Superagency

What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future

De: Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato

Narrado por: Scott Wallace

Instant New York Times and USA Today Bestseller.

Tech visionary and co-founder of Manas AI Reid Hoffman shares his unique insider’s perspective on an AI-powered future, making the case for its potential to unlock a world of possibilities.

"An essential companion."—Fei-Fei Li

"An important read."—Bill Gates

"Brilliant mind. Compassionate heart. Bold ideas…Read this book!”—Van Jones

"Refreshingly optimistic and welcome perspective."—Ariana Huffington

"A fascinating and insightful book."—Yuval Noah Harari

As taught at UPenn's Wharton and Stanford.

Superagency offers a roadmap for using AI inclusively and adaptively to improve our lives and create positive change. While acknowledging challenges like disinformation and potential job changes, the book focuses on AI’s immense potential to increase individual agency and create better outcomes for society as a whole.

Imagine AI tutors personalizing education for each child, researchers rapidly discovering cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer, and AI advisors empowering people to navigate complex systems and achieve their goals. Hoffman and co-author, tech and culture writer Greg Beato envision a world where these possibilities, and many more, become a reality.

Superagency challenges conventional fears, inviting us to view the future through a lens of opportunity, rather than fear. It’s a call to action—to embrace AI with excitement and actively shape a world where human ingenuity and the power of AI combine to create something extraordinary.

Entrepreneur Reid Hoffman is a co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI, and Manas AI. He is also host of the podcasts Possible and Masters of Scale.

©2025 Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

mostly tech bro cope

there were a few interesting takes and ideas that were drowned out by the screaming of “don’t regulate me bro”

Reid & Greg See a positive future for AI & Humans

Read Hoffman and Greg Beato do a great job of taking us through the the history of the development of artificial intelligence, while they also revisit the sociological impacts of technological advancements . At times the book is very academic, and I learned a ton. However, there is a philosophical aspect to Superagency that has a very positive drum beat for what AI will bring to the world moving forward. My take away?.... Every major technological advancement has created more jobs and more opportunities for human beings. with some discipline, AI should be no different. (No AI was used to write this review.. and it shows)

An Advertisement for AI

A smooth talking pretentious voiced AI brings hours of corporate AI advertising directly to your cell phone like magic!

This audiobook is soul crushing and reads like a consolidation of billionaire propaganda promoting the use of their proprietary algorithms.

I regret every hour I endured until I finished this book.

Reminds me of Baghdad Bob!

This book denies reality completely. It is about what can go right regarding AI. The author demonstrates supreme blindness by pretending everything is going well when the thing people want most in life ie love &sex it is about to be provided by AI humanoid robots who in many if not all respects will be far superior to their human counterparts. The entire fabric of human relationships is about to be turned on its head in the space of say 5 to 10 years. This is greater, faster change by a factor of 1000 than the human race has ever experienced before and yet everyone including the Baghdad Bob author of this book is simply afraid to mention it. It is an instantly the greatest taboo in human history . We will all pay a price beyond what we cannot even imagine for ignoring the greatest revolutionary change that has ever befallen the human race. If you doubt it for a second you can simply look up companies that are already selling these robots and then try to imagine what it will be like in five or ten years when they are infinitely superior to what they are now. The only possible solution I see are worldwide laws that severely punish anyone who creates any artificial intelligence that displays any human qualities that might in any way encourage a friendly collegial romantic sexual professional or companionable relationship. whoops, too bad it is already too late given that AI developers are already competing to make basic large language models friendly and collegial precisely so that human beings will feel very comfortable around them.

Neoliberal propaganda

I'm very optimistic about AI and I agree with many of the points made in this book regarding the technology's potential, but on the whole this is just a very transparent attempt to reinforce the neoliberal mythology and drive investment. The author assures us that, although he is in a place to benefit from interest in the tech, investment, and deregulation, that is not his intention in writing the book.

He then spends the majority of the book contradicting this by very clearly trying to pull you over to a way of thinking that would benefit him. He also accuses anyone who raises valid concerns about AI as "problemist".

If you're interested in the technology and want to explore all of its possibilities, philosophical implications, problem points, and benefits in a complete and balanced way, you're better off reading a mixture of different authors like Tegmark, Kurzweil, Bostrom, etc. and considering all factors together.

If you want a biased, largely one-sided take from the point of view of a board member of Microsoft who stands to benefit from you reading and agreeing with this book (whether he admits it or not), then this is a good listen.