Episode · Big Technology Podcast · 2025-01-29
Books mentioned on Reid Hoffman: Why The AI Investment Will Pay Off
Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn, a legendary Silicon Valley investor, and author of the new book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future.
Alex Kantrowitz discussed Superagency by Reid Hoffman and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Superagency
Discussed“I want to speak more about your book which I think is sort of like a in some ways a Manifesto um to the world talking about the positive uses of AI and why that book uh needed to be written”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (11) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Superagency
“definitely I have a copy of the book uh with me now this is the the galley the preview and I think the book that debuts will look uh a little different kind of cooler”
Plugged Superagency
“part of what I encourage people part of the reason why you know wrote super agency is anyone who's not actually engaged in using AI today and not just for hey I open my refrigerator I got set ingredients what should I make for dinner”
Plugged Superagency
“and I think part of what uh open AI also led the field in was doing this thing that I call in my book super agency iterative deployment which is make it available to you know hundreds of millions of people around the world so they can play with it”
Plugged Superagency
“so part of the reason why I you know know kind of wrote super agency was to say by the way this pattern has gone back to the history of the written word and the printing press and has done everything from like the power loom and the Industrial Revolution cars planes”
Plugged Superagency
“part of the reason why to re write super agency to kind of say Hey how do we navigate these transitions as we say well what are the issues we're going to have and what are the positive Futures we want to get to”
Plugged Superagency
“but if you know as I go into some depth in the in in the book If the the Lites had successfully destroyed all the power looms and said well no we want to have independent weaving then that would have meant the that that that the their children their grandchildren Etc would have been kind of doomed to uh”
Plugged Superagency
“and that will you know kind of speed up the level of of informational intelligence part of the reason why in the book we call it an informational GPS in terms of how you operate and so I think yes AI is great”
Plugged Superagency
“so for example when when you're building things in the future and we have this chapter in super agency saying Innovation is safety you can actually build a bunch of things that in the future that are part of that that that safety and that future safety and it's important to get to”
Plugged Impromptu
“and obviously the book before super agency was impromptu um which is trying to show people you know not just show like tell how it's amplification intelligence but show and through kind of some examples of the Chrome of prompting”
Plugged Superagency
“well so I'm writing a book on super agency I'm writing a book on you know kind of like what does the like technology mean for the kind of the ution of humanity and human agency um so here is my arguments”
Passing Hope Is Not a Strategy
“you could probably upload a book uh like some good sales or marketing books and say I want you to read this and now you know come up with the strategy based on the book like hope is not a strategy uh you know throw that in there”