Reid Hoffman & Inflection AI’s Sean White on designing AI that makes us better humans

0:03 Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. We have something very special for you today, a fireside chat between longtime innovators and friends, both of each other's and of mine. Our very own Reed Hoffman and Inflection CEO, Dr. Sean White. This conversation was presented by Inflection and recorded live at the twenty twenty-five Masters of Scale summit. I hope you enjoy it. One of the things we're running into that's gonna have a serious problem are gonna be mistaking AI for friends. Right? How do we get psychologically misled by the magic of these tools devices agents companions et cetera

0:49 So what do you think some of the really important things are relative to human psychology and interaction? that should be design principles about this agentic universe that we're rushing into. I love this topic because I think it's really important, right? I'm sure that every one of the you out here has at some point used your first chat bot and felt, wow, that feels human like, that feels really real. That sort of magical experience. And I think we wanna keep that, by the way. I think that is actually part of it being a really good interface. At the same time, you want it to be transparent.

1:26 Right. And so you shouldn't feel bad about this. Your brains are built to recognize People in things. There are whole psychological conditions where you'll see uh faces in trees and other objects. There's a field of study called captology that was part of human computer interaction as well, that BJ Fogg had sort of created, which was noticing that we applied some of the same social rules. to computers that we did to individuals, right? If this computer was really kind of critical. Sometimes we think that's smarter and so we think ah that computer is smarter than this other one. And so in terms of principles, the number one is

2:05 Transparency. That is Always knowing that there is an AI present where the AI is present, not pretending that it is human or sentient or some other thing, right? Or conscious. Or conscious. That's right. There are some other design principles in here though that you want to balance. Making sure That you have a good

2:23 Interface, right? So you and I have empathy as humans, right? And you want those systems to act that way. But if it starts leading down a path where it's clear that the human is actually going down a bad path, an unhealthy path. Being clear on that as well. That's a design decision. And so maybe a last one to think about is actually starting off by thinking about this as pro social.

2:48 Well, I think it's interesting to have a goalpost. Everything starts in design principles by saying what are you trying to do? If you try and aim for AGI. You can build AGI. If you try and build great tools for humans, you build great tools for humans. And so say also a little bit about what already some of the pro social things that we've seen coming out of even the agents as they exist today. One example is around just helping people.

3:17 With Pi I've gotten emails and messages, letters around this. Someone will reach out and say Yeah. I was having a really hard time. My mom died. And I couldn't reach a therapist.

3:30 And Pi helped me through it. But the important part that's after that is to also then reengage with other people. That's a large part of how we think about the training, right? The data sets that we use for doing that. Also thinking about this not as a transactional thing, but a relational Thing?

3:48 The other place where it's been pretty interesting has been in mediation. This actually was a journalist and had this great conversation. And then at the end she said, You know I use pie. So that's interesting. What do you use Pi for? My husband and I use pie to mediate sometimes when we're talking.

4:04 And it makes sense, right? The last example and and one of the things I think you should keep an eye out for. Last year we actually had run some experiments. We were running Pi with WhatsApp. So that's groups of people. and individuals, right?'Cause you know, in the end, I like people. If you're here, you probably like people and so figure out ways to help encourage that.

4:26 There must be some stories for you too. For sure. So I was part of the crew that persuaded Bill Gates that the GPT revolution was real. And what we had done is we gotten a challenge from him to say, I'll believe you have general purpose. functional technology.

4:44 If without special training you can pass the AP bio exam at a five. So we arranged a whole meeting. We brought a US one of the bio Olympiad with us who she was she was a gold medalist. Like very, very smart to cross check, ask the questions, all the rest. And that was all persuasive, but then it was the first time that with Bill that I saw him change his mind in real time because I was looking over at him and he was looking at this, and it's okay, but what question do you want to ask? And he said, Well, and I think it's because it happened with a friend of his, he said

5:16 Say you had a friend whose treasured pet just died. How would you try to comfort them? And so we asked that of GPD four. And G B D four gave a Pitch perfect answers like well, actually, in fact, you probably know your friend better than I do. So the specific thing for your friend, I'm not sure.

5:36 But here's some things you could consider. It's just you go be with them, you could offer to make their life a little easier, you could tell them that you're aware of how much their pet meant to them and how much it was part of the fabric of their life. And it had an incomplete Both. practical, but also cognitive and emotional range. And I literally at that moment I saw Bill's face change.

6:00 Right. It was like That's Great. Right. Cause it showed All forms of human context awareness. It was like, I'm not just gonna tell you what to do. You're gonna be a participant in this. And that's part of the whole agency thing. I'm gonna give you a palette of things that you might consider. I'm ready to continue doing that conversation. And

6:21 That design principle for these agents With exactly as you say, which is the focus here is How do you help people be better human beings in community and with themselves? Yes, I think it's incredibly important to bend that arc. And you know, I'm a fan of the Socratic Tell me more about that. Exact Well, so uh if you assume that everything should be single shot.

6:46 It would be And I get the story and then that's it, right? Once upon a time there was a doctor Sean. Yeah. That's right. But oftentimes, and you you and I have done this many times before, trying to understand something, trying to get it some truth, or tell some joke. It's a back and forth. And so the Socratic aspect of that, the conversational intelligence goes along with the EQ, and it also goes along, I mean I know you think a lot about not just the transactional, but the relational.

7:15 Yeah. Part of the reason why it's an absolute mistake. I literally correct people that I talk to and they say, Oh, AI like, you know, Claude's my best friend. And I'm like, No, friendship is a bi-directional relationship. Part of what is actually essential in friendship is I show up going, oh, I've had a really bad day. I want to tell Sean about my bad day, and sit down and I hear something about your day, go, oh, Sean's had a much worse day. We're gonna talk about Sean's day. Right. And that is actually not just a question of kind of like load balancing else. It's the way that by being friends to each other, when you allow your friend to help you

7:51 You're actually not just getting the help. But you're enriching the friendship, you're enriching the friend, it's extending the friend's capabilities, and that's part of the bi-directional things. That's right. But we're a very long way away from AI friends. Yes, and rightly so, right? I mean I I think the the more interesting ways for us to connect. Get better. I can ask you goes a little bit to the human computer interaction aspect. A lot of that gets grounded in philosophy. Oh yeah. I know you don't like talking about philosophy. But you know.

8:20 But there are no limits to language. Yes, exactly. So w what's your sense for how that Drive is not. Just what we have today, but what we should have in five years and ten years. Well, so here's one of the things to kinda think about this at some philosophical depth.

8:39 So one The evolution of tools Changes our epistemology. Just think like microscope, telescope, et cetera. Our world changes through tools.

8:50 Think about how AI is gonna change our epistemology. Right. So philosophers tend to have this mistaken conception, like no, it's just pure thought. You sit there with your pipe in a library and it's pure thought. It's like no. Our actual conception of the world is where homotechs through the technology, through the conceptions of even what we think of quote unquote logically possible. So the notion of what is our ontology, what is our epistemology is gonna radically change and evolve. Then think about okay, if we learn new things about language, because language evolves too as a tool and as one that constitutes who we are. That will also evolve what are

9:27 concept of self is our concept of the world, our concept of how we understand each other, what kinds of things there are. And so it's one of the things on the more subtle or philosophical side. And so the notion of oh, this language works in a new different way. Like we've talked about music as a language over 2 something. Like all of that changes the way we think, and then we'll change philosophy. Like one of the primal mistakes I think philosophers make. Is I think everything that is philosophically knowable is philosophically knowable right here. Just by thinking. And that is not the case.

10:04 Right. We sort of co evolve with our tools. I mean, this is one of the reasons why I I care so much about How we develop AI not just us, but the entire ecosystem. Right, is we will co evolve with these systems. I mean the same way we co evolved with language, yes, and we co evolved with writing. And that's one of the reasons to have

10:24 design principles on The interaction. with the agents. Like Sean at Stanford taught us in human computer design. And actually, in fact, those are even more Important. Now then was like okay.

10:39 Do you get the affordances right? Now it's is my epistemology of how I think about the world and how I think about myself and how I'm evolving that. How does that change? Ooh epistemology is affordance. Yes. Exactly. That's very complex. Yes.

10:56 Yeah, mind bending. Yeah, I know. So part of the the other thing, by the way. So I've given a couple speeches in the last few years in Italy. I had been thinking a lot and intensely about a theme that goes on here in Silicon Valley, which is Silent Valley's. The next Renaissance.

11:13 And In some ways that's very deep and very true. And some things that people don't even fully recognize, which is the Renaissance was on a trade route. It had a massive elevation of both science and technology as part of what it was doing. But the thing that we need to recapture more and add more to what we do, and that's part of the reason why I think the Masters of Scale people do such a great job with this event.

11:35 is the humanism of it. The humanity of it. And I think that we only would get those laurels of being another important renaissance moment if we bring that humanism back in. And that's where philosophy becomes very important because

11:51 Just technological space of possibility, technological space of creation and building, but also What's your theory of current humanity? of what journey we should be on, what we should be enable to do with ourselves and with each other. And by the way, for those of you who read Superagency, I don't think it can be pre-planned. I think it's an iterative deployment. You go out, you learn something, you iterate, you go out, you learn something, you iterate. The frequent mistake is to think, oh, it's almost like the philosophical mistake. I can figure it all out just sitting here in advance.

12:23 And almost nothing serious works that way. Yeah, that's right. One of the things that I have been joyed about the push and the acceleration around AI is it's forcing us to ask. What does it mean to be human? Cause I think we've been a little lazy about what it means to be human and it will evolve.

12:40 And we have a question. My name is Ellie Barmasel from Paranaut, and a lot of my work has been thinking about What are the technologies and brands that are going to enable human flourishing over a century-long lifespan? And I think a lot of AI doomers say that AI is going to be the end of humanity. But I'm curious about another question. When you think about the current state.

13:06 Of the human condition, what are the things that make us most radically human that we stand to lose without AI? Great question. I'll do three in very different directions. So one is obviously one of the amazing elevations of the human condition is spreading literacy. And only became possible because of printing press and books and whatnot.

13:30 And I think AI is obviously enabled by that, but it's the most amazing learning technology we've invented in human history. And the hope that It's not Crazy. To think we might be able to

13:45 Within a small number of years. Literally get to Call it eighty percent plus. of the eight billion people eight billion people and enable literacy, education, et cetera to what we currently think of as an everyday Western wealthy world standard. And that is a huge So that's one.

14:08 Two is The ability for AI to facilitate Medicine? is amazing. And one of the things I keep telling people is to say If you get a

14:21 Serious medical concern. If you're not using one or more frontier agents as a second opinion, you're making a desperately bad mistake. I literally have had my friend was hiking with his cousin in the Adirondacks. They had an issue, they went to a hospital, the hospital's always fine, here's some antibiotics. My friend was like, I'm not quite sure. Check chat GBT. Chad GBD said go to another hospital. And went to another hospital, and that hospital checked and said, Oh, I'm glad you're here. If you were two hours later, you'd be dead.

14:49 Right. So the second opinion, I'd say still be cautious about first opinion, unless you have no doctors. Right. But second opinion is super important. And then the Third is Obviously one of the reasons why I put such energy into the Optimism case is not because I'm blindly optimistic. I actually think it's rational. But like for example, we obviously run more and more at risk of serious pandemics, whether they're man made or natural or anything else.

15:19 AI is the only thing I can really think of as a good defense against that. Everyone tends to go to Oh my God, AI is terrible'cause of cybersecurity risk or enabling a bioterrorist, which would be terrible. But The defense part of that AI is the only thing I know that could be the defense. All of those things are humanity level, like billions of people. I don't know what you would Yeah. So uh I have a long list, but I think of two that wanted to highlight. One

15:47 We have shortened our attention span through our technology. Sorry, what was that? Shortened Oh my god, you got me. Uh Well done. But

16:01 My sense is that these systems can actually help us to pay more attention and help us with executive function. And that's not just to offload the executive function, but to retrain us. on where executive function is positive. Without AI, we could be going down a sort of very short five second attention rabbit hole where we go back to the days when we were mostly looking at pre-attentive cues in case there was a lion that was about to eat our head or something like that. Kind of related to this? My hope is that it helps us to value some things that we have been devaluing. Education is a good example.

16:36 And in large part it is because I think this can help in tutoring not to replace teachers, but to give more support. I mean, any time someone has one on one support. along with the guidance from a teacher, that seems like a win in my mind. Nice to meet you. Hey Sean. The thing that's been most surprising about the foundation models is how quickly they are growing in their capability to do general things. So you talk about the biology exam, but also Math Olympiad and others, and these aren't specialized models. So

17:10 There's a lot of people here who probably aren't working on foundation models. And so I'm curious, like Sean, for inflection and Reed for you generally, how you give people advice on here are the interesting things to work on outside of the foundation models that aren't gonna be in GPT six and seven and instantly taken away from you. Yeah, that's a great question. The world has been eaten up by LLMs. But actually AI, which was almost an embarrassing thing to say you worked on for years, is a really broad field. And so if I was giving a recommendation, it would be look at all of the different forms in which we use AI and some of those are rule based systems. Something super exciting to me is the combination of uh knowledge graphs together with LLMs, for instance, right? Where you have things that are like

17:56 We're getting into this regime where we have to be comfortable with probabilistic systems and putting together deterministic with probabilistic systems. And this is complex. Like the life work of folks like Michael Bernstein is human in the loop for those systems. The work that Vakash is doing at MIT, right? And so when you hear AI, if you're not familiar with it, realize that it's about fifteen disciplines, one of them which has to do with machine learning and deep learning and LLMs, and you're way down in this little Node. But there's a whole world to actually be adding in here. So

18:31 There tends to be this thought, hey, I build a business off GPD model X and then X plus one blows my business out of the water because it's just better than that and it doesn't really matter. And we've already seen that with some of the businesses that were built off GPD three, for example, when four came out. Now If you're building businesses, working on projects Think about the LMs will be available in evolving and multiple ways. That'll be great. Chart your product or your service strategy based on an expected model evolution that's not you just always training your own model.

19:03 One angle of that is a scaffolding because one of the things that we already have with today's like I could literally say everyone in this audience is not using LLMs to the extent that they could to empower themselves. Like we are under using these things right now. It's one of the reasons I force myself to do queries constantly like I try to get a trigger where I go, I'm thinking about a problem. Okay, what's the prompt? Just to get into using it because right now They are much more capable than you think. And the reason that that doesn't show through, and even though it's a very fast adopted product. It's the scaffolding, it's the affordances, it's how it's engaged with. Now, if you just build a thin little wrapper around it, the thin little wrapper is a thin little wrapper. Other people can copy it. It might get blown out of the water, et cetera, et cetera. So you have to think about that as part of your strategy. Now, you might also do things that Sean was gesturing out, which is like, well, actually my AI agent combined with a knowledge database that's rare and important could be something that's important. It could be medical, could be something else. I actually know of people that are doing this kind of things, even for like call it engine design, which, by the way, is super important for climate.

20:12 So you have to think about that you have a product or business strategy that Takes the evolution of these models, including the fact that the first model you may have built with may not actually be the absolute best model. Next year. Next six months, eighteen months, you may have access to that other model, you may not. How do you operate in that environment in terms of that? And that's how you think about it entrepreneurially.

20:38 Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida. Associate Producer is Masha Makatanina. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pugh. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Letal Molad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter. And please make sure. to check out our YouTube channel.

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