pong and go and it plays against each other. But the answer was we can apply a lot of compute to evolve a competent machine with cognitive capabilities. And I was like, you're right, we now have scale compute and what's more, we have scale data and we have scale engagement through Internet and mobile. The revolution, a revolution, a massive revolution is here. Now did I know when I walked out of that meeting at you know, King's Cross that I was like, oh actually it won't be the self play, it'll actually be these, these things called transformers, these large language models that read the trillion and a half words on the Internet and use that as a learning basis to create something. No, I didn't know that. Well I did know is this is now a revolution. And so it was like, okay, how do I help? And you know, for me I'm not adverse to doing stuff commercially, obviously I've done a whole bunch of stuff commercially. But for me I look across the whole spectrum, I go, okay, what's the stuff that I should do as a founder, as investor, what's the stuff that I should do as a content provider and author? What's the stuff that I should do? Talking to people who care about society like you and others and what to do? Like how do I go from, you know, humanity, society, industry? And that's the order which I Care about them. Right. Humanity first, society second, industry third. Industry can be very useful for society and humanity. But you like part of the, like when you were talking about that earlier, steering and shaping. Well, we want to steer and shape industry to go. It should be on average massively positive for society over time. Right. And if that's not the direct you're in, it needs to be fixed right now, over time. Not this year necessarily. Right. There's always costs of transformation and all the rest now. And so I went, that's the revolution we're in. And so for me, I think that's 2013 or 2014. And that's why when Sam called me and said, hey, I'm thinking of pulling this thing together for AI, for humanity, will you help? The answer was yes. It was one of the things where I just gotten my partners at Greylock really focused on crypto and I was like, oh, I'm going to stop doing this crypto thing because this AI thing is coming. And they're like, what AI thing? I'm like, oh, it's coming. And actually I think my partners at Greylock were the first venture partnership that saw GPT4 because I got Sam's permission. I was on the board of OpenAI to say, hey, come in and demo this and show this. Because There was a six month period where GPT4 was not public because we're like, oh, is it safe enough? And all the rest. And you know, they were doing it. I was like, okay, look, I think it's safe enough. Is it okay to show the partnership? And Sam's like, yeah, yeah, this, this. Since you're serving on a 5:1C3 board of OpenAI trying to do this, this is the least we could do. Yes, you could go show them, you know, what's coming.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Google, there's or there's some interesting I, I and I don't, you know, I don't want to get into gossip, but I think it's interesting because it's instructive to a lot of people and it's also, I think, connects a lot of your own personal relationships and dots. So you, you know, you were notoriously, as we were alluding to earlier, part of the PayPal mafia. And those are the, you know, brand names today. And Elon Musk, obviously, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, less of a brand name, but increasingly trying to be one in terms of association with the Trump administration. Musk allegedly and Larry Page, co founder of Google, had a conversation that as least Musk's telling goes, Musk was Concerned that Larry wasn't taking this gen AI seriously enough in terms of its downside risks and decided to go off on his own. Made the same contacts you made with Sam Altman and others and went down this path of a 501C3.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And tried to birth open AI. Is that reasonably accurate?

[Reid Hoffman]

That is reasonably accurate. I think it was a conversation. I think it was, you know, Larry was kind of saying was, you know, you know, it's probably too simplistic, but, you know, kind of articulating a transhumanist perspective to Elon that, you know, naturally freaks someone out because it is the rational response to that is that it's a little strange. Right, right. And so. And so got very concerned about it. Now, you know, in Elon's case in particular, it's the, you know, Elon has the definition of a messiah complex. So it's like, no, no, I have to be the one building AI, not anyone else. So there's the, there's a little bit of the. I'm worried about it generally, but it's also the. I'm worried it's you, not me.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I think that's sort of proven itself a little bit, this sort of notion of going back. Even when you said the glasses, which is interesting technology.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Can see better. You've been eating and embedded. And as a human, that technology. Yes. It's not just, you know, ones and zeros.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Though, you know, now the. Now they're becoming ones and zeros as meta and others. I think now Apple's coming out with their own version. But what this, this notion of technology trans. I mean, you remind it when. With what. What allegedly Larry said to Elon that freaked Elon out is what guys like Peter Thiel couldn't even answer. You know, I think it was a 17 second pause in an interview about, you know, human beings and technology. But when you. Yeah. You sort of invited that in with the glasses. I mean, what, what is all that. I mean, for folks that may not be familiar with some of this, but maybe familiar with the anxiety that some of these conversations have induced more broadly, what is the suggestion? Is this. Are we just all in a simulation or something? Is that the point? There's that kind of. There's a cast of characters.

[Reid Hoffman]

You've been in a few of those conversations too. Yes. It's like, it's like, like actually I was sitting with two of my friends at the time. Elon was one of them. Yeah, right. I won't like. And they're like, oh, yeah, everyone Smart I know is, is is living in a simulation. And I was like, am I smart? And they're like, yes. I'm like, well then not everyone.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And it wasn't. I remember the origin that we had second life. We had some of these virtual realities. Maybe they were alluding to a version of playing around with that. But they mean quite literally, we're in a simulation.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. And so I think simulation is the kind of classic theory that gets people to like the kind of Christian theory of intelligent design about how we get created or the Fermi's paradox. Like, we have questions we don't know the answers to, therefore.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

Simulation. And you're like, no, no, we have questions we don't have answers to. Stop. We will try to figure out the answers to those questions. The simulation theory stuff is like, sure, there's unknowns. Like, for example, the classic one that's usually used to argue with this is we don't have signals that there's other intelligent universe in life, in the universe. And so like with radio waves and statistics and all the rest, we should have that. Well, okay, that's an interesting puzzle. That's an interesting question. Why do we not have that? And therefore we're in a simulation. That's a lot of cognitive theoretical infrastructure to explain this. A similar way, like the, hey, we have an unknown about the complexity about how human brains evolved and what the intermediate steps looked. Well, therefore there must be a creator. Like, well, there's a lot of. It's an unknown. And by the way, therefore there must be a creator. And therefore, by the way, the creator must be my religion, not any of the other twenties. It's like what? It's like, no, no, pause on the mystery, right? And then go, okay, we have an unknown to answer. So there's a whole bunch of craziness. But I think coming back to your. The first part of your question, I think is very important because I think this. Like, I've been giving some speeches in Italy, like I gave one at Bologna and Perugia because I wanted to Silicon Valley to remember some of the important humanist nature of the Renaissance, which is, what is it to really be a humanist when you're thinking about this technology? And it's not just self declaration. I am humanist. Like, no, that's nice. It's better than I'm not. But it's like, well, what is it to be humanist? To say, look, I have a theory about why the work I'm doing will cause a much better result for call it at least 80% of humanity. Then the next thing is, and I'm transparent about it, I'm talking about it, I'm giving you a chance to critique me, dialogue with me, et cetera, et cetera. And then this is a super important thing is I'm not like a narcissist about it. I don't come to my theory of humanity because I go, well this is good for me, right? Or I'm the most genius person in the world. Everyone else's theory of humanity is bad. Mine is the good one. But no, no, engage in dialogue, get critique, understand kind of what's going on for this. That's what being a humanist for technology is right. And we have some right. Great. Doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes. Dario, Sam, et cetera. But they're, they're actually, in fact they are committed. And you can tell they're committed because they do things that are not in their own economic self interest and they invest in it in order to try to make it work. Doesn't mean they're perfect. Doesn't mean it's not worth speaking up and say hey, do X do also more of X or less of. Yeah, perfectly good thing to do. It's part of the reason why we have the dialogue about it to say hey, the way that we try to make decisions about. Because the short answer is these technologies will built by small groups of people and we'll have humanity level impact. And you're like, okay, you can't then say hey, we're going to have UN global voting day. That's not the way it's going to work. So the dialogue and bringing up the concerns about what it is, that iteration is the way that we get to being more broadly humanist.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

One of the great anxieties and you triggered it, this notion that it's a handful of people and we talked about the American version and at least having a chance at regulating something within our quote unquote jurisdiction. But regulatory capture is real. You have just massive obscene, off the charts wealth comes with massive obscene influence to write the rules and regulations to and the incumbency protection racket to lock everything out and lock everybody out to buy politicians.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, so how does that play in? I mean that certainly plays. That is playing into people's anxiety in a profound and outsized way. How do we address the both?

[Reid Hoffman]

And so a burst pipe, a dead

[Glenn Washington]

water heater, the AC calling it quits. Who do you call? Homeserve is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now. Go to HomeServe.com for 50% less your first year. That's HomeServe.com podcast savings compared to renewal Price void in Florida There's a reason they say Snap Judgment changed the sound of storytelling. The stories, the music, the voice in the dark heard on NPR stations across the country. Time called it one of the best 100 podcasts ever. The kind of stories you can't wait to tell somebody. Body Snap Judgment from kqed. New episodes drop every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan Equ equivalent to $15 per month required Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] if you've been sitting on a business idea for a while, consider this your sign to do something with it. You can even make it official today by creating a website with WIX Harmony. Just tell WIX Harmony what you want and it'll create the whole website for you, business features included. But don't worry, you can still change anything by hand. It's your website, your call. Tryit.com harmony that's wix.com harmony when you

[Reid Hoffman]

have a kind of a tsunami like this, and this is to some degree talking to you, talking to the Dems on this who tend to be the oh fight all the wealthy power and you're like you need capital on your side too politically right. So have that as a good theory of the game. So the issue is say and like for example, and I'll come back to AI but this is like the mistake the Dems made with crypto, which is like there's a huge amount of crypto wealth. If we just go attack it and go hey, we're just going to try to kill all of you. They go, you're trying to kill us. Okay, we're going to vote the other way with not just our votes but our dollars and all the rest. And it's like, okay, that's really painful and causes a whole bunch of bad outcomes for society.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

So again, you go, well, how do we shape it? It's like, look, we're not trying to, like, extinguish all of you. We're trying to make sure that crypto has the right positive function in society. And they said, well, I can't envision anything. It's like, well, come call me. I can envision things, right? There's payments, there's much cheaper banking systems, there's all kinds of things. Let's just shape it that direction. Yeah, I get it. You don't like. Because who does terrorist ransom coin, right? Like, you know, like, there's a bunch of bad shit we should do bad shit about that. Or the question of, well, it's this random speculation. It's like, well, look, we do allow betting in various ways. Let's try to contain it and make sure it's not too bad. You know, same reason why we go, you know, alcohol has a bunch of bad outcomes, but it's better for society if we go, sure, it's okay if when you get to age, you drink, don't drive, but it's like that kind of stuff. You have to shape it, right? Because there's certain ways. Now you get to AI and you say, all right, an AI wealth generation. And it's like, shit. This is creating a massive amount of economics that will have massive impact politically. And by the way, what's shared across all this economics is a interest in not having the economics of the AI industry, like, trimmed. Right? And, and by the way, some of that trimming is a terrible idea, which is, let's just reduce our own American wealth. Some of it, like taxation for helping the rest of society can be a good idea, right? So, so it's, it's. And, you know, getting it right is hard, but I think it's doable. And it's like, well, then you go to, well, who are the people who would be with me on, hey, we should tax AI in some good ways, robot tax whatever else in order make it happen. What are the ways we do that? So we take off some of the AI wealth that fights on our side for helping society, and we fight against the other AI wealth that's like, no, no, no, I should take my trillion dollars and be able to do whatever the hell I want.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So easier said than done. I mean, this gets to. And we talk about that turbulence and we talk about the transition and using your vernacular and you. There's a lot of Conversations about. All right, If. If this does have a more pronounced impact sooner than we anticipated, and we don't have the answer to what to do about that, and we don't have the AI solution to address the AI problem in terms of that transition. This notion of universal basic income versus universic basic capital, this notion of equity, this notion of ownership, broadly shared, so that we can address some of that anxiety. We all have a stake in the game. You tend to be on the ubc.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Side of this equation. But the question I have for you is not where you are on that simple question, the binary, at least in that context, which is hardly the binary. But the question I posed is how the hell you do it? Who's going to do it? You think Sam's gonna. He says two and a half percent. You know what? They're about to go public. We've. We've called for it in California. Why doesn't he do it here in California? Let's happily take two and a half percent a year in this, his home state that helped birth this damn industry. Think he's going to pick up the phone after hearing this?

[Reid Hoffman]

He might. I mean, like, Sam cares about this stuff.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

To his credit, he put out.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And to his credit. Yes, he put that out.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, he put that out. He's been running universal basic income experiments, funding it himself in Oakland. Like, like, like, like he's.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But here's the moment.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So this is the moment. All these IPOs coming, Dario. Here's the moment.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. No. So, like, I think that a great call to ask right now. I actually believe of all of the OpenAI folks and all of the anthropic folks, they're very philanthropically minded. So I think, like the foundation, I

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

mean, objectively, you can, you can dismiss these. I get the populist. These guys.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But they did put a foundation with. The largest in the world.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

That they set up. That exists.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And has tens of over $100 billion of capital today.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. And so. And what I think is, unlike, for example, take the OpenAI Foundation. I don't think they're going to be sitting on their hands. Right. And I actually think one of the things that you should do and I think California should do it should be. Is, hey, you guys were only possible because of California. Right. Like, we provided the platform by which you guys could do this. Could you guys, you know, disproportionately focus on helping our state and doing stuff we'd love to talk as opposed to

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

take your Capital gains to Texas.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. Texas, Florida, etc. It's like. Yeah. Like, you couldn't have made this without us.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Correct.

[Reid Hoffman]

So fact. So please contribute back.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Or contribute back without the. Please. Yes, we're grateful for the job creation, the innovation. We're grateful for all the energy and dairy. We're very, very proud of your success. And.

[Reid Hoffman]

And please.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes. And time to. Yes, yes.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. Because like, for example, you know, SpaceX forward. Impossible without this state.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah. Tesla wouldn't exist without the regulations.

[Reid Hoffman]

Impossible without this state.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Thank you.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. So it's like, you're welcome, Elon.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And thank you for your innovation in daring as well.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. By the way, extremely important. Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Like, absolutely.

[Reid Hoffman]

I'm pretty sure you can ask me a question where I'm about to dump on Elon Musk, but no, you. For good reason. But this is amazing for me to

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

have to ask that. Yes. But why isn't. I mean, so let's you open that door. Why doesn't he feel this way? I mean, honestly.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, because.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What? What is it? You know, I remember there was a different guy, though. I was with someone the other day, said, no, he was always this guy. And I said, well, he didn't appear that way in the 15 interactions I had. You know him better than anybody.

[Reid Hoffman]

So look, people are dynamic. So the question is, where do they go as they get more power, more sycophants around them and so forth? And the answer is, Elon became a narcissist who.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

He wasn't a narcissist.

[Reid Hoffman]

I think he was a small narcissist and now he's a big narcissist and he lies through his teeth constantly. I don't know if he tells himself stories about it. And it basically, like the whole pitiful OpenAI lawsuit, it was pathetic and pitiful.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

The courts agreed.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, well. And it's pathetic written out large for everyone to see.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, that's that too.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. It's like, it's a court of law with truth in like documents, depositions, et cetera. It's just pathetic. It's like the. No, no, no. Like, I'm trying to do anything possible to argue that you guys are wrong and I was right and it was like. No, they were. They were right and you were wrong.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, but it's just. I mean, it. So it just. I mean, I guess, I mean, it's just a classic clinical definition of narcissism.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, well. And like, for example, he goes. I like, for example, he helps found OpenAI as like, we need to have AI for the benefit of humanity, not just Google. Yeah, okay, great. Then he goes, oh shit, I should have my own. So he gets XAI started and in a desperate bid for market share, he's like, oh yeah, that's fine if we create a whole bunch of like pornographic images, some of which are children. You know, journalists have been reporting on this, et cetera. And that's because it's more important that I have this AI thing than this damage that we're doing to children and all the rest of the stuff, it's like, it's crazy.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So how, I mean, by the way, just, I mean, accelerating and fast forwarding. I mean, SpaceX is a pretty remarkable company on the basis of the facts and evidence. Starlink in particular from a sort of cash flow perspective, an ROI perspective and

[Reid Hoffman]

a goodness for society.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah. And by the way, I've seen that firsthand in the middle of the Amazon.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Which actually really inspired and surprised me to be that in fact universally awkwardly connected in the middle of the rainforest. Even more so than frankly out here in Silicon Valley. But I was curious just, you know, with regard to SpaceX in the IPO. I mean, there's other component parts of that that are a little more dubious and questionable. There are folks out there deeply more cynical than I am that just call it a damn Ponzi scheme, period, full stop.

[Reid Hoffman]

Where you are in, for example.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes,

[Reid Hoffman]

look, so I'm a small investor, but I think it's nuts, right? I mean, it's like, look, for example, you look at the, just look at the prospectus and the, the, the biggest part of it is payments from anthropic for these data centers that are horrific for the environment, are badly set up in their networking equipment that nominally. He's trying to restart Xai for the third time by cursor to go somewhere.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, and cursor, $60 billion San Francisco based company that five years ago didn't exist.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. And it's like, okay, and I'm glad he's buying Cursor, you know. Great. Yeah. Hopefully something will come of it.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What are they?

[Reid Hoffman]

A Vibe.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What is Vibe coding? Sorry to go down this rabbit hole.

[Reid Hoffman]

No worries.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But it's a Vibe coding company.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, it's one of the, the early revolutions of how do you have AI accelerate your coding? And Vibe coding is a part of that, it's not the whole thing. It's like, you know, like basically anyone who is coding who's not using AI right now, or not everyone call it 90 plus percent if you're coding and not using AI, you're making a mistake. Right, so. And it's only getting better. Right. And both Claude Codex, sorry, Claude code, OpenAI codecs. I think Microsoft Copilot. I think we'll have a good entry here are all. I think the fundamental way has changed the entire world in terms of how we operate. So Anthropic is willing to buy the revenue, but that is your primary revenue thing in the thing that you're going buy public. God.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Like this is in the government.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Cindy Crawford]

Well.

[Reid Hoffman]

And then you're like, oh, the DOJ is saying they've got to drop the lawsuit because this is part of our national security defense. Like, well, that's. None of that's in their prospectus. And by the way, the entire XAI thing, Elon himself said, it's a complete train wreck. We're rebuilding it. And I was like, well, you know, if you had like, honor, integrity, you'd say, well, we'll hand back those government contracts because we just said our product was a complete train wreck. Right. It's like, you know, so just. It's all corruption.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, corruption.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, you just call it.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, call what it is.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Call it what it is.

[Glenn Washington]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

We're living in the. In the, in the. In the greatest kleptocracy of your and my lifetimes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And it's. I want to circle back on that. Stay tuned for those that are tuning in on that because that deserves some attention. But as we sort of bounce back and forth, the anthropic data center point you made in this notion of compute, and you made the point, the biggest limiting factor in terms of the acceleration is less the chips, as important and profound as they are, it's really about the compute. And so it gets to the question of data centers and all the anxiety in data centers, which has actually been sort of a leading indicator of one of the reasons people have such animus towards AI, because they connect the dots. And there's been a few studies, DC, Maryland, that 60% of the growth of those retail, or rather residential utility bills have been attached to the issue of data center growth. So where are you in all that? I know you've said we blamed AI for everything. So the issue of utility costs, which have been growing separate from AI, certainly haven't been benefited from.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, they're not benefiting. Look, I think that the clear thing for you and the folks to do is say, look, we want to enable data centers that are net very positive contributors to communities. So, for example, a very easy one is to say, hey, if you're building a massive data center, you have to provision power at like 130% and that 30% that's amongst the things that you're contributing back. Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

All right.

[Reid Hoffman]

And by the way, who should benefit from that? Well, the local residents who should have a choice whether or not they want that or not their power bills go down. Right. As part of that.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean the irony is the data centers are getting subsidies on their bills and we're socializing an increase on everybody else's.

[Reid Hoffman]

No. And so what it should be is like no, no, you should contribute. Look, we will help you because by the way knowing from the inside Microsoft board and other things.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

They care about.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Here you are walking conflict.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, I don't know but that's a conflict. But information informed. Look, what are these hyperscalers care about? They care about reliability, ability to construct the thing, ability to deploy it, ability to manage it the right way, etc. Look, if you said you have to have like your cost structure will increase because you have to have a 130% contribution for the power stuff, they would sign that deal in a heartbeat if you gave like if you, you said hey, and, and, and by the way they do more. It's like well what are you going to do for local community in terms of jobs? Right. We want, we want to see something serious here. Look, it should, it's a simple kind of like, like simple set of asks

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

and in the absence of that they'll take what you're giving because they're chasing for these damn things. Virginia. I think it's 25% of all their base load now.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Data centers.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Which is off the charts insane.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. And so you should, it should be an ask for. We will help you do this stuff. These are the things you need to do. And by the way, if someone else give you a better deal. Fine, go with this someone else.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

This notion of jobs though. I mean the construction jobs are legit and we should celebrate that. And these are good high paying jobs and, and careers and people bounce around even if they're temporary and get the benefit of that. But they're not a lot of jobs on the permanent side of that.

[Reid Hoffman]

This. No. Although for example, when you're going to hyperscalers. Let's take Microsoft. The thing I would ask if I was a local area is I'd say I want you to open up a Microsoft Office here.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Now you're talking.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, just open up a Microsoft office.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

We need to be better damn negotiators yes. Whereas, I mean, we just. Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm having a hard time arguing with these, these, these deeper points. What about this notion of these things being. What is it? The GPUs don't last very long, Right. They're just a few years.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, because the next ones are so much better.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So is this, I mean, back to froth, even kkr.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Big promoter in the future. I mean, saying a little froth here. Sam said bubble Mark, you know, all these guys, I mean, you know, the Zuckerbergs of the world, you're like, ha. Yeah. I mean, so this notes, where are you in the bubble matrix on the sort of frothy bubble side of this and the capex in this space and that the ROI is, you know, or is it. It's electricity to you.

[Reid Hoffman]

So I think it's ultimately electricity where we're getting intelligence at the cost and scale of electricity and that's just great. And so, for example, it's one of the reasons why a lot of the challenges are just wrong. Like they say, well, you know, you know, climate impact. And you're like, well, actually, let's just make sure that AI is applying some to grid analysis and power running and so forth. And you say, hey, if all of a sudden all of the H Vacs and laundry machines and all the rest were intelligent devices that ran when it was cheap on the grid and all the rest and was doing power management, net, very positive benefit. And we've already seen Google do that with their own data centers and all the rest. Like, it's a whole bunch of stuff there. And I think the same thing in terms of, of ultimately, that doesn't mean that there won't be some things that are Ponzi schemes and some things that are major economic losses, but a bubble is, oh, this isn't sustainable. It all just kind of falls down and it has domino effects to other things.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

The short answer is like anthropics. Revenue is limited by its computer. It has more demand than it can provide right now. And so this isn't like, oh, no one wants this, it's no, no, this intelligence at the scale and cost of electricity is massively useful, massively wanted. So doesn't mean you say, well, maybe we built that Data center for 50 billion and actually ends up being worth 40 billion and we've got some operating losses, but by the way, in operating it, it operates profitably and all the rest and we just have to take a charge down. That's not a bubble. That's volatility in a market.

[Cindy Crawford]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What do you make of a market which is so fierce in the competition? This notion that of super intelligence, this race to this holy grail. And then a nanosecond I shut every competitor down and I quite literally talk about the messiah complex. I own the world in my palm, palm of my hand maybe literally that a company like Google and Gemini are uniquely positioned against an anthropic, against OpenAI and others just on the token question that they can sort of do what companies Amazon infamously many other companies do. And that's just gut their competition and price them out by lowering the cost below their actual cost and have tokens as loss leaders until they bleed out their competition.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, they definitely are the cheapest price tokens of the major stuff today. And it's not having that much of an impact.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Interesting.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right, so. Right. So it isn't to say it's not an issue to pay attention to, but like for example, when people kind of check token costs across, call it, you know, you know, OpenAI anthropic and Google. Google is by far and away the cheapest, but the heat and usage is still an open AI and, and, and, and anthropic. And by the way, within the enterprise context, Microsoft. Right. And so, so yes, that's a worry, but it's not really playing out that way now. Some of it is, you know, for example, you know, Google missed the curve on the coding agent thing. Right. Some of it's, you know, kind of other things Google. And look, I'll just, so I'm just doesn't look like I'm Microsoft, you know, dumping on Google. Like Google missed a bunch of different productization things. So did Microsoft. Right. So Microsoft. So it's like, you know, there's a bunch of stuff.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And so did OpenAI. I mean as they're investing in Sora.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Versus you know, and I. What is it? What was it? Banana something. I like it.

[Reid Hoffman]

Nano Banana, Google.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Meanwhile anthropic sort of plugging along.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, no, no. Last year and this year you're of anthropic.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right, right. What happened with Mythos? What did it mean to you? Was it overhyped? Was it a Dario once again, doomskull. Yeah, here I was. I mean, is it, you know, was it just the friction of just anyone's sort of pushing back against Pete Hex and Trump and so they need to be banished? Is it Elon making the calls in this competition in SAC saying we want these son of shut down? What is, what does Mythos represent to you.

[Reid Hoffman]

So mythos is, I think, both real and overhyped, right? It's a weird. I don't think I've ever said that sentence before. And it's real because they tuned. They had a coding sharp lead, they tuned it to cyber. That was a genius and genius for both. And they did the responsible thing of saying, hey, let's try to allow a bunch of different places which are critical infrastructure, which are both within the kind of public sphere and also private sphere banking, et cetera. Let's make sure that all of that is hardened early before this stuff is not. And we're doing a very responsible rollout for all that. And that's the real. And then the overhyped is like, it would be the end of the. They would just be catastrophe if it came out. And you're like, yeah, I don't think it's quite that. I just think it's like more train wrecks, right? Like there would be some real costs, but I don't think it would be the end of civilization or anything else. Now what I think that happened is because Anthropic is trying to be responsible. As far as I understand from the outside, looking at the administration, there's a lot of different people jockeying for control. In the AI sphere, there's people who are like, oh, we hate all tech and we hate big tech. Let's just close all this AI stuff down. That's like banning, etc. There's people who are like, oh, this is a commercial thing. I should own it. It's like best sent, etc. There is, you know, Sachs going, there should be no controls here. The only way that AI becomes American intelligence is there's zero control. You know, and so like, there's a melee within the. Within the White House to. Which tends to really only the factions that tend to ultimately win. Is, you know, is there a big payoff for someone in the kleptocracy? Right? So I think. And they don't like anthropic because they also like to be the. We are the big, you know, swinging, you know, things right in this. And we don't like that. They're not rolling over and going, you know, yes, sir, you're my master. And they're like, they're principled. And by the way, we live in a country by which, you know, kind of individuals, citizens, organizations, companies must follow the law. But the law is not I do whatever the fuck you tell me to do.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Reid Hoffman]

It's we follow the law.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes, Right, Both.

[Reid Hoffman]

And yes, yes. And so.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Well, we'll get to the rule of dawn later.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. And so. So their principal about that and that's what they were trying to hold up to and what they were doing. And it was like, no, no, you must do what we tell you to do. It's like, no, not necessarily. Right. You know, and so it's like, ah, we have an option to show them who's boss. Right, right. You're like, ah, I don't think that's that, by the way, frankly, I think that's un American. We should be celebrating achievements of Americans of things that we do and so forth. And it's like to say, no, no, you must be following hair leaders commands, whoever Herr Leader is, whether it's a, you know, you know, left wing version,

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

right wing version, whatever it is, it's

[Reid Hoffman]

like, no, no, it's like we follow a rule of law together.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

There you go. So Sam took advantage of this from a competitive perspective at OpenAI and said, we're good.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What'd you make of that?

[Reid Hoffman]

I wish he'd called me beforehand. Yes, it was a mistake.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, it didn't. Didn't go over well.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, well. So maybe Trump folks that did. I haven't talked to Sam about this yet, partially because it all happened very quickly. And then I was like. And then it happened at that point, showing up and saying, I wouldn't have done this. It's like, not very constructive and helpful. Undoubtedly, part of what Sam's trying to do is say, look, if the good principled people like Anthropic and OpenAI bow out, then it's only left to the unprincipled people like Xai. I get it. It's a challenging issue. It's not straightforward, but this would have been a very good chance to say, no, no, all of us principled companies should stand together and we should sort this odd all together. Right? And so we're like, we're not going to jump in. We also think these principles. And what happened is he quickly deluded himself and it's like, oh, this is solvable technically. It's like, no, the Anthropic people are good technically too. They're from OpenAI. And he was like, oh, shit, that doesn't work. Yeah, that's the reason why Anthropic was going, we're not going to do it this way. Right. And so it's like. And you know, part of what happens is the competition gets so ferocious that it's like the, oh, I'm Just comedian. It's like. No, no. There are some places you put the competition aside and when it's humanity and society, you put the competition aside in.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

What they're not Putting aside at OpenAI is this notion of AI into the physical space. They're actually trying to lean into that partnerships with Johnny and others. And that gets even to what Elon's doing and dexterity. Robots. The robots are coming. Physical AI. We're seeing it manifest in, you know, driverless cars, driverless planes or flightless planes or pilotless planes shortly or at least flying cars in the vernacular of the Jetsons, which is interesting. They're doing a reboot of the Jetsons. Seems to make some sense in this, this world that we're living in. But what is.

[Reid Hoffman]

I suspect it'll be a little bit more mixed than the Jetson. Just on current cultural context, I suggest you're right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I believe you're right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

What.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So where is the physical AI? I mean, we could talk about robots as a separate thing, but what do you think?

[Reid Hoffman]

What.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, I don't know. What do you think where Sam's going with, with OpenAI and the partnership, Johnny Ivey and others in terms of designing some really revolutionary. There's sort of an Apple esque, you know, Steve Jobs. Johnny sort of. This is, you know, imagining the future without the constraints of what you already know. Eraser mania. Forget what you already know. Design a project, a product for the, for the AI age that's not constrained by the thinking of the past.

[Reid Hoffman]

So just like within a small number of years, none of us will be doing anything that's like knowledge or information work without having multiple AI agents that we are managing a workflow and so doing. And that's small. N5 maybe. Right. Like, you know, there's no longer such a thing as a human individual contributor. There's a human manager of agents maybe working on a team with other humans managing agents and all the rest and all the, you know, a nerds of what's happening. That's an amazing transformation. There will be within a small number of years some amazing AI bringing into the work, into workplace. Will it be the kind of Johnny reimagination of the phone, et cetera kind of thing? Will it be the rebirth of manufacturing in America through robotics and all the rest. Will it be autonomous vehicles which you know, will. Will bring enormous, like health savings, you know, deaths, other kinds of things? Enormous. And by the way, there's obviously job transitions, although by the way, like we're short a lot of truck drivers.

[Glenn Washington]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Which is remarkable.

[Glenn Washington]

Yeah, yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Because it hasn't come yet at scale. Yes, but it's coming, right?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. Yeah, but, but by the way, even if all truck manufacturers started manufacturing only autonomous trucks today. Yeah. It's at least 10 years before there's over half of the trucks in the road are autonomous trucks.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Interesting point.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. So it's like, so there's even, There's a. There's adjustment.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

And so, so all the stuff. And we want it. Right. I get it. People say, well, I don't want disruption. I want disruption of what I.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

You want robots. Yeah, I want my humanoid robot. I do.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, you do.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I actually do.

[Reid Hoffman]

You do. Right. It doesn't mean you want every different version of them. Right, right. But like, for example, like, take autonomous vehicles. Like, like we have over 40,000 deaths per year. That doesn't count injuries, maiming, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Like that's a cost in human lives. What's more, you go, well, you care about environment. Well, if you can actually, in fact, have the grid manage all the more efficiently, massive environmental impact. Right? So you want all that. And it's like, yes. And by the way, you say, well, what happens, the truck driver jobs, like, well, one, not a lot of people doing them. They hate the fucking jobs. And then two, yes, the central thing we should be doing in this age of AI revolution is how do we help figure out large swath of people, like get new kinds of jobs. Whether it's entrepreneurial, new starts, whether it's things that we're doing with society, whether it's like all of that stuff we need to lean in heavily to, because the jobs will be changing. And most people say legitimately, I like my job, I don't want it to change. And you're like, yeah, it happens, right? And we'll help. Right? But that, that's, I think, how it.

[Glenn Washington]

I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award winning storytelling podcast from kqed. Every week, Snap deals a new card. Like the girl whose sister was a monkey, the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card. Snap Judgment from kqed, New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Reid Hoffman]

admit it, I'm a control freak. Luckily the folks at WIX get it. That's why they created WIX Harmony. It's an AI website builder for people just like me. It lets you create any type of website super fast, but stay in control of every detail. You can even choose whether to use AI or click and edit things yourself until your website actually feels like you try it for [e-mail] Harmony that's wix.com Harmony

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh wow, you look so good for your age. Like why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age. That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age. Learn [e-mail]

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

so much of the focus and, and you as you're speaking got me thinking about you and your two AI companies that you've, that you've founded. Co founded. Yeah. Not all those others that I think everyone we've named, you've. You've invested in.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

It's just we can get to that in a minute. But this so much of our time and energy. I was talking to Ezra Klein about this and back east a week or two ago and he, he said be good to mix in. I'm paraphrasing him and I don't want to talk out of school. Some of the good stuff along the lines of what you now are sprinkling in and you're, you're investing very directly just in the area that we, you know, you talked about 20, 30 years ago, people were focused on the issue of breakthroughs in medicine. Yes, breakthroughs. I mean, I can live longer, healthier life. So I mean, where are we? Let's talk. Let's now paint a more positive picture of what AI can do for growth. Good for society, not just for Elon. So he's worth $6 trillion by the time my daughter graduates college.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. So Manus AI Sudharth Mukherjee Ujwal Singh and I have co founded and the idea is to create a drug discovery factory with AI. And it's the best shot I think we have seen ever in human history for doing a lot of cancer curing and a bunch of other things too. Because AI, it's like a search problem. Biology is more complicated than all of this other shit, right? It's like he's like, well there's more moves in GO than there's atoms in the universe. And yeah, go's a child's simplicity tool, relative biology. But now that we got scale compute, it's like, okay, what's the thing that is going wrong with leukemia? Can we find something that allows us to monitor stuff early, allows us to figure out what might be going wrong and something that might be an easy therapeutic that might be as simple as an injection or a pill because you create a small molecule, an antibody, a protein, et cetera. That combined with the kind of the thing that's going wrong and disable the bad thing and not have serious toxic side effects. That's a difficult search problem. And right now what we have is, we have, and by the way, I think we'll continue to have genius clinician PhDs, researchers doing stuff. I don't think it takes away their job, but we have them like, it's like they're doing all the computation by hand and they're trying to be brilliant and figure out something. So like figuring this out takes them a decade to have a maybe I've got, I spent a decade and I got one maybe, right? Well AI can now go, all right, here are like I did today's compute, I generated 100 maybes. Let's sort through which of these things might be worth looking at more, which hours I generate more, et cetera. And how do we run that through the entire process by which we do of course we want to do safety checking and so forth. And is our third theory that it is non toxic? Okay, we've included in our search and how the AI works but let's test it and let's run through it. We should have that because that's part of what makes our meta system. We have the envy of the world in the pre RFK junior FDA. Of gold plated medicine. Right. It's one reason like if you're, if, if it's accepted here, it's accepted everywhere, right. And, and let's, let's con, let's keep our, our rigorous standards. Maybe we could figure out how to make it more efficient in various ways. I think that's a good thing to do, but and then deliver more medicines. And by the way, this is part of like the AI for humanity is if you said like, and you know, I don't know, like what I will categorically assert is AI has the best shot in human history of curing all cancer. Right. Like if we, if we could deliver even on a percentage of that.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

That's huge.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Have we though? I mean, we've been saying this for a few years and there's exponential. I mean, I feel like AI's exponent. I mean, I know we're always just right around the corner here. We are just fusions just a few weeks. It's, it's like, you know, it's like the Iranians are just, you know, they're right there with fusion.

[Reid Hoffman]

Fusion a couple weeks away.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, whatever. So where are we?

[Reid Hoffman]

So, so at, at, at Manus AI, we have, we have some of the world's brightest computational chemists and some of the chemistry that the AI has been saying. How about this? They're like, that's really interesting. That might work. I've never seen that before.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And that gets exciting.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. And we're calling this the move 37 off AlphaGo of we're getting maybe move 37 chemistry. Right. So it's a very interesting. Like, it's like that's interesting.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And how do we socialize it? I mean, that was the point Ezra was making. To me, it's one thing again just in the. In the hands of you, sir. God bless you, I'd rather you than these others. But the point being, how does you know, it's, it's, you know, compute for, you know, the UC System and the CSUS and for 40 million Americans in California, for 350 million Americans for society writ large. So, so it's not about monetization, it's not just about the commercialization. The context of an ROI that is numeric. And I, I know there's the, the sort of free enterprise case that that is. You know, we don't even get into the larger philosophical point.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, one of the things I think is important for everyone to think about is we don't have the AI revolution except through the commercial sector. The capabilities of doing it in any other sector than the commercial sector do not exist. Because what you need is you need to be able to apply scale teams with scale resources and like scale teams. I mean, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, scale resources, billions to hundreds of billions in risk environment where a lot of this will fail as you're going, no other sector other than the commercial sector can do it. And that's because people go, well sure, I'll bet a billion dollars here that I might lose because I'm not going to then be castigated for it or anything else because it's like, look, it's my billion dollars, I'm trying to do it, et cetera. And that's part of what gets to the scale compute scale data centers and all the rest of the. Now, so what we, when we think about this is we say how. Well, how do we shape it? Now back to some of your earlier questions about like, well, what should, you know, folks in your chair be doing? Like what we want. And in your conversation with Ezra, what we want in short order is at minimum three assistants given to every citizen, state, country, et cetera. One medical, one legal, one educational. And we want them to be very competent and we want them to be essentially equivalently free. Doesn't matter like if it's like a low cost, doesn't matter if it's like ad subsidized. Doesn't matter like whatever. And it can be done without the state paying anything. Because if you go to say, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI anthropic and you say look, if you're willing to build this on what you're doing, what would you want from us that would make it worth your while to do it? Because by the way, the money you'd get from us, you don't care about relative all the you're getting like just being paid. You don't have to spend public money on this. What do you want from us? They might say, well you know, we've got some permitting problems in these three data centers. Well, as long as you clear with the local community, jobs, electricity, so forth, we'll help you with your permitting problems if you do this right like, or, oh well, look, we would love to be in the healthcare business but like the medical liability stuff is so intense. Could you give us a channel of safe harbor that could be by an independent review committee that you set up from the amazing hospital system in California and say, hey, give us a parameters of safe harbor to operate and if you give that, then we'll be learning and we'll be building an industry off this. Great. And then we will provide a medical assistant that's 247 available to every citizen of California, maybe every. I prefer the US but we're here sitting here in California. Fine, anything of that because then, by the way, I have access to this kind of medical thing. Of 24, seven, I can call a doctor and get an answer for something I need. Very few people have that. I would love it if every single person had it for their kids, for their partners, for their grandparents, for their family members, for their friends, et cetera. And by the way, these things can give really good medical advice. No medical advice is perfect, but they can give really good medical advice. So there's medical advice and so it's like take them the kind of medical thing that only the ultra wealthy have access to and make it democratically available like every citizen. Legal assistant. Right. Okay. Currently like law, law is expensive. Right. And so currently like when a guy, when a person's kind of going into like signing a rental contract or an employment contract or anything else, most people can't afford lawyers. Right. And I trust that it probably works out, it's okay, et cetera. Right. Well, legal assistant like it will help you with your rights, with what goes on, with, with how to interface this. Like that's why we have these laws to help protect you. Now we have an agent that can help navigate that and say we want to make sure that's provided to every citizen.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Nice. Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

And then education, same thing and the

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

same thing with education. So we talk about democratization and I've had a strong theory that it's the same fight that if order to save democracy, which I've been particularly passionate about, Prop 50 redistricting and pushing back against what's happening in Washington D.C. that we have to democratize the economy, that this notion again of just concentrated wealth. I'm joking about the $6 billion trillion dollars. I think it's realistic. You know, maybe not my oldest daughter graduation, but certainly my youngest son that will see that you already have 10 of people own 2/3 of the wealth you have. A 30 year old's not doing better than his or her parents. For the first time in American history, there's just growing anxiety between the imbalance between the rich and the poor. You've got 20 states, it's still $7.25 minimum wage, people working full times and ending up on welfare. Talk about corporate subsidies for those. Corporations are getting the benefit of that. You talked in terms, you used the word kleptocracy that a lot of people are using right now. And I talked about regulatory capture and I talked about that concentration of wealth ultimately comes concentration of political power, etc. What do you make of the world we're living in today? What do you make of the state of our union in relationship to all of this.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, you know, I always. When a new administration kind of comes into power, even when I disagree intensely campaigns, I'm quiet initially because I want them to be successful. We want.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I agree.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. It's like we want for society, for the citizens, 100%. And it's just like. Like, the level of, like, call it Chernobyl squared. Catastrophe is just huge. It's like no one has a theory that tariffs lead to better economics for your average citizen.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Bannon does.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, maybe he doesn't buy eggs and gasoline. You know, and so, you know, no one who understands how economics and economies work.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. And so. And it just goes down the list. And then you get to the, like, the absurdity of, like, maybe that, like, the iconic one is, you know, when Trump's being given the plane, even Laura Loomer leaves the. Leaves the plane, leaves the boat. Like, no, no, don't accept that.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

By the way, we are a huge investor in that plane. Not just the $400 million the Qatari government gave to Trump, but the 900, almost $1 billion in the Pentagon budget to retrofit it.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Was also appropriated. And that is a plan he will take with him. Yes, yes. To the foundation he will take with him.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, yes, exactly. So, like, it just, like, it's just. It's not just, I think, frankly, illegal, but it's gross and un American. Right. I mean, it's not. It's like, what we stand for is not the rip off everything that you can out of the public coffers to benefit yourselves, but that's happening.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And these are your old friends. Some of these were my old friends.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, I knew some of these guys when they seem to be completely indulgent in this, it's not just showing up. They're the beneficiaries of this.

[Reid Hoffman]

Like, is the thing I mentioned earlier is, like, you know, Elon acknowledges that the Xai stuff is a complete train wreck, catastrophe. And you're like, okay, well, hand back your government contracts. That would be the honorable thing to do. And by the way, I'm, you know, that's against my own, you know, very small shareholder interest.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Small with large is not small to the rest of us. But I appreciate your point.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

But why the hell are they doing. I mean, seriously, it's not just Elon. It's. It's all these. I mean, I've got knee pads right there for sale on my Patriot site for a damn reason. I had to go.

[Reid Hoffman]

I dropped your note. I love this.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

God bless you, man. I mean, not everyone does. But it wasn't just for the CEOs and these brand names. But it's for, you know, law firms talking about law.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

It's about the universities that we're selling out. It's about, you know, all these, you know, folks that you used to count on.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Selling their soul to get the deal.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. I don't know how these people look at themselves in the mirror. I mean, it's like, look, it's. What's the price of your honor, your integrity, your ethics? This is crazy. Right? And look, if you're a citizen that has any power, which basically is all of these people, including myself. No, no, stay to your principles.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Some of the most powerful people in the world, and they're falling prey to this bullshit.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. And they're bending down and they're rationalizing it. Oh, the. The Dems would be worse. And you're like, in what planet? Right. Like, is the sky purple where you live? I mean, what's going on? It's probably red. And so it's kind of the question of how do you defend this stuff? I mean, it's like, for example, the Iranian war will have massive impact on your average American citizen. You know, even as humorous opens, the ships haven't been. Haven't been going for, you know, months. We're not like. I appreciate the fact that the market's like, oh, we're really hopeful it's back and we're going to lower the price of oil futures. This will work through.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, well, there's some estimates over. You look at the total cost. Over a trillion. Dollars. Dollars. Not the 50 billion. Yes. It's the direct cost, the cost that have been born globally to all the

[Reid Hoffman]

rest of us, and that's to every American citizen.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right. And then the notion of, oh, well, because, like, the classic one is a. All apologies accepted. Because I. I know this is not true of you. You know, and. And actually many politicians, but they. All politicians are corrupt. Trump's just more. More straightforward. Exactly right. And you're like, no, he's gonna.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

He does it openly.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

At least he's a man that's. He's the most transparent president.

[Reid Hoffman]

Everyone was getting planes. He's just the first one who's acknowledging it. No, that's not the case.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Not the case.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Not the case.

[Reid Hoffman]

And so. And by the way, you know, someone who says, hey, you like, whatever politician acts. Oh, you misreported that. You probably should have said, hey, this weekend was a gift. Okay. Small dollars. What do you Think that corruption. Like, like, like, like people think about it. Would you have been bought off by that? No, it was a mistake. Okay. These things can happen. Someone gets you a billion dollars in crypto. Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yes.

[Reid Hoffman]

You're bought, period. Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah. Well, we get to the uae and then the fact they got high valued chips in turn.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

That were denied in the previous administration.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Only after World Liberty Financial deal.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And all that. And how. Well, I can go down a litany, a list including just the UFC fight and how it's paid. Bonuses were paid in the Trump backed crypto, so.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Can't make this stuff up. But also you can't make up the fact that you, you know, you must have. Tell me the truth. Did you feel an inclination at first, you're like, all right, I'm going to turn the page. A lot of my friends are going to the inaugural, you know, even if I'm not invited. You know, you know, we wish this guy success. Maybe he's different this time. Maybe he learned his lesson after all. You know, being on the receiving end of, you know, so much stress during the Biden years. Yes. You must have gotten calls from friends of yours that did. Goes like, Reed, brother, I'm just doing this because it's the right thing to do for my company. I'm a fiduciary. What? I mean, what. How did you, you chose not to do any of that. You're paying a price for that. I want to talk about that briefly. But you chose not to. Most folks chose to.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. So look, I think, I think the important thing is to say look, and, and people may not realize. It's like people can see that you are, you are. What's the price that you're putting on your own? Honesty. And frankly, the only kind of price I would accept from honesty is, is, is saving millions of children. If there was something where I were where you say, okay, this would save millions of children. You're not going to be dishonest. Okay. I would take that trade.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Contrast that to Doge and USAID.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. Yeah. 500,000 children probably dead because of that.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

Right.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Great job, Elon. Your ipo.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. I'm the defender of children. I see lots of corpses. Right. And so I think that the

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

look,

[Reid Hoffman]

the exhortation is look at yourself in the mirror and see it. And by the way, if the person goes, I look at myself in the mirror, I'm just fine. Goes, I don't care. Then, then we have to speak about it. And that's part of the reason I wouldn't go. That's part of the reason I don't, like, you know, I got these funny phone calls from people saying, hey, you know, for $20 million, the right thing, I can make your.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Your.

[Reid Hoffman]

Your Trump problems go away.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

You literally got to call.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Like donate to this or that equivalent of a ballroom at the time.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. And it's like, I can make your things.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

I mean, this is sick.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

This is happening. It happens.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, it is. That is un American. I stand for what the country aspires to be and should be. This is corrupt. This is fucked. No possibility.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you and I share something sadly in common, which is just the elephant in the room. So either of us, we can act like it didn't exist. We can edit it and say. But the Department of Justice.

[Reid Hoffman]

Justice, yes. Which is being instrumented as a personal. And corrupted to a personal attack vehicle for President Trump. In your case, it's political opponents. Right. Which is. No, our whole point from George Washington's seating of power and what this country stands for is we do not allow the instrument of state to try to corrupt the political process for people running for office. Oh, no, no. I'm gonna stand up. Cause, like, what's the basis of your Department of Justice investigation? Like, do you have any evidence? Do you have anything? No, no, we'll just harass them. We'll just. We're gonna look for something, and we're not gonna look for something in red states. We're not gonna look for something. We're gonna look for something. And, oh, who are the people who might be running, you know, for office? Let's look for them. Right. That are running against us.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right, right. Or those that donate.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

To the other team. Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, this one is crazy. So, look, I have the honor of being called out three times by, you know, Trump for a Trump administration, Actually twice by Trump, and once, most recently, kind of indirectly for, like, investigation. The first one was Antifa, which. Which is like. Like an organization that they can't name a member of, an activity of a leader of an attributable action, etc. But whatever that is, maybe I've been financing it. You're like, what are you talking about?

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So you've been doing how many years you've been financing Antifa?

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, well, like. And can you point it out to me? I would love to see it. As far as I know, I have never financed anything even remotely in the same universe. Yes, right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But whatever.

[Reid Hoffman]

So now, most recently, you know, some lawyers for E. Jean Carroll came to Me and said, we have a woman who is the victim of sexual assault, who is being slandered and attacked and wants to go to court. And would you like, make a 501 donation, by the way, totally legal to finance legal cases, by the way. It would even have been financal legal cases to say, hey, I get a percentage of the proceeds. That's actually. It's like, no, no, no. I think what's important here is that a. That. That a. A vic, a survivor of sexual assault, can have her day in court with an American jury who makes the decision. Yes, I will. I. That. That is an important thing as being Americans. I will. I will finance that.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right, Versus financing a ballroom.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes. Versus finance and ballroom. And I have no economics. I was literally like. Like, if economics come back from it, she is the survivor. She should get that. Right. I am just helping her have her kind of ability to speak her truth in court. Twelve jurors, probably at least three of them were Trump voters, twice demonstrated as. Nope. Quick. Universal. The entire journey went, yep, this is. This is bad. And now, because it's like, wow, you know, so now the DOJ should be investigating this first. They started with, we'll investigate E. Jean Carroll. Right? And you're like, so wait, you're investigating the vic, the survivor, and the victim of sexual assault, which an American jury has found in favor of. So you, as the doj, are investigating her and they're. Oh, no, no. We're investigating the funder. Well, for what? Right? Like, you know, I was like, and by the way, would I do it again? Yes, like a woman who has been assaulted by a very powerful rich man. She should have her ability to speak her truth through a jury.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And so I love the clarity. I would even do it again. I mean, you've been defiant. You said, quote, unquote, I will not bend the knee. Your lawyers may have said, hey, Reid, why don't we just. Why don't we simmer it down a little bit here and see if we can work something out? Why do you feel you need to be so clear and defiant in this?

[Reid Hoffman]

Look, my lawyers, who are extremely good, said you have the following risks. But one of the things I love about my lawyers is that. And we admire the fact that you're. You're. You're. That you're doing the right thing, period. And that's part of the reason that they like to work, right? Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

God damn right.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And. And this thing's playing out in real time. This is just a few weeks ago. They went after you.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly. Yeah. And so, and as you know, maybe it's still going, maybe it's not. Who knows?

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Who knows? Read A hell of a hell of a journey. This conversation's been around the globe. And I'd be remiss if I didn't just circle back on one final thing, and that is you're over under assessment. You've been a lifelong Democrat. You've been trying to sort of work with the party from within, trying to sort of strengthen our muscles, strengthen our, you know, our, our approach and tactically and substantively in policy and also just in, in terms of how we're successful in just building coalitions, et cetera. What's your make of just overview of this whole autopsy and where we are and the lessons we learned or didn't learn from the last election and where we stand as a party, the Democratic Party, today?

[Reid Hoffman]

Well, one major mistake we made in the last election, that the next election we simply won't, which is most of the American people think D.C. is broken and want to change. And the problem is Kamala's chance was to say I'm different than Biden. And yes, he was a necessary stabilization for the catastrophe that was Trump won and there'll be a necessary stabilization for the infinite catastrophe that is Trump 2. But I'm hearing that people feel pain and feel that there needs to be a change and DC Is broken. That's going to be important.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yep.

[Reid Hoffman]

And it's, you know, including like, hey, until we figured out what's going on for us, could we like really limit and slow down what's going on with migration? Because, like, like, I don't know how migration is better for me.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

So, you know, that kind of stuff. But I think probably most central thing is there's a lot of Democrats who don't understand why business is so important. They don't understand it pays for everything. It pays for the, the Medicare, it pays for Social Security, it pays for jobs. It's like really important. You got to be the I'm pro business. Right. It just got to be.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

You can't be pro job and anti business.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, exactly. So it's like, stop being like, stop doing anti business rhetoric because people go, wait, that's totally broken. Right. Then that's part of what this, like socialist means. Right? It's like, so, like be pro business. Now you may say, well, I want business to contribute more. Okay. Be more specific about what that is and then go on that as part of what you're doing. It's like, look, I'M very pro business and I think business can contribute more in the following way. I want business to succeed and I think we should get business like it's the. I want business succeed. Of course you do. It's what gives us jobs and everything else. And so being pro business in that regard, and I think that's part of the thing where there is like, I just don't think it works to say the real problem is in early elections we weren't anti power enough, where anti power means anti business. And so it's like, no, look, we do. Look, all societies have pillars of power. They have pillars of power in politics, they have pillars of power in business, they have pillars of power. In celebrity, they have pillars of power. And what you really want is a distribution of power. Now when you get to a trillionaire, you go, hey, he should be limited about how he can buy elections and do other kinds of shit. That's important because that's a corruption on that kind of power. But by the way, part of the reason why I have not been worried about the scaling tech companies is because if we were, this is one thing I said eight plus years ago, if we were five to seven, scale tech companies heading to three, I'd have a concern. If we're five to seven, heading to 15, they compete with each other and they're balancing out their power and all the rest. And by the way, I'm right. Nvidia OpenAI Anthropic. It's more and more and more competing with each other. And that competition is part of how we govern the system in terms of how we're doing it. So being more business intelligent and pro business generally. And the thought shouldn't be how do we limit business? The thought should be how do we shape business to help society?

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And so in this, I mean, so it's interesting just at the core and I think it goes to, you know, you had some issues with Lina Khan at the FTC and the context and then the brand of Biden.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Sort of took a shape in the, in a completely different direction. Yeah. Including by the way, in the crypto space, as you were implying earlier.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

That there was an opportunity there.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And they just turn their back because of the excesses, but without looking at the sort of baseline benefits of blockchain or democratizing access to banking and not having the friction and the capture of the banking system and the fee structures and the rest.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah, exactly. So what we want is we want Democrats to say, well, we're business intelligent and we're Proposing things that shape it to the better benefit of the working class. Great. All for it.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

And you are aware on the billionaires tax, sir? Reid, where are you on the billionaires tax? You know, my position is a state level. But what about that debate broadly and how does that play in to your broader point?

[Reid Hoffman]

So I'm not at all opposed to increasing progressive taxation.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

You and I have talked about the income taxes here. California is a perfect example right now. But the, the way that it's proposed and implemented is a disaster. Right. I mean it's the, you know, it's kind of like the, hey, fuck you, we hate you guys, we're going to take money from you. Well, a lot of them respond to that very rationally and say, great, we're going to another state. Yeah, right. And by the way, not only do they take the, they reduce the prospective billionaires tax.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

The annual income tax that we were otherwise enjoying is no longer with us. Yes, it's a disaster, as this state has discovered. It's not anecdotal. I mean people say, oh, it's. No, it's not. And we have actual names, real people. And then we have dozens of people they don't know about because they don't want to make a big deal about it.

[Reid Hoffman]

Exactly. I personally know 15 people have moved.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, don't say that. Yeah, because I'm at 12. So let's compare the list.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, so, so it's a disaster. Now part of by the way, and

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

someone watching this may be like rolling their eyes, of course. Read Mr. Billionaire saying this Newsom's captured by these guys as well. You know, that's why this is a chummy conversation. But, but the notion of the California billionaires tax at a state level, this is a real thing. I mean, just by the way, it's why the teachers opposed it. Yes. That's why the firefighters opposed it. That's why a vast majority of organized labor opposes the California billionaires tax, which I think is an incredibly important point to make. It's not just you saying it to me, who's well known in my opposition. That said, it's at a federal level this notion of, again you say progressive tax system, but this notion of a tax system that does what inheritance needs to be reformed, does it stepped up basis need to be reformed?

[Reid Hoffman]

Look, I think it's good to do all of these things.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

Look, it's good to say, look, we are not in a place where, roughly speaking, progressive taxation, for example, as you make more money, you pay a higher percentage of Tax, not just a higher number, but a higher percentage. Not to infinite. I actually think roughly when you get to 50, you start getting weird perverse incentives like you go to, I'm now charging you a 70% tax. The answer is, oh, I'm now going to work more on how do I not pay the 70% tax than earn the next dollar.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

Roughly at 50. 50. Many. Not all, but many people go, I'll just earn the next dollar. Right, Right. I'm fine now. But the problem is the net effective rate for wealthy people is well below

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

50 because it's not on their income, it's on the corpus, it's on the capital.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

It's the benefits that accrue then to having a lower tax rate.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

So capital gains. Yeah.

[Reid Hoffman]

So this we should be fixing. And by the way, we already have versions of wealth tax, like property tax. A good way. I actually like the whole Pieta terror tax. I think it's a small thing, but I think it's a good thing to do in.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Mandami obviously popularized it, but it's happened in many other cities, including San Francisco, at a version. It's in litigation and other parts of the globe have been doing for years.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yeah. But I think it's a, like, it's a small one, but an example of this is a good one. Right. And so what are the ones that we can do that are healthy in the system and also don't have, you know, weird kind of massive double tax, you know, kind of things, and are coherent across it. And so. But progressive tax is good. And of course, the incentive is to try to avoid tax. Right. I mean, that's a natural incentive. Everyone has that incentive. Right. But let's try to make it so that it's. That you're like, okay, because this is the thing I like when people call me to ask me about the California wealth tax. I say, look, here is how I would try to introduce new taxes in California. Whether it's raising the income or anything else, I would say, okay, we're going to tax very much disproportionately from the wealthy. The wealthy have had a huge benefit of being in California because that's how they've made all their wealth and all the rest. So, yes, we wish that they would just go along with it. But of course, everyone wants to avoid tax, but, like, pitch it to them in terms where you're like, I'm fixing the problem. Right. Like, hey, we're creating a sovereign wealth fund for being able to fund ongoing, you know, kind of prosperity of California. He's like, okay then, like, okay, I like I'm, I still would rather not pay more tax.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Reid Hoffman]

But it makes sense to me.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

That opens the door. And by the way, so many of the conversations we've had with many of the people, including a number of people that have left, are in those lines where they would. They have publicly stated, not just privately stated, they would support something along those lines.

[Reid Hoffman]

So. Because. Because it makes economic rationality. Because, because in addition to first thing, you know, fu. You wealthy people, we're gonna just charge you for this. And it's like, well, were you charging me for what? Oh, the huge shortfall from Trump's, you know, a big beautiful betrayal. Betrayal bill. Yes. Big cuts to Medicaid which we have these huge costs because cutting Medicaid. So we're gonna charge you for that. It's like, well, that's not a one off issue. Yeah, that's gonna continue. And you're telling me this is one off. I don't believe you.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

Amen. Well, I appreciate that sentiment and obviously believe very strongly we're going to have to address the tax code federally in a profound way. And California in many ways has some clues, it has some models. And I mean compare California most progressive tax rate states like New York as well, but to the most regressive states like Texas and Florida that tax their low wage earners more than we tax our high wage earners. So the question objectively is who is the high tax state? Yes. The highest tax rate for the 1%. 99%. Don't live in the 1%. And so this, it's this. But this notion that there's a tonality here, there's a sentiment around begrudging success. There's aspects of this that I think there's nuance of what you're saying that I think is important as a Democrat, I certainly share. Thanks for sharing all this time. It's been a lot of fun and thanks for coming to, you know, Governor Reagan's mansion who I think had 70% tax rates.

[Reid Hoffman]

Yes, well, and I think that's one of the reasons I was unwind is like it just creates a huge incentive to try to do something about it. But it's a pleasure and I look forward to our next.

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