Episodes
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Today’s Guests:
Kashmir Hill is a Times business reporter covering technology and privacy.Additional Reading:
Google unveiled new features for its A.I. chatbot, Bard.Kashmir Hill’s “Your Face Belongs to Us” tracks the rise of Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up. -
Is Google allowed to spend billions of dollars to make its search product the default browser? That is the question at the center of U.S. et al. v. Google — the most important tech trial of the modern internet era — and Kevin and Casey disagree on the answer.
Then, a conversation with the journalist who spent the last two years shadowing Elon Musk.
Today’s guest:
Walter Isaacson is a writer and author of the forthcoming biography “Elon Musk.”Additional reading:
Google’s antitrust lawsuit against the U.S. government brings the first major tech trial since U.S. v. Microsoft which began in 1998.“Elon Musk,” by Walter Isaacson. -
Missing episodes?
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This week: How tech executives’ favorite place to take their pants off turned into a muddy hellscape. We talk to one executive who couldn’t just call a helicopter to escape.
Then, Jonathan Greenblatt, C.E.O. of the Anti-Defamation League, on how his organization went from having a “productive” meeting with X’s C.E.O., Linda Yaccarino, last week to being threatened with a lawsuit by Elon Musk on Monday.
Plus, Kevin and Casey answer your questions.
Additional Information:
Burning Man left behind a sea of “moop” in the desert.Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups found that hate speech had increased on Twitter after it was purchased by Elon Musk.Snapchat’s My AI freaked users out after the chatbot appeared to go rogue. -
A group of tech titans is gobbling up land north of San Francisco with aspirations to alleviate the Bay Area’s housing crisis, promote innovation, and experiment with new forms of governance. It’s not the first time ultra-wealthy people have tried to build the place of their dreams. Will this time be any different?
Then, note-taking apps claim to make us smarter. Usually, they don’t. Casey Newton, a productivity cult member, on how A.I. could change that.
Plus, Kevin and Casey play HatGPT.
Additional Information:
Tech billionaires want to build a new city. A political fight is coming.Casey takes a look at note-taking platforms and why they usually don’t live up to their promise.An Air Force program is embracing A.I. in aerial combat.The S.E.C. took action against a NFT projectYouTube will waive content violation warnings if the creators in violation attend a class.Google Meet’s new A.I. program will take notes for users in real time.A smart contact lens can be charged with human tears. -
Are New York City’s new rules for short-term rentals like Airbnb effectively a ban? And will they accomplish what proponents want them to? Then, The New York Times tech reporter Erin Griffith on Silicon Valley’s mad dash for GPUs. And finally, we take stock of the A.I. songs of the summer and discuss YouTube and Universal Music Group’s plan to make synthetic voices profitable.
On Today’s Episode:
Erin Griffith is a New York Times journalist based in the San Francisco bureau, where she reports on technology start-ups and venture capital.
Additional Information:
New York City’s new regulations for short-term rentals go into effect soon.
Start-ups are on a “desperate hunt” for GPUs. (There’s even a song about it.)
Creators are using A.I. voices to imitate Freddie Mercury, Johnny Cash, Eric Cartman from “South Park,” and others.
Google and YouTube have different approaches to compensating creators whose work is used to train A.I. tools.
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When Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in December, he was confined to his parents’ house — but he was left free to roam the internet. Today, the New York Times reporter David Yaffe-Bellany talks about how access to the cyberworld allowed Mr. Bankman-Fried to violate his bail terms and land himself in jail.
Then, how universities can manage a generative A.I. world.
Plus: another look at autonomous vehicles.
On Today’s Episode:
David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who is experimenting with generative A.I. in the classroom.Additional Information:
Sam Bankman-Fried was sent to jail after violating his bail terms. The court dispute over his bail focused on a New York Times article that described writings by Caroline Ellison, an FTX executive who had also dated Mr. Bankman-Fried.A driverless car got stuck in wet concrete in San Francisco this week. -
Users are protesting Zoom’s liberal data-collection policy. Authors are shutting down websites that scrape their work. And, in a concession to users, OpenAI is allowing websites to opt out of web scraping. The era of A.I. backlash has begun.
Then, street activists are deterring self-driving cars by placing traffic cones on the hoods of vehicles.
Plus: How Reddit has squashed the Reddit Revolt.
Today’s Guests:
Adam Egelman and Mingwei Samuel are organizers with Safe Street Rebel, an activist group trying to get cars off the streets.Additional Reading:
The publication StackDiary exposed that Zoom’s updated terms of service permitted the training of artificial-intelligence models on user content.Benji Smith took down his website prosecraft.io, a database that contained the works of over 25,000 books, after authors discovered that their works were being used to power the website without their consent. -
Researchers in Korea claim they’ve identified a material that could unlock a technological revolution: the room temperature superconductor. Material scientists are skeptical, but enthusiasts on Twitter are enthusiastic. Why is the internet so excited about superconductors?
Then, the Kids Online Safety Act is headed to the Senate floor. Would it actually keep children safe? And how would it change the internet?
Plus: Kevin and Casey play HatGPT.
Additional Reading:
South Korean researchers released a video they claimed was a superconductor showing levitation at room temperature. Scientists were skeptical.The New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill profiled Mike Masnick, who wasn’t so sure about KOSA. -
On Sunday night, a crane arrived in downtown San Francisco to take down the Twitter sign from the company’s office building. The crane’s arrival marked the death of Twitter, the brand, and the start of X, Elon Musk’s everything app. Today, why Elon’s acquisition feels more and more like cultural vandalism and what, if anything, will replace the global town square.
Then, is Sam Altman’s universal basic income cryptocurrency app Worldcoin an iris scanning tool to save humanity, or just another attempt to get rich on crypto?
Plus: a trip to Google’s robotics lab, where artificial intelligence models are creating breakthroughs.
Additional reading:
Casey breaks down Twitter’s rebrand.The launch of Worldcoin — and the story of how it recruited the first half a million users.Kevin’s column is a deep dive into Google’s new robotics model, which melds A.I. with robots. -
Dario Amodei has been anxious about A.I. since before it was cool to be anxious about A.I. After a few years working at OpenAI, he decided to do something about that anxiety. The result was Claude: an A.I.-powered chatbot built by Anthropic, Mr. Amodei’s A.I. start-up.
Today, Mr. Amodei joins Kevin and Casey to talk about A.I. anxiety and why it’s so difficult to build A.I. safely.
Plus, we watched Netflix’s “Deep Fake Love.”
Today’s Guest:
Dario Amodei is the chief executive of Anthropic, a safety-focused A.I. start-upAdditional Reading:
Kevin spent several weeks at Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters. Read about his experience here.Claude is Anthropic’s safety-focused chatbot. -
This week, we answer more of your questions, like: What is ChatGPT’s carbon footprint? Why are engineers so sure artificial intelligence will keep getting better? And, why are there so many venture capital bros?
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Instagram is no stranger to taking product ideas from other companies and turning them into their own successes. Just ask Snapchat about Instagram Stories or TikTok about Instagram Reels. This time, the company is coming for Twitter with Instagram Threads.
Today, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, on why the company now wants to take on Twitter.
Today’s guest:
Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagram.Additional reading:
Meta announced a new app called Threads intended to rival Twitter. -
Whether it’s on TikTok or Twitter, A.I.-generated content is already flooding the web. So, what happens when the technology — prone to confidently making things up — starts ingesting itself?
Then, the New York Times reporter Joe Bernstein talks about why Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight Elon Musk in a cage match.
Plus, we put ChatGPT’s recipe generation to the test with A.I. cocktails.
Today’s guests:
Joe Bernstein is a Styles reporter at The New York Times.Priya Krishna is a Food staff reporter at The New York Times.Additional reading:
Generative A.I. is already changing the web and potentially harming itself.The Times’s Cooking team tried cooking recipes made by ChatGPT. The results were mixed.Mark Zuckerberg has been working out — and he’d like you to know about it. -
This week, advertisers swarmed the beaches of southern France for the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Kevin says artificial intelligence is all anyone there can talk about, but admits the conference is making him rethink how quickly generative A.I. will take over the industry — despite the buzz.
Then, the New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg on when remote work stopped being the future for tech companies.
And finally: What does the newest season of “Black Mirror” tell us about what’s next for TV?
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Moderators on Reddit have shut down their forums in protest of a new policy that charges users for access to the site’s API. The revolt has put Kevin in child care-wisdom-withdrawal (RIP r/daddit) — and left many other users without their favorite subreddits. But does the incident say something more about the future of the internet?
Then, the MrBeast Philanthropic-Industrial Complex.
Plus: Platforms are already fumbling the ball on misinformation.
Today’s guest:
Max Read is a journalist, screenwriter, editor and the owner-operator of Read Max.Additional information:
Casey examines the Reddit revolt and why the company isn’t backing down on shutting down third-party apps.Max Read on MrBeast’s rise as a viral philanthropist.Following the algorithm doesn’t always lead to philanthropy, as Kevin explored in a 2019 article on PewDiePie.Platforms are backing away from peak trust and safety. -
Apple kicked off the week with the announcement of a mixed-reality headset: the Apple Vision Pro. Putting a computer on your face may seem weird AF, but if there’s one company that knows how to make nerdy stuff into the thing that everyone wants, it’s Apple. Will these fancy goggles be the next Apple revolution?
Then, crypto had (another) terrible week after the S.E.C. filed lawsuits against the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance.
Plus: Our teenage listeners on how they feel about social media.
This week:
David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.Additional Reading:
Why Kevin won’t bet against Apple’s Vision Pro and why Casey thinks Apple has an edge on Meta’s Metaverse.The S.E.C. accused Coinbase of illegally allowing users to trade unregistered securities a day after it sued the international crypto exchange Binance.This Teenage Life (TTL) is a podcast about teenagers being teenagers. -
A few days after a lawyer used ChatGPT to write a brief filled with made-up cases, a group of A.I. experts released a letter warning of the “risk of extinction” from the technology. But will A.I. ever be good enough to pose such a threat?
Then, FAANG is now MAAAN, with the addition of Nvidia. Here’s how the GPU company became a trillion-dollar behemoth.
Plus: Kevin, Casey and the New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger answer Hard Questions from listeners.
Today’s Guest:
Kate Conger is a technology reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The New York Times.Additional Reading:
A lawyer used ChatGPT the same week that A.I. leaders released a 22-word statement about the existential risk A.I. poses to humanity.The chip company Nvidia hit a $1 trillion market cap, powered by A.I. demand.The podcast “Acquired” did a two-part series on the history of Nvidia. -
The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, says social media poses a “profound risk of harm” to young people. Why do some in the tech industry disagree?
Then, Ajeya Cotra, an A.I. researcher, on how A.I. could lead to a doomsday scenario.
Plus: Pass the hat. Kevin and Casey play a game they call HatGPT.
On today’s episode:
Ajeya Cotra is a senior research analyst at Open PhilanthropyAdditional reading:
The surgeon general issued an advisory about the risks of social media for young people.Ajeya Cotra has researched the existential risks that A.I. poses unless countermeasures are taken.Binance commingled customer funds and company revenue, former insiders told Reuters.BuzzFeed announced Botatouille, an A.I.-powered kitchen assistant.A Twitter bug caused the platform to restore deleted tweets.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced his presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event rife with glitches.Two former rivals, Uber and Waymo, are teaming up to bring driverless ride-hailing to Phoenix. -
In a congressional hearing this week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared to be on the same page as lawmakers: It’s time to regulate A.I. But like so many other proposals to regulate tech, will it actually happen? The Times’s technology reporter Cecilia Kang helps us understand whether Congress will actually act, and what that could look like.
Then, Casey talks with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, before and after Elon Musk took over the company.
On today’s episode:
Cecilia Kang is a reporter at The New York Times covering technology and regulation.Yoel Roth is the former head of trust and safety at Twitter.Additional reading:
Sam Altman urged Congress to pass legislation to regulate A.I., including the proposal that A.I. developers should be required to get licenses from the U.S. government to release their models.Casey Newton reported for This American Life on Roth’s time at Twitter, before and after Musk took over. -
At its biggest event of the year, Google announced an avalanche of A.I. product releases: A.I. in search, A.I. that writes emails and A.I. that generates slides. Is Google pulling ahead in the A.I. arms race?
And, after years of hype, self-driving cars are finally hitting the streets of American cities. Kevin and Casey take a ride through San Francisco in Banana Slug — an autonomous vehicle from the self-driving car company Cruise. After their ride, they sit down with Cruise’s chief executive, Kyle Vogt, to discuss the role he thinks self-driving cars will play in the future of transportation.
On today’s episode:
Kyle Vogt is the chief executive of Cruise, a self-driving car company.Additional reading:
At their annual conference, Google announced dozens of A.I. products and featuresIn a leaked memo, a Google researcher argued that the company did not have a strong A.I. moat because of open-source A.I. companies.Self-driving cars are expanding their footprint. - Show more
