Reid Hoffman on AI’s new tune, Davos, and the need for CEO courage

People like to have a cause celeb and kind of virtue signaling of I'm really good and that that AI thing is bad. It's the greatest human amplifier for quality of life that's been built. You're saying go somewhere else. It's like it's like the Bernie Sanders does no data centers here, build them all in Canada. Have Canada get all the economic benefit. Let's make sure we Americans don't. It's crazy thinking, it's stupid thinking. You have responsibilities that are commensurate with your power, and so you need to speak up. I myself get uh regularly called out by the White House. We need to be speaking up and we need to be figuring out how to solve our problems together. That's Reed Hoffman, of course, founding host of Masters of Scale, co-founder of LinkedIn and tech investor. I've had Reed as a guest on the show many times. Rarely has he been this animated. With the World Economic Forum in Davos as a backdrop, Reed and I talk about the latest in AI, as well as the leadership challenges and opportunities facing the business community. We talk about music and medical care, how the prospect of a tech bubble is and isn't impacting his own investing right now, and we dip into the roadblocks.

Posed by political headwinds from Ice activities to Denmark. It's been a busy start to 2026, so let's get to it. I'm Bob Saphian, and this is Rapid Response. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Graylock, founding host of Master Scale, co-host of uh podcast possible, read, great as always to uh to chat with you. It is always great to see you, Bob.

I have to start by thanking you. You sent me a holiday gift of Christmas music, an album of all AI generated songs. Here it is. You're on you're Your own creations. What sparked that project? We're actually gonna put it up on Spotify because we got such positive responses to it. It was a couple things. So one is when you look at AI and the kind of superagency of ex of increasing human expression, whether it's text

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