Reid Hoffman

You know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Similarly, you know, like, for example, when the phonograph had to be pitched, it had to be pitched as, it's going to be used for church music, right?

Because it'll help people to, like, have church music at home.

Because the kid's like, well, what are people going to do this with?

Are they going to be distracted?

Are they going to be sitting on their couch just like television, doing nothing?

Television is going to destroy society, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, as a matter of fact, we had this discussion around smartphones, you know, within our memories.

And so the thing to remember is to say, yes, it's going to completely change the future.

It's going to change the future in the way that we experience our agency, how we think of ourselves as kind of operative agents, what we're capable of doing, what other people are capable of doing.

But that change has thus far always ended up very, like every single case has ended up being very positive.

Now the transitions have been difficult,

The printing press, which was described as, you know, like, oh, it's going to destroy human cognition by reducing the ability of memory.

It's going to create a whole bunch of misinformation.

The truth tellers in society, which in those days were priests, are going to be undermined.

And, of course, since we as human beings are very bad at these kind of transitions, it led to nearly a century of religious war.

So you go, okay, so the outcome can be really good, but what do we do with the transitions?

Now, one of the things I'm pointing out in the AI context, and part of the reason for writing Super Agency and part of the reason for doing this is to say, well, in fact, we can use both lessons from the past, these

technology transformations, and we can use AI to help us.

You say, well, shoot, my job is now going to be done with a human using AI.