IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reid Hoffman Discusses the Upside of AI with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton

On January 28, Institute of Global Politics (IGP) Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reid Hoffman — cofounder of LinkedIn and Manas AI and partner at Greylock — joined IGP Faculty Advisory Board Chair Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton at the 92NY Kaufmann Concert Hall to discuss artificial intelligence’s positive potential. That potential is the focus of his new book, Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future. 

Hoffman told the audience he’s troubled by how much the possible drawbacks and negative consequences have come to dominate public debate about AI. According to a 2023 survey from Pew Research Center, only 10 percent of US adults are more excited about the increased use of AI than they are concerned compared to 52 percent who are more concerned than they are excited.

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“Most people think of AI as being of a totally different dimension,” especially when compared to previous technological innovations, Clinton said. Fear about emerging technologies is not new, Hoffman noted. In fact, the public anxieties expressed about AI, such as concerns that it will spread misinformation and destroy our institutions, are, in Hoffman’s estimation, “very similar to the dialogue around the printing press” — more than half a millennium ago. 

With new technologies, “part of what we tend to do as human beings is start with what can go wrong,” he said, which is part of why we “need to approach these transitions with more grace and think about what could possibly go right.” 

In his book, Hoffman identifies four groups of voices in public discourse about AI: Doomers, who forecast an AI apocalypse; Gloomers, who are more concerned with the risks and want to move more slowly; Zoomers, who are anti-regulation and want to move as fast as possible; and Bloomers, who embrace a “learn as you go” approach to AI who want to move quickly but smartly. 

Hoffman and Clinton both consider themselves Bloomers. “We should learn as we go, although I do worry about all the people who don’t see the curve and drive off over the cliff,” Clinton said, emphasizing the need for guardrails as AI continues to develop.

“You don’t expect perfection at the beginning,” Hoffman said, “you do iterative deployment and development” based on concerns that become clear with feedback. Automobiles were not invented with bumpers and seat belts, he pointed out as a historical comparison.

Hoffman observed that societies who fail to embrace AI’s beneficial prospects risk being left behind. “What we’re seeing here is the cognitive revolution. It will have the same significance on our society as the industrial revolution,” he said. He pointed out that “places that endorsed the industrial revolution engendered ages of prosperity,” whereas groups such as the Luddites (who opposed 19th-century industrial innovations) did not share in that prosperity. 

“If we slow down, we won’t be the ones to create the AI future,” Hoffman warned. “I want the AI future to be [shaped by] American intelligence.”

Hoffman said the US currently leads the AI race. “We have AI capability” within American large-scale tech companies and “we have an amazing number of startups,” Hoffman said. The only place rivaling American ingenuity in this space, according to Hoffman, is China. 

Chinese AI firm DeepSeek recently roiled financial markets when it announced that its new model outperforms OpenAI’s ChatGPT but costs far less to build. For Hoffman, DeepSeek serves as a clear signpost in the AI innovation journey. “This is, in fact, an intense tech competition and DeepSeek demonstrates that in a very compelling way,” he said.

“We are in a competition now that in the past didn’t exist,” Clinton said, noting that China’s emergence as a driver of innovation threatens to upend America’s longstanding position as a leader on the global stage.

The way for the US to retain its competitive edge is “to play to our strengths, to be more American,” Hoffman said.

Both Hoffman and Clinton acknowledged that as with any technological transition, there are people at risk of being left behind. To keep up with this fast changing world, Hoffman urged the audience to be more curious about AI. It is okay to be skeptical and nervous about AI, he advised, but “add being AI-curious to it.”