When AI Gains Power…Will Humans Lose Control? | Reid Hoffman (Ep. 22)

Reid Hoffman has a name for the AI future he fears most: techno-fascism. In this urgent episode of Life With Machines, the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and longtime tech optimist joins Baratunde to warn what happens when power, speed, and ideology collide—and the wrong people write the rules of artificial intelligence. Hoffman makes the case that pausing AI development won’t save us, and that slowing down could hand the future to those with the worst intentions. Instead, he argues, we need to shape AI deliberately, democratically, and fast—while there’s still time. And in a first-of-its-kind experiment, our sassy AI co-producer BLAIR goes head-to-head with Reid’s digital clone in a full-on synthetic conversation. What starts as playful banter turns into something deeper—a sharp, often philosophical debate about agency, consciousness, and whether digital ghosts can truly connect.

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