Reid Hoffman on AI, defense, and ethics when scaling a startup

LinkedIn cofounder and Greylock Partners investor Reid Hoffman tells executives who are running startups that scale fast -- the kind who want to double in size every few months -- to build ethics into their businesses. As companies plan for the future and grow their engineering or sales ranks, they should consider what can go wrong, he said, and hire people whose job is dedicated to risk management. Next, he added, companies can develop a risk framework to sort risk levels. Anything that can be a catastrophic risk to individuals, a systemic risk to company systems, or a risk to a large number of users should be handled in a proactive way to stay competitive with other startups. Hoffman, who coauthored the book Blitzscaling, joined former White House chief data scientist DJ Patil and Stanford University political science professor Amy Zegart Tuesday at the Stanford Human-Centered AI Intelligence (HAI) fall conference on AI ethics, governance, and policy symposium at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto.