Possible with Reid Hoffman

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1. Why Democrats won the 2026 midterms | Reid Hoffman

   5 november 2026 · 22 min

   Afspelen
   After Democrats win the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms, Reid Hoffman sees a clear demand: an economy that works for everyday Americans. He and Aria Finger examine Democratic breakthroughs in Texas and across the South, and what those candidates got right. Reid tackles the tension in his own political giving: why he keeps donating while backing efforts to get big money out of elections. They also discuss why Elon Musk’s spending fell short and what tech leaders who embraced the Trump administration must do to rebuild trust. From campaign donations to data centers, the conversation returns to one question: what are you doing for the American people? Lees meer

   For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

2. AI’s midterm coalitions, Anthropic’s safety bill, and VC conflicts

   28 oktober 2026 · 29 min

   Afspelen
   Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger weigh in on AI policy heading into the midterms, from Bernie Sanders and Greg Casar’s proposal to ban superintelligence to Anthropic’s own frontier AI safety bill. They map the political coalitions forming around AI regulation, including a bipartisan push from Chris Murphy and Josh Hawley to hold developers liable when AI agents hack. Reid explains why pausing AI for a congressional process would be a mistake. He argues AI companies should work with any administration but stay transparent about political spending, and that government can borrow expertise through councils and working groups. He also makes the case for his dual mandate: keep America in the lead on AI while making sure it helps people now. They also examine Satya Nadella’s call to treat AI models as potential insider risks, the public feud between Factory and Cognition, and whether VCs can still back competing AI startups. Along the way, Reid uses water-cooler conversations to explore where company IP ends and human nature begins. Lees meer

   For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

3. Karpathy’s AI gap, free Adobe clones, and AI’s effect on persistence

   21 oktober 2026 · 27 min

   Afspelen
   What happens to software businesses when AI makes their products easier to recreate? Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger explore what a developer’s effort to rebuild seven Adobe apps with Claude means for software pricing, competitive moats, and intellectual property. They also unpack Andrej Karpathy’s AI capability gap: why everyday users and researchers inside frontier labs have very different views of what AI can do. Then, they examine a randomized study showing that brief AI assistance caused—not just correlated with—reduced persistence after that help was removed. Reid makes the case for AI as a cognitive exoskeleton—and for designing tools that build grit alongside capability. Lees meer

   For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

4. Why Americans are so worried about AI

   14 oktober 2026 · 28 min

   Afspelen
   Only 36% of AI-aware Americans expect AI to mostly help their country, according to a Gallup and Microsoft survey. Reid traces that unease to three forces: fear that the future will be worse than the present (which AI amplifies when prosperity has not reached much of the country), an instinct to protect what Americans have, and doubts about who will share in AI’s gains. With Aria Finger, he makes the case for winning at AI while spreading its prosperity, including through AI and robotics in manufacturing. They also examine HackerRank’s Chakra AI interviewer and why hiring should remain a team decision. Finally, OpenAI’s plan to test visual ads in ChatGPT raises another question: can a free AI assistant earn trust while carrying advertising? Reid calls for a clear separation between ads and answers, enforceable commitments, and third-party audits. Lees meer

   For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

5. Building safety tools no one can take away with ROOST’s Camille François

   7 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 24 min

   Afspelen
   Protecting people online shouldn’t depend on whether a company keeps its safety tools effective, affordable, and available. ROOST founding president Camille François joins Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger to explain how a nonprofit is turning trust and safety into shared infrastructure. She digs into why social media was a blip in how we build tech, what Discord did after Twitter bought Smyte and shut it down, and how two people running a fandom app caught 19 cases of child exploitation in two weeks. A daycare switching its Alexa wake word to "computer" becomes a lesson in how the next generation should relate to machines. They also examine why policy without tools is ineffective, how a shared safety commons helps startups compete, and what it will take to make safety as invisible as encryption. Lees meer

6. Who gets to pull the plug on AI?

   30 september 2026 · 15 min

   Afspelen
   Reid Hoffman sees promise in an AI buildout and wants its financial risks in the open. He and Aria Finger unpack a Financial Times report on up to $300 billion in AI infrastructure guarantees largely absent from the balance sheets of technology companies. They explore California Governor Gavin Newsom’s push for independent lab auditors and an AI kill switch, and discuss what effective federal oversight could look like. Reid explains how these proposals differ from the 2024 bill he opposed and makes the case for an international cyber treaty. A Truth Social poll to rename AI also prompts a debate about why “artificial” sells the technology short. Lees meer

7. When AI's builders sound the alarm

   23 september 2026 · 41 min

   Afspelen
   Can America lead in AI while making life better for everyday Americans? Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger weigh in on Dario Amodei’s call to pace the frontier, and Reid makes the case for America’s dual mandate: leading in AI while delivering prosperity for the many. Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger puts his personal estimate of AI-driven extinction risk above 10%. They unpack that warning alongside Sam Altman’s support for slower development and David Sacks calling Anthropic and OpenAI a cartel. Reid identifies biological threats, cyberattacks, and job disruption as the real risks, makes the case for steering over pausing, and explains why kill switches matter. From data centers that don’t raise local electricity bills to a free AI medical assistant for every American, they explore what rebuilding public trust could require. Lees meer

   Read “AI for All Americans” on Substack: https://reidhoffman.substack.com/p/ai-dual-mandate

8. Seven creators, $1,000 a week in AI tokens, one summer

   16 september 2026 · 44 min

   Afspelen
   Reid Hoffman and Parth Patil argue that if your AI experiments always work, you’re not pushing hard enough. Wrapping up the Tokens to the Future series, they revisit seven grantees’ experiments with $1,000 a week each in tokens. Their conversations span Dungeons & Dragons worldbuilding, an iOS game built in a weekend, and personal agents whose usefulness compounds over years. They explore how AI can shift more people from execution-focused “cog jobs” to creative “spark jobs,” and why expertise can sometimes make new possibilities harder to see. Throughout, they ask what to delegate and where story, pacing, and judgment still demand human direction. Plus, Parth’s example of ChatGPT picking seven for a “random” number raises a bigger question: how do you get surprise from a system built to predict? Lees meer

9. Can we defend against AI hacks? | Dozie Anazia

   9 september 2026 · 41 min

   Afspelen
   When AI can fake your CFO’s face and voice, what still counts as proof of identity? Infosec Analyst Dozie Anazia joins Reid Hoffman and Parth Patil to explain how AI is transforming cyberattacks, penetration testing, and autonomous defense. Drawing on projects including the Breakfast news app and Aegis URL scanner, he shows how Claude and Codex can build software, uncover an XSS flaw, and run a pen test—while still falling short of unsupervised network defense and elite human hackers. They explore purple teaming, agent-versus-agent review, and the advantage defenders retain over attackers. Plus, one low-tech defense against a stolen voice: a family safe word. Lees meer

10. Training robots for a world they’ve never seen

    2 september 2026 · 59 min

    Afspelen
    Useful robots won’t be programmed one task at a time; they’ll need to adapt to unfamiliar objects, environments, and robot bodies. Physical Intelligence cofounder Chelsea Finn (named last month to the TIME100 AI list for 2026) joins Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger to explain how general-purpose robot models learn to act in the messy physical world. She explores why lower-quality training data can strengthen a model, what months of failed laundry-folding attempts revealed, and how the same system can work across different robot platforms. A robot mistaking an oven for a drawer becomes a lesson in the strange line between useful generalization and obvious error. They also examine why robot demos can mislead, how hardware reliability can stall progress, and what it will take to move AI off the screen and into the world. Lees meer

    Congratulations to Chelsea, recently named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI:

    https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/chelsea-finn/

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