Tech journalist, author of The AGI Chronicles, co-host of @MachineGodsPod, p(doom) available upon request.
SF
Joined January 2009
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My new show with @CaseyNewton is called Machine Gods, and we’re partnering with NPR!
It’s a twice-a-week, video-first podcast about AI, and it will be available next month on YouTube and other podcast apps (and on radio soon!)
It’s a really critical time for public engagement with AI, and we’re thrilled to bring our AI coverage (and jokes!) to NPR’s massive audience, while building an independent media company in San Francisco. We’re also thrilled that @RachelCohnnn, our incredible Hard Fork producer, is coming with us to make the new show.
More to say soon!
npr.org/2026/09/16/g-s1-1434…
Kevin Roose retweeted
Given how out-of-nowhere it seems to many, it is astonishing that there was a small group of people who predicted with remarkable accuracy everything that is happening in AI today a decade ago (@kevinroose shows this in The AGI Chronicles). Many are now very rich and/or powerful
I tried to AGI-pill @reckless on Decoder and failed (I think?) but at least we had a good time. theverge.com/podcast/1018264…
Kevin Roose retweeted
@balesni and I went on a podcast to talk about the importance of (and problems with) third-party auditing at frontier labs youtube.com/watch?v=tjAg_KxA…
dang! publisher's weekly just named The AGI Chronicles one of the top 10 books of 2026! best-books.publishersweekly.…
On today's @MachineGodsPod, we talked to two safety researchers who were fired by OpenAI after an investigation into their communications with outside researchers. This is going to be a thorny issue in the next few years, as AI companies bring in external monitors while also trying to clamp down on leaks.
Thanks for coming on @tomekkorbak and @balesni. youtube.com/watch?v=tjAg_KxA…
Fun review of The AGI Chronicles in the Economist! "A rollicking tale of the people shaping Silicon Valley's new obsession."
economist.com/culture/2026/1…
Kevin Roose retweeted
In their first podcast interview, fired OpenAI safety researchers @balesni and @tomekkorbak give us their account of the events leading up to their dismissal. It's a wild story: youtube.com/watch?v=tjAg_KxA…
Kevin Roose retweeted
Wrote a lil manifesto with @kevinroose about what we're trying to do at Machine Gods. We call it AI realism platformer.news/machine-gods…
Tomorrow on @MachineGodsPod: the first interview with @balesni and @tomekkorbak, two of the three OpenAI safety researchers who were fired earlier this month.
Nobody is doing it like Joanna
There are a lot of iPhone Duo reviews out there. Only one involves a custom-built robot trying to fold it to death. My iPhone Duo review is here. youtube.com/watch?v=bxDTWuL9…
Our new show with NPR, Machine Gods, is finally here! Episode 1 is live wherever you get your podcasts.
The official podcast of the singularity starts today!
youtube.com/watch?v=OKDai2_a…
we're so incredibly back
@KevinRoose and @CaseyNewton see their new podcast set for the first time 👀
Machine Gods, NPR's official podcast of the singularity, premieres TOMORROW on a brand new set. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
It’s weird that the CEO of Hugging Face continues to be an “AI is normal technology” guy despite being the victim of an autonomous cyberattack by a swarm of rogue agents, arguably the least normal thing AI has done so far.
Just watched the @netflix Instadocs about the @OpenAI cyberattack on @huggingface. Super disappointing, as they went for maximum anthropomorphism of the technology and full doomer mode.
I spent more than two hours with them trying to correct all their mistakes and ground this in reality, explaining that agents are technological systems, not aliens. But it looks like the drive to scare people for maximum views was too strong.
Also, they didn’t mention the lack of containment and monitoring of the agents, how closed-model safeguards blocked our defensive work, or how we defended ourselves with AI using an open model. And that we still lack a lot of information and transparency, including full agent traces and that companies need to remain accountable for what their agents do.
It ends up being a fun sci-fi movie though!
Kevin Roose retweeted
"I had a council of Claudes that I would consult with before I turned things in to my wonderful human editors at FSG."
Former New York Times tech columnist @kevinroose tells @semaforben and @maxwelltani about the different ways he used AI to help write his recent book, "The AGI Chronicles."
Kevin Roose retweeted
Tonight @cwclub in San Francisco:
• 6 PM PDT / @kevinroose: Inside the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence
• 6:30 PM PDT / How America Looks from Everywhere Else (Sold Out)
Details & tickets: commonwealthclub.org/events
this post announced what could be the largest commitment of philanthropic capital ever made ($200 billion if Anthropic goes public at $1 trillion, which is probably conservative)
the first reply I saw asked if Anthropic was going to use it for “gay race communism”
We’re committing a portion of Anthropic’s shares to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new wholly owned entity dedicated entirely to the public benefit.
It will start off with 5% of our shares. For every 50% increase in the company’s value over a set baseline, we can contribute up to an extra 2%, subject to our board’s discretion.
In total, this means that roughly 20% of Anthropic’s shares are committed to the public good. Our co-founders have already pledged to donate 80% of their equity, and around half our employees are donating a portion of their equity as part of a donation matching program we’ve run since our founding.
In the post below, we share more details about our new fund.
anthropic.com/news/public-be…
by my count, if Anthropic and OpenAI each go public at $1 trillion (again, probably conservative), that’s roughly $460 billion, or 5 Gates Foundations, earmarked for philanthropy-shaped things
time to start those 501c3s y’all
