Reid Hoffman says AI has been ‘marketed horribly’ and sees a narrow path for tech optimists in 2028

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent financial backers, stood before a Washington audience on September 16 and delivered a blunt diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s biggest messaging failure.

“AI has been marketed horribly to the American people,” Hoffman said during POLITICO’s Decoded Summit. The statement lands differently coming from someone who has spent years championing artificial intelligence as a transformative force, including in his book Superagency, where he frames the technology as an “intelligence multiplier” that enhances human capabilities rather than replacing them.

The marketing problem nobody wants to own

Hoffman’s core critique is that the public conversation around AI has calcified into two unhelpful camps. One side wants to accelerate development at all costs. The other wants to slam the brakes entirely. Neither faction, in his view, is spending enough time on the question that actually matters to most people: what does this technology do for me, specifically, on a Tuesday afternoon?

Public anxiety about AI continues to grow, driven by concerns over job displacement, ballooning energy consumption from data centers, and a general sense that the technology’s benefits are accruing to a very small group of people while its risks are distributed widely. Polls consistently show voters becoming more worried about AI’s societal effects, not less.

In the days leading up to the summit, leaders at Anthropic, including CEO Dario Amodei, raised alarms about potential dangers associated with advanced AI systems and called for development pauses in certain areas. OpenAI insiders echoed similar concerns. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump declared his preference for US leadership in AI and rejected any notion of slowing down.

The 2028 calculation

Beyond the tech critique, Hoffman outlined what he sees as a viable, if narrow, political path. He suggested that a tech-optimist candidate could compete in the 2028 presidential race, but only if the messaging fundamentally shifts away from abstract promises about the future and toward demonstrable, practical benefits that voters can see in their own lives.

The political landscape around AI is getting more crowded and more complicated. New advocacy groups are forming on the Democratic side, and candidates at various levels are beginning to stake out positions on AI safety, regulation, and economic impact.

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