How to be Agentic in the Age of AI (Cate Hall, CEO of Astera)

Cate Hall is the CEO of Astera, a private foundation focused on AI risk and frontier technology. Before leading Astera, Cate’s unconventional career path took her from practicing law (including work on Supreme Court briefs) to becoming the world’s top-ranked female poker player in 2016. After overcoming personal struggles with addiction, she co-founded Alvea, a biotech company developing shelf-stable vaccines for pandemic response, before joining Astera. In this conversation, Cate shares insights on human psychology, agency as a learnable skill, and why she believes AI’s biggest risk may be a “soft takeover” in which humans gradually lose independence and meaning.We explore:• How Cate’s approach to poker focused on reading people rather than pure game theory, and why this contrarian strategy worked• Why people who always try to “play” high status in conversations often have psychological issues• The critical difference between ambition and agency, and why they’re often confused• How LSD helped Cate break out of her career path and discover her own agency• Why Cate believes we need a slowdown in AI development to develop the social technologies to manage it• The challenge of maintaining meaning in human life as AI systems increasingly mediate our experiences• How Astera is using investment as a philanthropic tool to help steer frontier technology development—Thank you to the partners who make this possibleAuth0: Secure access for everyone.