Billionaire entrepreneur and venture capital investor Reid Hoffman is concerned about artificial intelligence, but not for newsworthy apocalyptic reasons. Rather, he worries that doomsday headlines are too negative.
So in recent months, Hoffmann has been practicing active thought leadership to celebrate the benefits of AI, including in blog posts, TV interviews, and hearth chit-chat. He spoke with government officials around the world. He hosts his 3 podcasts and his 1 YouTube channel. In March, he published “Impromptu” in collaboration with the AI tool GPT-4.
It’s all part of public land grabbing around AI in preparation for when the initial fear and hype about the technology will settle into a coherent debate. Which side will be chosen, regulation will be proposed, technology tools will be politicized. For now, public concern is only growing, but industry leaders like Hoffmann are trying to adjust the terms of the debate to their advantage.
“I hit positive drums very loud, but I do it on purpose,” he said.
Few people are more involved in the many facets of a rapidly changing industry than Mr. Hoffmann. The 55-year-old serves on the boards of 11 tech companies and eight nonprofits, including Microsoft, all focused on AI. His venture capital firm, Greylock Partners, backs at least 37 AI companies. He was one of the first investors in OpenAI, the most prominent of his AI startups, and recently left the board. He also helped found at least $225 million in AI chatbot startup Inflection AI.
Then there’s the more abstract goal of “enhancing humanity,” or helping people improve their situation, a concept he conveys in a friendly, nonchalant manner. Hoffmann believes his AI will be integral to that mission, citing its potential to transform areas such as healthcare as an example. And he education – “give everyone a tutor.”
“That’s part of the responsibility we have to think about here,” he said.
Hoffmann is one of a small group of interconnected tech executives leading the AI space, many of whom also spearheaded the last internet boom. He is a member of the PayPal Mafia, a group of former PayPal executives including Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. The latter two of him backed AI startup DeepMind. acquired by google, and all three were early backers of OpenAI. A startup incubator, Y Combinator founder Jessica Livingston also funded his OpenAI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he was previously the president of Y Combinator.
Musk has now founded his own AI company, X.AI. Thiel’s Venture Founders Fund backs more than 70 AI companies, including OpenAI, according to Pitchbook, which tracks investments in startups. In addition to running OpenAI, Altman has invested in several AI startups, and OpenAI itself through his startup fund he has invested in seven AI startups.And Y Combinator’s newest batch of startups It contains 78 are AI-focused, almost double the last group.
Tech industry leaders disagree about the risks and opportunities of AI and have been vocal about their views on the idea market.
Musk recently warned of the dangers of AI on Bill Maher’s show and in a roundtable with New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. Hoffman briefed Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimond and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about the technology’s potential. “The benefits of the tools we’ve put in place far outweigh the risks,” Altman said at a congressional hearing last week.
In Hoffmann’s view, warnings about AI’s survival risks to humanity overstate what the technology can do. And he believes there are obvious solutions to other potential problems caused by AI: job losses, democratic destruction, and economic disruption. It’s about increasing technology.
“The solution is not by enshrining the past, but living in the future,” he said.
That’s a tough sell for ordinary people who have seen the ill effects of technology over the past decade, from social media misinformation to self-driving car crashes. And this time the risks are even greater, says Oded Netzer, a professor at Columbia Business School.
“It’s not just about the risk, it’s about how fast it moves,” Netzer said of tech companies’ response to AI. “I don’t think you can expect or trust the industry to regulate itself.” Told.
Hoffman’s AI promotion campaign aims to promote trust when it is broken, he said. “Some areas are not without damage,” he said. “The question is whether we can learn and iterate better states.”
Hoffman has pondered that question since studying symbolic systems at Stanford University in the late 1980s. So he imagined how AI would facilitate “our Promethean moment,” he said in his paper. YouTube video From March. “We can make these new things and travel with them.”
After working at PayPal and co-founding the professional social network LinkedIn in 2002, Mr. Hoffman began investing in startups such as Nauto, Nuro and Aurora Innovation. All of these companies focused on applying his AI technology to transportation. He also served on DeepMind’s AI Ethics Committee.
DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleiman said the main motivation that made Hoffman different from other venture capitalists was to do good in the world.
“How can we serve humanity? He was always asking that question,” Suleiman said.
When Suleiman started working on his latest startup, Inflection AI, he found Hoffman’s strategic advice so helpful that he asked him to help build the company. Greylock invested in the startup last year.
Mr. Hoffman was also there in the early days of OpenAI. In 2015, I met Musk and Altman at an Italian restaurant in San Jose, Calif., to discuss the creation of a company with a mission to ensure that the most powerful AI “benefits all mankind.”
Years later, when OpenAI was considering a corporate partnership, Hoffman said he encouraged Altman to meet with Microsoft, which acquired LinkedIn in 2016.
Altman said he was initially concerned that Microsoft, a behemoth with an obligation to put shareholders first, would not take seriously the unusual structure of capping OpenAI’s mission and profits. “Everyone wonders, ‘Will this really work?’” in large, complex deals, Mr. Altman said.
Mr. Hoffmann helped me to keep things running smoothly. As an OpenAI board member, a Microsoft board member, and himself, he put on a metaphorical “hat” and spoke to Altman on a range of concerns.
“I have to be clear about which hat I’m talking about.” Mr Hoffman said.
Altman said Hoffman helped OpenAI “model Microsoft and think about what they care about, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at, and what they’re like for us.” Told.
In 2019, OpenAI and Microsoft signed a $1 billion deal that propelled the company to a leading position today. (To avoid conflicts of interest, Mr. Hoffmann did not participate in the negotiations and abstained from voting to approve the agreement at each board meeting.)
A little over a year ago, Hoffmann had another Promethean moment when he saw OpenAI making progress with its GPT-3 language model. He quickly flipped his AI switch on just about anything he worked on, including new Graylock investments and existing startups, as well as podcasts, books, and discussions with government officials.
“It was basically like, ‘If not this, I’d rather have something that’s absolutely important to society,'” he said.
OpenAI created a sensation in November by releasing its chatbot ChatGPT. One of his investments in Greylock, Tome, soon after integrated his GPT-3 technology from OpenAI into its own “storytelling” software. The number of Tome users has skyrocketed from thousands of teams to six million he said, Keith Peiris said. Tome’s top executive.
Hoffman said his approach was partly shaped by access to “very high quality streams of information” and partly through business relationships with the likes of Microsoft and OpenAI. Some, like his AI Center at Stanford University, are through various philanthropic efforts.
And part of that is through his political connections. He has poured millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns and political action committees. Barack Obama is a friend.
For now, he’s using his clout to paint a picture of AI-driven progress. Technical people are rooting for his cheerleading. The rest of the world is even more skeptical.Recent investigation According to a survey conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, 61 percent of Americans believe AI could pose a threat to humanity.
Hoffman dismisses those concerns as exaggerated. He predicts that more specific problems facing AI, such as the tendency of AI to spew out false information, will be addressed as tech companies upgrade and deploy systems.
Looking ahead, he said there will be more investments, more podcasts, more conversations with government officials, and more work on Inflection AI. He emphasized that the way to avoid the risks of AI is to lead the world in a positive direction.
“I am a technology optimist, not a technology utopia,” he said.
Cade Metz Contributed to the report.
