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Reid Hoffman returns to Rapid Response to explore todays AI landscape, and the future promised by a concept he calls superagency. Hoffman shares his vision for what an AI-infused workday will soon look like, how we should address societys greatest fears about technology, and more. As we enter a daunting new erapolitically, socially, and technologicallyHoffman urges listeners to choose curiosity over fear. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. So you have a new book out today called Superagency with coauthor Greg Beato. Some people have called the book a surprisingly positive take on AI and on humanity. I think the surprise is less about you being optimistic than about the topic, that there’s so much skepticism right now about the future of both AI and humanity. Can you start first by defining the word agency, and then what superagency is beyond that? So agency is our ability to express ourselves in the world, to make choices, to configure our environment, to say, “This is . . . what I want to have happen to me, to my environment around me.” Obviously nobody has infinite agency, but we all have some agency, and we aspire to that as part of what we do. AI, like other kinds of general-purpose technologies that have come before, gives us superpowers. Superpowers are like a car gives you superpower for mobility, the phone gives you superpowers for connectivity and information. AI gives you superpowers for the entire world of information, navigation, decision-making, etc. And what superagency is, is not just when you as an individual get the superpower, but when you and many of the people around you, when millions of people throughout society also get that superpower. Just as a car doesn’t just transform your mobility, your ability to go somewhere, when other people’s mobility is similarly transformed, like a doctor can come for a house call, a friend can come to visit. So the society that you experience with this kind of superagency is when many people get the same superpowers, and we’re all benefiting from our own and from others. I mean, the fears around AI, I guess, are that AI will eventually limit human control. And when you’re talking about superagency, you’re sort of positing the opposite, that we’re going to have more control. Well, it’s actually different, but more in some important ways. These technological transformations of agency are never only additive. They’re mostly additive. Like the car is broadly additive. But of course, if your agency was previously that you were a driver of a horse carriage, that agency changes. Like when you have a phone, you can reach out to other people, but other people can also reach out to you. So you’re available. Agency kind of transforms in these cases. You can already see it if you start playing with these agents. You can now do things and accomplish things that you couldn’t accomplish before, which unlocks your ability to learn things, your ability to communicate things, your ability to do things faster and in more interesting ways. That’s part of the reason why it’s really important that we actually play with these technologies. We engage with them. We do serious things with them. We do what I call in the book “iterative deployment,” and that’s what’s so important for us all engaging on this path heading towards superagency. You’ve been preaching about the potential of AI for some time. You wrote a book with ChatGPT to demonstrate the potential. You’ve made digital twins of yourself to try demystifying it. Not everyone is convinced. What do you feel like you have to fight most in getting people over this, and what prompted you to do the book now as a way to try to make that change? My biggest hope and persuasion is that people who are AI fearful or skeptical may begin to add some AI curiosity and kind of say, “Hey, look, I should try to play with this.” Part of what superagency is about is to say, look, it doesn’t just matter for yourself, but it’s other people getting exposure to this that will also be good for your life. For example, if you think about the fact that I have a smartphone, I have a medical assistant that is as good or better than the average doctor. Would you rather have a radiologist read your X-ray scan, or would you rather have a radiologist with an AI? And the answer is with an AI every day of the week, eight days a week, because that then gives me a much better health outcome. So it’s not just me and my superpowers, but other people gaining superpowers also helps me. Even if I’m not engaging quite the way you would like me to most, I’m still going to get some of the benefits of this. It’s going to be part of cultural changes. Ultimately how people get to adopting and adapting their lifestyle to these new technologies is because they begin to see, “Oh, actually, in fact, this is a new, very good thing.” As opposed to when cars were first introduced, they were considered so dangerous that they had to have a person walking in front of them, waving an orange flag. Now, we got rid of that regulation very quickly. And it’s like, okay, well, they’re dangerous, but can we contain and shape the danger in ways that are small relative to this massive benefit of superagency and mobility? AI acting on its own seems to be what scares people the most about it. But I’ve thought that the likelihood that I’m going to lose my job to an AI alone may happen at some point, but I’m more likely now to lose my job to someone who uses AI better than I do, right? Although if I’m losing my job, maybe it doesn&8217;t matter that much either way, which one I’m losing it to. Part of the thing that I love about thinking about technology is whenever you think there’s a problem, including a problem created by technology, you think, Can technology be a solution? So, yes, I do think that a lot of jobs will then start requiring the use of AI and AI agents as part of being professional. It’s a little bit like if you said, “Hey, I’m a professional today, and I don’t use a computer, or I don’t use a smartphone.” It’s like, no, not really good. So there are technological requirements, which increase with new tool sets for doing jobs, and AI is definitely going to be one of those. That being said, part of the solution, you go, “Oh, my God, am I going to be out of a job?” Well, actually . . . this gets back to the book being for technologists and thinking about human agency: How do we help people have their agency to learn the new skills and say, “Hey, yes, my job is going to be taken over by a human using an AI.” Well, how about that human being me? Or, okay, so this particular one doesn’t work, but how can the AI help me find a different job? In many ways, I think we will naturally get there, but I think, you know, just because we’ll naturally get there doesn’t mean we can’t get there better by being intentional in having design. It’s one of the reasons I identify myself as a bloomer in the book versus a zoomer, because I don’t think that everything will just be great with technology. I think we have to steer it intentionally, because when human beings encounter new general-purpose technologies as early as the printing press, all the rest of them, we mess up in various ways. We handle the transition of new technologies badly. And part of the reason why I’m doing this book, this podcast, things like this, is to try to say, Let’s do this transition much better. It doesn’t mean we won’t have suffering in the transition. But if you embrace it with some agency, we can possibly make that both less painful and have more opportunities. We are entering into the cognitive industrial revolution, and all you have to do is look at any simple books about the industrial revolution to recognize transitions can be painful. Let’s do this one better.
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E-Commerce
Paola Antonelli has a litmus test for worthy design. People often ask the Museum of Modern Arts senior curator of architecture and design how she decides what to add to the museum’s collection, and she gives them simple instructions: Close your eyes and think, If this object did not exist, would the world miss out? she says. Of course, filling one of the world’s preeminent art museums is not quite that easy. Antontelli says you also have to consider an object’s form, function, and problem-solving utilitybut her litmus test is something she returns to again and again. It doesn’t mean that something has to be necessary, Antonelli clarifies. Take, for example, the Tamagotchi. Totally superfluous, she says. [But] I think it would be a pity that it didn’t exist, right? Antonelli is telling me this at a preview of MoMAs newest exhibition, Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, which opened on a snowy New York City Sunday. The show examines design objects as change agents that have had a deep impact on society, as far ranging as the humble Post-it note, first Apple desktop computer, and a portable handwashing station developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design changes human behavior, Antonelli contends, and this exhibition proves her case in dozens of design inventions. Objects have consequences, she says. That’s really, in a way, the motto for the exhibition. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] This isnt the first time Antonelli has examined the social impact of designers and the objects they introduce to society. She launched the content series Design Emergency with Alice Rawsthorn in 2020 to examine the many ways design solves problems in moments of crisis. The series later became a book. Designers are trained to traditionally and classically solve problems, Antonelli told me in 2020. Design is a word that is as big as art or culture, she added. So its difficult to say what design can do in a particular situation. But it definitely is a lot more than just chairs and posters. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] Pirouette encompasses, yes, chairs (the Eamess RAR rocking armchair; the Monobloc chair; the Aeron office chair, to name a few) and posters (okay, lets say signs: a parking sign; a route sign for British roadways) but also a wide range of objects pulled mostly from MoMAs collection spanning furniture, electronics, symbols, fashion, wearables, industrial design, product design, and information design from the 1930s to the present. Milton Glaser, I NY concept sketch, 1976, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Photo: 2024 NYS Dept. of Economic Development] The I love New York concept sketch, NASA worm logo, Tabi boots, Crocs, a Telfar bag, a Bic pen, an infographic depicting Brazils deforestation rates: What these objects have in common is their invention. They changed the way people thought, saw, or interacted with the world. They all represent experiments with new materials, technologies and concepts, and offer unconventional solutions to conventional problems, reads part of the exhibitions opening text. In these objects, designers have channeled their vision and ingenuity, distilling energy into momentum and setting them in motion like ballet dancers performing pirouettes. Ed Hawkins, Warming Stripes 1850-2023, 2018-ongoing [Image: Ed Hawkins] I asked Antonelli how she curated an exhibition with such a range of seemingly unrelated objects. In some cases, it’s very free-flowing. It’s almost like word association, she says. In others, it’s really juxtapositionand putting objects into conversation with each other. I pointed out how she had situated a pair of Crocs, Tabis, a Telfar bag, and a plastic Monobloc chair near each other in one corner of the exhibition. The Telfar bag is there, and the conversation that it’s having really directly, in my opinion, is with the Margiela Tabis. But also it’s having a conversation with the Crocs next to it because Telfars motto is This is not for you, it’s for everyone. So there’s also this idea of making things for everybody. Antonelli then connects the Crocs and Monoblo chair. They’re so ambiguous, she says. [Theyre] amazing mass products enjoyed by billions of people. But they also have this flip side. The Monoblock chair has become almost synonymous with waste and with consumerism, she says. Meanwhile, Crocs are at the center of an eternal discussion that gives the design tension: Are the Crocs beautiful? Are they ugly? There are all these different associations that somebody like you, who’s conversant in design might catch, she says. Others who are less erudite, because everybody knows design, will catch them anyway, but at a different level. And maybe they will not catch them at all, but they will focus on every single object. Shigetaka Kurita, Emoji, 1998-1999, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Image: 2024 NTT DOCOMO] Each object, Antonelli sayswhether M&Ms candies, a Moka Express, Sony Walkman, or Bernadette Thompsons money manicure artificial nailsshifted the way we operate in the world. Some designs are so intuitive and intrinsic to our day-to-day lives as to be imperceptible, like the flat-bottomed paper bag. Other objects are more subtle and esoteric, like Sabine Marceliss resin Candy Cube, which might have an effect on other designers and percolate into society that way. As she said of information design in 2020: Our actions dont have reactions in a very unequivocal way, but rather have reverberations that can go in many directions. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] The exhibition text warns that objects have the power to shift the ways we behave, for good and for bad. The objects in this exhibition exemplify human ingenuity, providing new answers to previously unsolved challenges that you can see with your own eyes. Some of those solutions, like the injection-molded plastic Monobloc chair invented in the 1950sa quintessential mass-market product that provides people around the world an easy to clean and cheap place to sithave consequences that aren’t so black and white as good and bad. It’s always time to make people understand how important design is, Antonelli says. But right now, I would love people to have something constructive to think about. Design is a lens to look at the world in a constructive way. It’s a beautiful expression of human creativity, positively directed, in the case of the objects that are in this exhibition, at least.
Category:
E-Commerce
Starbucks’s new CEO, Brian Niccol, made a bet last September that the company could draw customers back into its stores by reintroducing personal touches you might see at smaller, third-place sort of coffee shops, like handwritten names on to-go cups. Here we are about four months later, and Starbucks has beaten Wall Street expectations, announcing $9.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of last year during its earnings call Tuesday. Niccol attributed the chain’s performance to “getting Back to Starbucks and those things that have always set us apart. (Though it’s worth noting that the companys sales are still down year over year.) Starbucks developed a back-to-basics approach to reintroduce itself to consumers. Changes include a simplified menu, a new no-loitering policy, an expanded refill policy, ceramic mugs for in-café sipping, and the return of handwritten notes on to-go cups to better connect with customers and elevate the café experience for those who choose to stay and work,” Niccol said. The strategy comes after the chain experienced falling sales at its struggling coffee shops due to factors like rising prices and longer wait times. Niccol, a former Chipotle CEO, wrote in a letter after assuming the top post at Starbucks that its stores “have always been more than a place to get a drink, but admitted that the company hasn’t always delivered on that experience and that telling its story would be part of its comeback. Bringing back handwritten notes on coffee cups is the focus of a new ad spot launched last weekend. Set to the 2008 hit That’s Not My Name by the Ting Tings, it shows baristas putting pen to coffee cup to write out messages like “Let’s goooo!” and “Shine on.” The closing message is “Your pick-me-up is ready,” with “pick-me-up” styled to look like it’s written out by hand. Ad agency Anomaly developed the spot, which received mostly positive reactions online, even among people who said they didn’t like Starbucks coffee. At least when it comes to ecommerce, a study published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing in 2022 found that handwritten thank-you notes have the potential to double future sales. “Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers,” the study’s authors wrote. Improving its app is another step Starbucks says it’s taking as part of its comeback, but a simple analog solution could also prove useful. Might what works for online retailers prove equally successful for selling Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espressos? Starbucks certainly hopes so.
Category:
E-Commerce
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