Warren Hui Of Soul Ventures On the Future of Artificial Intelligence
An Interview With David Leichner
Vulnerability to Cyber-attacks: AI being used in important systems can also attract cyber-attacks, leading to serious security issues. AI can also be used as a tool to hack or penetrate encrypted data.
As a part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Warren Hui.
Mr. Warren Hui is a Co-Founder and Partner at Soul Ventures, focusing on investments in AI, deep tech, and consumer internet. He has most recently led investments in Neuralink, Space X, Epic Games, Reddit, and Cohere. He serves as a Venture Partner at Type One Ventures and Advisor at Smash Capital. Previously, he served as Vice President in the Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley where he focused on IPOs, M&A, and capital raising for Asia Pacific corporates. Before that, he was in Debt Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley where he originated bond issuances. He received his B.A. from the University of Southern California.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?
I founded Soul Ventures 3 years ago with a vision to invest in disruptive technologies. I am a huge supporter of innovation and believe technology can be truly transformative. One of the early ‘thesis’ we had was AI would completely change people’s daily lives in the decades to come and how embracing this change can lead to growth, innovation and refinement of all industries. We spent a lot of time looking at different types of AI companies and made some bets on the ones that were the most promising.
What lessons can others learn from your story?
As I am quite early in my venture career, I don’t think I’m in the position to give advice to anyone yet. However, as a general note, I would recommend to set goals, be disciplined and stay true to your passion. For AI and venture investing, I was inspired at an early age. I watched a lot of sci-fi movies including Star Wars, Aliens, Robocop and Blade Runner. I was fascinated and spent a lot of time learning about robots and the technology (AI) from these films and I think these interests eventually made me explore investing in this field.
Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?
We have just recently invested into an generative AI company called Cohere. Cohere specializes in developing advanced NLP technologies for large enterprises. The company primarily focused on building powerful, seamless and scalable language models. We’re thrilled with the company’s trajectory and groundbreaking work they’re doing in NLP for corporations. Their models are not just enhancing the way machine learning understands and generates language, they’re setting new standards for scalability and accessibility in tech. While they are already a major player in AI, we are most excited for their enormous potential to transform industries and the way we lead our daily lives.
Beyond that, we are looking at the broad spectrum of AI and investing in the entire value chain. While the big LLMs, your Coheres, Metas and Anthropics, dominate the headlines, we believe that the entire vertical will reshape society as we know it, and therefore look to find companies across the segment that will catalyze this change.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My dad has always been my biggest supporter and inspiration, since I was 14, he motivated me to take on multiple internships, giving me countless opportunities to gain professional experience which offers practical work in order to discover my skills, interest and passion. He is a successful entrepreneur and engineer, at a young age he would show me his projects and business plans to give me insights. I think because of my dad’s guidance I have a natural affinity and passion about investing, entrepreneurship and venture.
What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?
1. Innovation and Collaboration: The transformative potential of AI is immense — it not only stimulates innovation by serving as both a tool and a collaborator across various domains, freeing up human cognitive resources for higher-level tasks, but it also enhances creativity and accelerates economic growth.
2. Humanoid Robots: Leading AI robotics companies are deploying humanoid robots for commercial use already, I’m super excited with the use-cases for humanoid robots. From dangerous labor like construction or mining all the way to household chores, I can’t wait to see different types of robots being used in the future.
3. Space Exploration: AI’s impact extends to space exploration, processing vast data from probes and managing systems on spacecraft, setting the stage for profound exploratory missions.
4. Healthcare Transformation: AI is transforming healthcare by improving the efficiency and accuracy of diagnostics through telemedicine and personalized treatments, promising to bridge the healthcare gap significantly.
5. Economic Inclusivity: Additionally, by automating routine tasks, AI supports economic inclusivity, enabling a fairer distribution of resources and opportunities, and addressing deep-rooted societal issues efficiently.
What are the 5 things that concern you about the AI industry? Why?
1. Data Privacy Concerns: Data privacy is a big concern with AI because these systems use huge amounts of data which can compromise personal privacy. They need tight data management to keep everyone’s information safe.
2. Bias in AI Systems: If the data used to train AI or the AI model inherently has biases, the output from the model will likely adopt these biases too, which is why it’s crucial to have balanced data and transparent systems that we can check for fairness.
3. Vulnerability to Cyber-attacks: AI being used in important systems can also attract cyber-attacks, leading to serious security issues. AI can also be used as a tool to hack or penetrate encrypted data.
4. Black Box nature of AI: Plus, most AI operates like a “black box” where it’s hard to see how decisions are made, which can be tricky in fields like healthcare or finance where accountability is key.
5. Impact on Employment: Lastly, as AI automates more tasks, it might replace jobs, which can increase unemployment and economic inequality in the short term.
As you know, there is an ongoing debate between prominent scientists, (personified as a debate between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,) about whether advanced AI poses an existential danger to humanity. What is your position about this?
I don’t think anyone in the field would disagree AI poses risks to humanity, however I believe the potential benefits outweigh the risks. If AI is built correctly, it could lead to scientific breakthroughs, solving global problems like poverty.
As AI gets closer to AGI there will be more and more risks. Apart from obvious attacks such as misinformation, deep fakes, hacking, there could be bad actors who abuse the technology if they had control over a model with AGI capabilities. Once AGI is reached, the damage and risks would be extremely high and we must all start planning on how to prevent these risks now. I believe that as AI companies that have the capabilities of developing AGI, they need to set strong safety principles and guardrails to make sure things don’t go horribly wrong. This risk is the focus of most large AI companies and governments at the moment.
What can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? And what can be done to assure the public that there is nothing to be concerned about?
To mitigate concerns about AI posing an existential threat and to reassure the public, I think it’s crucial to develop robust safety and ethical guidelines integrated at all stages of AI development. This involves enforcing regulatory frameworks that ensure transparency, accountability, and alignment of AI objectives with human values.
Furthermore, fostering public engagement through education and open dialogue can really serve to demystify AI technologies, especially some of the more extreme fears surrounding the industry and its development. The industry as a whole should make the benefits and limitations clearer to a wider audience. I also think establishing international cooperation to share best practices and monitor AI development can also play a vital role in preventing potential threats, rather than treating it as an arms race. Such measures can help in building trust and safely harnessing the potential of AI with the public, while simultaneously ensuring that we progress in a responsible and ethical manner.
As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you advise what is needed to engage more women into the AI industry?
As both AI research and startups are still male-dominated, there is a lot of work to be done by everyone in the industry to give more women opportunities. I would encourage women to step up and apply for roles they are really interested in. There are really good roles models such as Mira Murati from Open AI and Daniela Amodei from Anthropic.
What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?
I don’t follow “life lesson quotes” but I believe in following your dreams and outworking everyone. Hard work and perseverance is really important. I believe you can really tell the character of a person on how they bounce back from failure and their lows.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share a story?
It’s very important to always give back and mentor the next generation. Every year if university students reach out I would usually grab coffee or do catch-up to give advice on breaking into venture. We also give internship opportunities to promising students who reach out to me. This year we have a few summer interns who I have met and was impressed with their efforts into learning more about venture and AI.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would like more people in venture and the AI industry to gather and really think about environmental issues. A key problem which I think not a lot of people are thinking about is the energy consumption of large AI models. I hope we can use AI to find solutions for environmental issues and solve energy consumption problems.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow my Linkedin or go to soulvc.com to see what we’ve been working on
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
