Tech journalist, author of The AGI Chronicles, co-host of @MachineGodsPod, p(doom) available upon request.
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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…
New @MachineGodsPod! Why scientists are mad at OpenAI for solving their hardest problems, and some delightful audience Q&A including "is it unethical to change your partner's AI settings without telling them?" youtube.com/watch?v=-RPrF7mu…
Kevin Roose retweeted
Signal president @mer__edith's warning: AI with access to our devices could mean "the elimination of the possibility to provide privacy." Her ask: let apps like @signalapp opt out of AI data access.
With @KevinRoose and @CaseyNewton on Machine Gods with @NPR.
Two weeks after launch, @MachineGodsPod is the number 1 tech podcast on @ApplePodcasts!
Huge thank you to everyone who has subscribed, commented, left reviews, and commented on our terrible sitting postures. (We're working on it, the chairs are too deep.)
i listened to this podcast and it helped me understand why people listen to Zitron despite his miserable track record. he knows a fair amount of stuff! the conclusions he draws from it are usually wrong, but he can tell you like, what broadcom is, or how a GPU works. (he did not know what "API" stood for, which is kind of funny, but ultimately not disqualifying.)
it reminds me a lot of young-earth creationism. the individual creationists i've met all know more about carbon dating techniques or whatever than the average layperson, so it sounds impressive until you realize how many mental gymnastics they're doing to assemble their (often correct) object-level facts into a totally incoherent worldview.
“Is this just a big circle jerk?” Jon welcomes Ed Zitron (@edzitron), host of the podcast Better Offline, to make sense of the financial house of cards propping up AI and big tech. New pod out now!
Kevin Roose retweeted
Currently reading "The AGI Chronicles" by @kevinroose and it's full of little gems like this one. Apparently Demis Hassabis wanted to name Gemini "Titan", after the Greek gods, but Google's lawyers thought it sounded too aggressive 😂
New Machine Gods ep: we break down the Anthropic S-1, and Signal president @mer__edith stops by to warn that AI agents like Muse could kill private communication as we know it.
youtube.com/watch?v=_hP1vFEr…
everyone talking about the Anthropic S-1, no one talking about how 5 of the co-founders got new faces
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…
