The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 47 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Hoffman: Trump abused state power for personal gain in first term
“Even in the first administration, there was the, there were some abuses of instruments of state for personal gain, for personal power. And that is, I think anti the spirit of anything in democracy, anti the spirit of anything in American.”
ByteDance Will Delay TikTok Action Until After the US Presidential Election
“Likely, and I have no inside information here, I think ByteDance waits for the election, because they presume that Trump could get bought off by investors since, you know, he's a coin-operated person in his entire life, not just as in his presidency.”
Hoffman: Trade wars will cause a massive drop in U.S. prosperity
“The trade wars will create a massive drop in prosperity in the U.S.”
Hoffman: DOGE has zero chance of cutting $2T without defense cuts
“There is next to zero chance that the missions that they have declared will be successful because the only way to get two trillion out of the budget would be to massively reduce the deficit and reduce defense spending.”
Hoffman predicts Bitcoin will approach $200,000 by the end of 2025
“I would say end of 25, so I'm approaching 200,000.”
Microsoft Board Approved $1B for OpenAI Despite Having No Clear Product
“The very first OpenAI Microsoft deal was, you know, Satya and Kevin Scott brought to the Microsoft board. We want to put a billion dollars into the investment in this vehicle. From a five one C three that doesn't really have any particular plans at making its …”
Hoffman: LLM scaling continues and larger models will show new magic
“We're not reaching the upper end of LLM. The next large LLM that's training with a larger computer will still have new magic in it. The scale game is still playing.”
Hoffman: DOGE will not attempt to reform Medicare spending
“Now, again, you know, unfortunately, I would predict that they're not going to do that because it's a political third rail and it requires, you know, Courage and other things to go into it.”
Hoffman: Climate change priority will drop under the next US administration
“I think it's guaranteed, unfortunately, and given that it is an inevitable, it's a physics process. I worry about that. That's one of the I think likely outcomes of the next administration that will be a serious impact.”
Hoffman: Data centers and AI consume single-digit percentages of global power
“Data centers, I think, are something like, it's some single digit percentage of all power consumption. Like three, something, so it's not very big. And then AI within data centers is like, you know, a single digit percentage of that. So currently AI is not acc…”
Reid Hoffman expects Trump administration to quietly preserve CHIPS Act work
“While I expect that the next administration, because they'll say everything the Biden administration did was terrible, we're tearing it all down, that they'll tear it down in words and then keep doing the work, right, would be my hope.”
Hoffman: LLM scaling is not out of data thanks to synthetic data
“It's like, well, actually, in fact, we can create synthetic data, and there's a ton of data that's out there that's not part of the standard internet training corpus. So, the scale game is still playing.”
Hoffman: Derailed Adobe acquisition will make me more money on Figma
“I mean, look, I'm an investor and all the rest, and I think Figma is an amazing company that's gonna, gonna, I'm probably going to make substantially more money because the deal was essentially derailed, but there was a bad theory of the case.”
Professionals Not Using AI Will Be Incompetent Within Five Years
“I think that, call it five years from now, there won't be a professional doing professional activity who, if they're not using AI to help them with it, is being fully competent at the profession they're doing.”
Foundation AI Models Will Not Become Simple Commodities
“I do think that it won't be, that it's kind of like a grain, like grain of wheat. Or a pound of copper, you know, kind of in the classic thing. I think that foundation models will be different. They'll be different, like there'll be this one, there'll be found…”
Tech Industry Is Seeing an Effective Resumption of Moore's Law
“And so I think we're already in the equivalent of a resumption of the acceleration of Moore's law.”
Pure-Play AI Foundation Model Companies Will Be Viable Businesses
“So I think that there is literally no doubt in my mind that there's viable businesses that will play out, and... Purely in the foundation model. Purely in the foundation model”
Tech Is Expanding to 15 Global Giants, Not Consolidating to Three
“If what we were was, call it, seven big tech companies heading to three, then I would be concerned, right, because of, kind of, the monopoly effect. But I actually think we're seven big tech companies heading, like, 15.”
The Era of Creating New AI Frontier Models Is Over
“I think it's almost zero percent the way a frontier model created and the way the frontier models exist today. I think that wave is gone.”
ChatGPT's Release Forced Google Onto Red Alert After Delaying Transformers
“Google Brain invents the kind of transformer and publishes it, and it's kind of bouncing around as kind of a research project, and it takes OpenAI developing it, scaling it, and releasing it as ChatGPT for Google to go on red alert and go, oh my god, we should…”
Sam Altman Sought Independent Board Governance Over a Rubber Stamp
“Sam was very very much wanted to have a board that was separate governance from himself. A lot of founders tend to set up as, no, the board is my rubber stamp vehicle.”
Every Smartphone User Will Daily Consult Personal AI Agents
“Well, one of them is I think even shorter than that, Every single person who has a smartphone will have one or more personal agents, personal AI agents, that's why we, in inflection we call it Pi, that is their agent, but it is like there for them, and on a wh…”
Smartphone AI Medical Assistants Will Soon Beat the Average General Practitioner
“I think your most important job is I have a line of sight to a medical tutor, or sorry, a medical assistant, probably better than your average general practitioner on every smartphone.”
TikTok's Feed Model Was Born From Chinese Government Follower Limits
“It was a genius invention that came about of necessity because the Chinese government didn't want to have any social networks with more than 500 followers.”
Reid Hoffman predicts zero involvement in incoming Trump administration
“Obviously, in the next administration they don't want to have me helping them, right? I won't be involved in any of the activity that's, that, that, that the administration is doing.”
Hoffman: US will benefit substantially from significant deregulation
“I actually think the U.S. Will be benefited by a substantial reduction in regulation because the kind of like the, okay, for every new regulation you want to add, remove two, as a way of kind of modernizing and refactoring versus just decreting”
Hoffman: Federal workforce layoffs mathematically cannot yield trillion-dollar savings
“What I think the, is, is a false promise is to say, well, the real important thing is if we lay off X percentage of the federal workforce, and all of a sudden, our federal budget will be so much more trim. It's like, well, no, no, actually, that's not, that's,…”
Hoffman predicts US defense spending will increase under incoming administration
“Like, if I anticipate anything gonna be happening in the next administration, it will be increase in defense spending versus decrease, despite all the, we're gonna have fiscal discipline, and we're gonna reduce costs, and we're gonna bring this, you know, a ma…”
Hoffman: Congress frequently forces Defense Department to continue unwanted programs
“One of the things that happens frequently is the Department of Defense says, well, we should stop these programs, and Congress says, no, we're continuing them, because this is where, you know, you're spending money in our district is.”
Hoffman: Nuclear regulation damaged climate goals by driving reliance on coal
“The things that we have done in regulating nuclear have been destructive to, for example, climate change, because you're using a lot more coal versus nuclear.”
Hoffman: Major hyperscalers are making multi-billion commitments to green energy
“All of the major hyperscalers are doing multi-billion dollar commitments to green energy companies saying, if you can deliver the energy, We will pay you the, we will give you the initial customer capital to build that.”
Hoffman: Quantum computing will aid drug discovery long before breaking encryption
“Look, we'll have to figure that out because that'll be an issue once we get to what is, you know, somewhere maybe minimum 2000 or 5000 logical quantum bits, qubits. So that's at 2000 to 5000 or more is when you get into the encryption issues. I'd call it a 150…”
AI Will Drive a Cognitive Industrial Revolution
“Artificial intelligence in an economic sense is it's a steam engine of the mind and we'll have a cognitive industrial revolution.”
Every Scale Software Company Will Need Internal AI Teams
“So I do think that every cloud provider and frankly every scale software company Is going to need to have a serious provision within like they'll want to have some internal teams and some internal talent doing things. It doesn't necessarily need to be everyone…”
AI Will Raise Incomes Across All Societal Classes
“I think that AI will raise incomes both for working class people and for, you know, middle class people and for wealthier people. I think it'll raise incomes across all of them.”
US Tech Giants Have Legal Autonomy That Chinese Counterparts Lack
“Google does not work for the US government. Microsoft does not work for the US government. There is, there's ways they're accountable by law, but they have to go through a legal process for that kind of thing. And so, given that legal process doesn't exist wit…”
David Sze warned Reid Hoffman that Airbnb could be his learning failure
“David turned to me and said, look, every venture capitalist Has to have a deal that they cratered, and it is a disastrous amount of work, and that doesn't work in order to learn, and Airbnb can be yours.”
Hoffman: Nvidia will remain strong despite tech giants building rival chips
“So both, NVIDIA's business will continue to go very strongly because they have an amazing Lead, currently, in amazing chips, and there is you know, massive demand for their chips for doing compute, and many players, Google, Amazon, others, including AMD, are b…”
Users Will Orchestrate Multiple AI Models Like an Orchestra Conductor
“I think there will still be differences, but I think our behavior, both in creating products and as individuals, will be almost more like kind of a conductor in an orchestra. It'll be like, well, you know, a little bit, you know, louder on the bass, a little b…”
Humanity Will Indefinitely Expand Compute Power Across All Life Aspects
“Like, we're going to be on a journey, maybe forever, as human beings, of massively increasing the amount of compute available to us in all aspects of our lives.”
Cresta Study Shows Entry-Level Workers Benefit Most From AI
“Like one of Greylock's portfolio companies, Cresta, did a study of which people in the customer service were most benefited by early AI, and it was the entry level people. It was the people coming in, right, and learning the job much more quickly.”
Prompt Engineering and AI Research Directors Will Be Future Job Categories
“Well, I think we'll have a whole swath of jobs that are in the kind of prompt engineering, you know, kind of, AI research assistant, you know, kind of directors.”
Greylock recruited three key engineers for Instagram within four days
“And to give you an example, when we were talking to Kevin Systrom about investing in Instagram, and they were 13 employees, and they said, well, what's their major pain point in terms of how they operated? We said, okay, great. Because we have this network of …”
Hoffman: DeepMind algorithms reduced Google data center electricity usage by 15%
“It was, I think, five, seven, eight years ago, DeepMind ran their algorithms on Google's data centers and figured out how to save 15% of the electricity.”