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Opposition to “woke AI” is “detrimental to American success” and economic growth, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman said Friday.
Hoffman — the LinkedIn cofounder who was an early investor in OpenAI and recently launched an AI drug discovery startup — was asked at Semafor’s World Economy Summit about tech investor David Sacks’ role as the White House’s “AI czar,” in which he’s tasked with crafting an AI action plan.
Sacks and other right-wing tech figures have repeatedly railed against what they perceive as “woke” AI models from US firms — for example, AI image generators that depicted historically white figures, like the US Founding Fathers, as people of color.
Such criticism “makes a very nice political headline,” Hoffman said, but amounts to “noises” and a “foolish” perspective.
“Focus on the things that matter. Now, they may get there. I hope they do,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump’s administration.
He lauded the Biden administration’s 2023 executive order on AI, which aimed to reduce the risks AI poses; Trump rescinded that order shortly after taking office.
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Hoffman said focusing on risks of bioterrorism and cybercrime — and thinking of AI as an industrial mechanism — are more important than a system’s ideological tilt.
He likened the AI boom to the industrial revolution, when countries that embraced the new technology also got ahead economically. Today, autocratic states are implementing AI much faster than democratic nations, Hoffman said, raising the stakes for the US to keep up.
“What it means industrially matters a lot more than [asking], ‘Did it make a woke statement or not?’ It’s like, whatever,” Hoffman said.
The Semafor View
The boundaryless pools of money that defined finance in the last 20 years are retreating, and capital is becoming a national resource to be protected. Public and private markets seem set to converge: Where they meet — and which firms stake out territory — could determine finance’s winners over the next decade.