For most people, the AI Era we’re now living in started sometime around the end of 2022, when OpenAI released the first consumer version of ChatGPT to much fanfare—and, ultimately, over 100 million downloads within a few short months.
In reality, as WIRED readers know, the story of artificial intelligence stretches back decades. And the work informing today’s generative AI products, from chatbots to agents and beyond, has been more than a decade—of blood, sweat, tears, and furious rivalries—in the making.
It’s that recent history, told through the interweaving stories of three generative AI leaders—OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—that’s chronicled in Kevin Roose’s compelling new book, The AGI Chronicles. Roose, a longtime tech journalist who most recently served as a columnist and podcast host for The New York Times, conducted more than 150 interviews with AI insiders to compile what he hopes becomes something of a historical document, an accurate, in-depth retelling of the people and the institutions, the bloodbath and the drama, that brought Silicon Valley to where it is to today.
I spoke to Roose in late September, a few days after he and Casey Newton—with whom Roose previously cohosted the New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast—announced the creation of their new media company Machine Gods Media, alongside a podcast distribution deal with NPR. We talked about what Roose and Newton hope to accomplish with the new show, why traditional media companies have a talent problem, and, of course, all things artificial intelligence.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND: You and Casey Newton recently announced that you were launching a new media company, called Machine Gods Media. And your podcast is also called Machine Gods, correct?
KEVIN ROOSE: Yeah, a name so nice we used it twice.
When you first announced that you’d be leaving The New York Times, you described your vision for what you wanted to do as one that, quote, “takes AI progress seriously, is clear-eyed about the capabilities and risks of powerful AI systems, and tries to empower and entertain people in the face of radical uncertainty.”
As you look at the landscape of tech coverage and AI coverage, what’s missing from the reporting and commentary that you and Casey want to address with the new show?
We just feel like it was high time that two men had a place to talk about AI.