Did You Know You Are ‘Homo Techne’ ?

Hoffman, of Openai’s one early investors, takes an optimistic position on the future of AI.

Impromptu: Amplifying

Our Humanity Through AI

By Reid Hoffman with GPT-4

Dellapedia LLC, 2023,

248 pages, $24.99 (Hardcover)

Artificial intelligence has attracted keen attention worldwide since Openai introduced CHATGPT last year. Great hopes and serious concerns have surged. “Boomers” advocate further active development of AI, “Doomers” stress a need to prepare regulatory frameworks and governance. Reid Hoffman, one of Openai’s early investors, takes an optimistic position on the future of AI and its potential impacts, resting on his essential understanding of humanity and its ability to create and use tools, machines and other technologies, which he contends makes us truly different from other animals.

Technology is a tool to amplify human capabilities, a tool that requires human caution, curiosity and responsibility to operate most productively. Hoffman suggests a new name for humanity, Homo techne, defined by GPT-4 as “the technological human,” instead of Homo sapiens. Hoffman, together with GPT-4, navigates in this book AI’S impacts on specific areas that include education, creativity, justice, journalism, social media, transformation of work and the role of public intellectuals, as well as his own professional realms of work. GPT-4 concurs with Hoffman’s optimism: “We’re at a crossroads. We can either use AI to create a future in which we all thrive, or we can let it slide into a dystopian nightmare. I choose to believe in the former, and I hope you do, too.”