This transcript is generated with the help of AI and is lightly edited for clarity.
REID:
I am Reid Hoffman.
ARIA:
And I’m Aria Finger.
REID:
We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way.
ARIA:
Typically, we ask our guests for their outlook on the best possible future, but now every other week, I get to ask Reid for his take.
REID:
This is Possible.
ARIA:
Hey, Reid, it is great to be here. So I wanted to start with something actually near and dear to my heart because I am an avid Apple AirPods user. I have the AirPods Pro 2, and I have not yet tried the AirPods Pro 3. And so just last week, they announced the Pro 3, which was a next-gen earbud and does live translation—all powered by Apple Intelligence. Some people might say that’s an oxymoron—Apple hasn’t exactly been leading the charge with their AI integration into their products. But so this is going to translate instantly between five languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. And then they have plans to expand to Italian, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese before the end of the year. So my question for you is this rollout of pretty incredible, groundbreaking AI into products that we’re using every day—is this a gold standard for how AI should be launched to consumers?
REID:
Well, it’s certainly not the gold standard, because it might be a gold standard in terms of bringing in AI in just the natural way that you’re going through your life. Now, you could almost see it potentially being a little bit like when you’re watching those really bad dub films where someone’s lips move for like ten seconds and then the audio is, “Yes,” and you’re like, okay, clearly there’s some mismatch between these. And let’s hope that’s not what it’s ending up as. But obviously, all of the folks in AI have known that this kind of instantaneous translation has been in line of sight. And so it’ll be awesome if Apple is bringing it. And I do think that the notion for a number of uses of AI products is to integrate them into the natural flow.
REID:
It’s like oxygen, water, and, to some degree, even electricity—just flows in the background and the environment that you’re operating in. And I think that will be important to do. Now, ultimately, if you look at all the largest-scale tech companies, Apple is by far the one that’s most behind on AI. And so, how much they’ll be able to bring their design sensibilities and the ability to actually have AI be Apple Intelligence is still—we haven’t seen any of it yet. So this would be an awesome first step.
ARIA:
And so if this is successful—as cutting-edge as they say—where do you think the biggest impacts for this live translation are going to be across society?
REID:
Look, I think it’s obvious that the way one part, which is this notion of information and communication. Because, in fact, I think most people don’t realize how much we live in different bubbles. Now, part of the reason why a lot of people don’t realize that is because most of the bubbles are oriented on English. So, for example, the tech-sophisticated people in China, and Japan, and France, and in Germany, and Poland, and Italy, all understand that they have to do English in some way. And so they make that effort, and so we benefit from that blind spot. But there’s obviously tons of very interesting things happening in these other languages. So I think a media ecosystem and understanding, and mutual understanding, will be a very good sociological part.
REID:
But I think that in terms of businesses, I think there’s a general help in making all businesses operate that will be very good. Obviously travel businesses will be important. Obviously, global businesses with supply chains and so forth will be important. Obviously, media businesses. I mean, you already see this a little bit in the echoes of streaming. I think that entertainment, I think will get strongly amplified. And so I think those are all the kinds of places where language can make a greater acceleration, fluidity of impact, and ability to do stuff. And obviously, part of this is, as you get to the obvious one on tourism, is actually I already know people who’ve experienced, like cab drivers in Morocco using ChatGPT as their translation. So that, “Hey, whatever language you speak—even though I only speak Arabic here in Morocco—I can still drive you anywhere.”
ARIA:
Absolutely. And I think you’re totally right in terms of the blind spot when we speak English, and the business community speaks English, but just because you speak English doesn’t mean that’s the way you want your content. So I wanted to switch gears actually, to purely entertainment. OpenAI is bringing their AI tools to Hollywood. They have announced that they’re creating an animated feature film called Critterz. It’s going to premiere next year at Cannes in 2026. And this film is going to be largely—but not a hundred percent—AI-generated. So, they’re going to use GPT-5 for scripting. They’re going to use advanced image generation for all the animation. It’s going to take nine months to create—which is about a third of the time that animated movies typically take—and it’s going to cost under $30 million. So even though they’ll still have voice actors, and I think some of the writers from Paddington 3, this is the first feature film that’s largely AI-driven. So when this comes out in 2026, do you think people are going to be able to judge it just like, “Oh, this is the latest animated movie. What do we think?” Or is this going to be a referendum on if AI can compete in the creative world?
REID:
Well, I think the answer to your question is both. Because I think that the very first question will be is how good is it as a film? Because it is such a test point of AI filmmaking, like if it’s a great film, it’ll be like, “This is one of the reasons why human creators need to be protected. This is a disaster coming,” et cetera, et cetera. “It’s really important to do.” “Oh my God, the copyright stuff.” “It’s important that people be paid.” That will be there. Now if it’s bad, it’ll be the, “And this is why AI slop, and this is the danger of AI slop coming in,” and da da da. So people will occupy their political position, whether it’s good or bad, and use it as a referendum, whether it’s good or bad.
REID:
But I think it will be, the quality of the film will essentially come into it. And for me, part of what I’ll be looking at is a little bit like on the threads of Superagency, which is, well, what are the things that if we nudge or shape in various ways, this helps create more of the positive human future? And those will be the kinds of things that I think is actually the more interesting discourse that I’ll be trying to look at, and help shape whatever is post-Critterz. It’s like, well, what does this mean for what are we learning? How do we nudge for what is better? For how we become better as individuals, and as groups, and as societies, and as a species in humanity? I think that will be—in terms of the test case—that’s the analysis that we should be running.
ARIA:
Well, but on that note, I mean, I like animated films as much as the next gal. I think Moana has a lot of bangers. But the promise of AI was, “We’re going to cure cancer, we’re going to have education for everyone.” Are you surprised that OpenAI is spending their time on animated films?
REID:
Well, I’m quite certain that whatever group and people are spending time at this, and OpenAI are not the people who are working on the fundamental model for the things that would help with—like Manas AI—curing cancer and other kinds of things. The fact that they’re spending time on it is actually, I think not necessarily—I think it’s a group that’s a large company—but I also think that part of—and this is one of the things that I’ve thought for maybe a decade even—which is part of how tech companies should be thinking about their marketing, their communications is essentially various forms of content generation that help express what is their tech movement, their tech mission, the way that they’re trying to improve humanity to the world.
REID:
And obviously, this could be in the context of business, could be things through LinkedIn. But I think that as a strategy, as opposed to, call it the classic one of buy ads in the Super Bowl. Nothing wrong with buying ads in the Super Bowl—but is thinking like, “Oh, I’m going to buy 30-second spots.” That’s actually less the thing as your technology gets completely, 100% spread through society—through mobile and internet and everything else, and the platforms you’re doing, you should be. So, for example, it’s been completely unsurprising to me that a number of different tech companies have been doing their own video studio businesses when they’re doing videos, as instances. And actually, that is in a sense, they say, “Well, is that a good business?” It’s like, well, look, that might be a better way of them engaging in marketing, including marketing spend—but marketing spend that may even be generating some revenue—that actually elaborates their platforms in various ways. And I think that that’s true for every major scale tech business. So do I think OpenAI should be doing this? Yes. Do I think OpenAI is doing it—so far, from what little I can see from the outside—intelligently? Yes. And I’m quite certain it’s not slowing down any of their major efforts at the things that are, how do we increase our capabilities?
ARIA:
Well, so we got to talk to Stephen Colbert last week, which, no surprise, he was a delight. But he talked about the food system as an analogy for AI. And he was talking about sort of Michael Pollan’s term of nutritionism, where forget Whole Foods and organic foods and how food is normal, like we are processing foods, and like shoving in vitamins, and trying to create a perfect food. But are we actually losing an essence here? We think it has all the vitamins in it, but it’s losing something that we don’t know about. And are we doing the same thing for AI? It’s trained on human data, it learns from human feedback—reinforcement learning—but we’re losing some essential humanness when we do that. And so I would ask you, do you agree? What do you think? AI is a powerful tool, but are we losing some essential humanness when we try to copy from what they’re learning about what we read and write?
REID:
Well, also to echo—Stephen Colbert, awesome. It’s always a delight to talk with him. I think he, in addition to obviously being funny and insightful, is smart and interesting on these things. And so it was totally great. And, the food metaphor is a good lens in thinking about it. Now, the challenge with this is, is that this exact discourse of every technological transformation, and the history of homo techne, is always that there is something being lost. So with a calculator, it’s mathematical abilities. With the printing press, it’s memories. Like, “Isn’t there something essential—oh, now you’re typing it? Isn’t there something essential for handwriting?” And by the way, there is something being lost. It’s not that this is the mistake, is like they say, “Oh no, every single dimension is better.”
REID:
No, no, of course something’s being lost. Like if you had to really engage your memory in certain ways, there’s positive attributes that come out of the fact that you have to have a deep engagement of memory. There’s a positive attribute. If you can’t instantly summon an AI agent to ask you a question, but you have to cast your mind back and try to think about it, and think about whether or not you’re right or not. Of course, there’s some positive attributes there. The question is on balance. And so if you use the food analogy, you go, “Hey, look, is on balance this new diet better than the old diet?” And you have to look at the attributes of it. And so, for example, I think there’s so many things that are just so clearly massively better with AI.
REID:
For example, a medical assistant that’s in your pocket that you can answer questions. The very natural instinct of a lot of these chatbot companies is to try to say, “No, no, spend all your time with your phone talking to only the chatbot, and stop talking to human beings.” That would be a massive negative amplification of the loneliness epidemic and other things. I think there’s a lot of reasons for us to be needing to engage and confront with other human beings—in friendship, and in learning, and in all the rest. And so I think that nudging towards keep engaging with human beings—which AI could, by the way, be super positive on, in terms of how it operates—that thing is like, “Oh, those are those micronutrients of another human being.” Those are important to maintain and keep, and to amplify. And AI can actually even help with the amplification of that. And that’s how we should be nudging towards it.
ARIA:
Well, on a related note, we talked to Stephen a lot about humanity and creative flourishing. And about two years ago, you gave a speech at the Bologna Business School. And it was about how AI could usher in a new renaissance of beauty, humanity, creativity. So it’s been about two years. Where do you think you’ve seen that new renaissance emerge over the last two years with AI?
REID:
Part of the reason I gave a speech in Bologna was because one of the things that there’s a very often made comparison between Silicon Valley and the Italian Renaissance. There’s a bunch of places where that’s deep and interesting. And actually the deep and interesting aligns to trade routes that funded the Renaissance. And the internet is a trade route that funds Silicon Valley. There’s a bunch of engagement with science and technology as an outcome of it. There’s a bunch of good things. But one of the things, obviously, that Silicon Valley tends to lack is art, and is culture, and that kind of humanism. And it was partially to say, “Hey, this is an important thing, and as much as we can, to add it back in.” That’s obviously one of many reasons why I was a prominent funder of Co-Founders the musical. And in terms of doing this, could try to bring that in, in terms of discourse and experience.
REID:
And I think that that’s the thing that we’re still, as it were, doing the clarion call for. And I think it’s still important to do, and I don’t think we’ve seen too much of that in the last couple years, but this can be over time. Now, one of the places where I think that the notion of how do we think about what is the place of human beings in the world and in the grander cosmos. Because one of, again, the more subtle things about the Renaissance was a shift from the Middle Ages, where everything was this great ladder to God, to saying, “Hey, let’s study human physiology. Let’s study the human place.” It’s part of what enabled the thinking of, “Actually, we are on a planet that orbits a sun.” That there’s a lot of other suns that are all going in different directions versus, “We’re in the actual center of the universe, and everything else orbits around us.”
REID:
And so that return to humanism and thinking about humans as the center of action—and it’s one of the mistakes that can be made in technology. Because it’s like, “No, no, actually, in fact, it’s the robot that’s at the center of the action. It’s a technology at the center of the action.” And actually, that’s part of the reason why—in Superagency, and Impromptu, and other places,—I’ve been describing it as homo techne, because the human being is at the center of the action. Now we’re constituted, and we move through the world with technology. I mean, literally, of course, it’s not just meant to be a metaphor. And I think that that is important and the notion of doing so with grace, doing so with amplifying who we aspire to be. Humanism as aspiration is, I think, the thing that we as technologists and we as technology industry should be continuing to focus on, and focus on a lot more than we are.
ARIA:
Well, I love that you brought up Co-founders, the musical, because for those of you who don’t know, it’s an amazing musical by Beau Lewis that came out in the Bay Area a few months ago. And it’s both a celebration of technology as well as a critique of some of the things that are going on in Silicon Valley. And your co-author, Greg Beato—who we know really well—just came out with an incredible series called Bro-botz, which could never have happened before AI. Because Greg can’t sing, and didn’t know how to make movies, and now he’s just using AI, creating this entire, essentially I call it an animated music video, of something that again, is both a celebration of AI, but also a critique—in a tongue-in-cheek, calling them robots. And so again, you can critique and celebrate at the same time, which I think is so important.
REID:
Yep. And just to reemphasize what you said, is that part of what Greg is doing is showing the thesis of Superagency that he and I wrote because it’s like, look, here is now a superpower that we have to be able to express ourselves in what is otherwise a challenging thing of music, and music videos, and other kinds of things. And of course, doing it with humor.
ARIA:
Absolutely. Reid, thank you so much.
REID:
Always a pleasure.
REID:
Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It’s hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Thanasi Dilos, Sara Schleede, Vanessa Handy, Alyia Yates, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, and Melia Agudelo. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.
ARIA:
Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, Parth Patil, and Ben Relles.