Hoffman is explaining why college students react so negatively to AI even though, by his estimate, nearly all of them use it regularly. He thinks the framing is wrong but says the reaction follows naturally from what students are being told.
well so there's a couple different sorts of using the tools so one is sometimes people using them don't realize they're using them right yes exactly and then two is they're using it but they're kind of using it for oh like where is that cafe in midtown that i wanted to find and so forth and then they're simultaneously being told oh the people who are building this think there's an extinction risk in humanity or it's gonna take out 25 of white collar jobs in a couple years and like well why are you doing that right like like are you crazy um and then they go you must not be crazy is it just because you're gonna get really wealthy like why are you like and so so they can simultaneously have this negative feel it's a little bit like i got asked um by a friend of mine he's like well why are the college students booing ai in commencement speeches because they're all using it a lot it's like look here's the thing you know and your friends they're probably drafting their commencement speech like how
do i avoid this problem
yes exactly and i was like look to your average college student from what they're being told they're like okay you gave me a homework helper and you took away my career take your homework helper back and give me my career back right like and that's incorrect as a framing but if that's what the the the the the kind of the the the words that you're being told are then naturally you have a very negative verse reaction even though probably the vast majority like 99 of college students use AI regularly.
Do you have a prediction on what sort of AI is going to mean for jobs over the next decade?
Well, anyone who has a solid prediction is probably self-delusional. Because one of the things is a little bit like getting on the road and steering is there's a lot of different ways it can play out. And I've heard smart people argue everything from, you know, the Dario 25% white collar bloodbath to there's going to be zero issue whatsoever, right? Like it'll be the most empowering thing and people will use it and so forth. And smart people, like, so the whole range is smart. So the way that I tend to think about it is what here's kind of the more crisp thing. So one is the speed at which existing companies will change is not nearly as fast as the technologists think because how companies learn things, like for example, if you go to most companies now, like, well, we're looking around to buy an AI class, and you're like, you know, we got to train our employees, we got to buy an AI class. You're like, no, you could just use AI for that. Ask AI how to use AI. This is the whole point. You know, like, you don't need to go like AI for dummies. No one should buy that book. Just like, you know, don't do that. On the other hand, so those will be much slower than most of the, oh my God, it's going to be here in a year or two. But what will happen is new kinds of companies will be created that are much more AI native, and those will be very strong competitors. And then that will start forcing the competition. And so that's the pattern that once we're in it, I think we can make predictions about, well, how will the major employment white-collar jobs, whether they're sales or customer service, other kinds of, what do those, how do those end up, you know, transforming? How
quickly are AI native companies out-competing the old guards rather than the old guard being like, goodbye, everybody, we figured out how to use AI.