Hard Fork

“Hard Fork” is a show about the future that’s already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

  1. 9 hr ago

    ‘Hard Fork’ Live Part 2: Dylan Field on Standing Out in the A.I. Era

    We’re back with more from our live event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In this episode, we sit down with Dylan Field, a founder and the chief executive of the design company Figma, for what he describes as a “roller coaster” of a conversation. We cover everything from the company’s “Design Is Dead” campaign to the sudden resignation of the Anthropic executive Mike Krieger from Figma’s board. Then, we close things out with a special musical performance by eight wooden robotic dolls that make up the Teenage Engineering Choir. One quick correction to note: In our interview with Field, he makes reference to the SpaceX S-1 filing and misstates what the company says their addressable market for A.I. enterprise applications is. Field says “$22.9 trillion,” but the correct number from the SpaceX filing is $22.7 trillion. The decimal point makes it look small, but it’s a difference of $200 billion. We’ll be back on Friday with our final installment of “Hard Fork” Live.   Guests: Dylan Field, chief executive and co-founder of Figma. Dan Powell, robot conductor, New York Times music composer and “Hard Fork” theme-song creator. Teenage Engineering Choir   Additional Reading: This Start-Up’s $20 Billion Sale Died. It Came Fighting Back.   We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    31 min
  2. 5 days ago

    ‘Hard Fork’ Live, Part 1: Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn

    This week and next, we’re bringing you recordings from our second-ever live taping in San Francisco. First, we sit down with Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, to hear what he’s maxing out his A.I. tokens on, why he’s skeptical that software developers will ever be fully replaced, and how he’s hoping to create a new business model for Xbox. Then, Phil Mohun tells us what it has been like to watch people in the Bay Area interact with two robot dogs that wear the faces of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And finally, we talk with the longtime privacy defender Cindy Cohn about where things stand in the fight to protect internet users from digital surveillance by Big Tech and the government. Guests: Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive of Microsoft. Phil Mohun, executive director of Node. Cindy Cohn, former executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.” Additional Reading: Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella Says, ‘Everyone Is a Stakeholder’ in A.I. Node presents “Beeple: /Infinite_Loop” We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 6min
  3. 5 Jun • Subscribers Only

    Hot I.P.O Summer + What Is A.I. Doing to Math? + HatGPT

    SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all racing to the public markets. We discuss what their I.P.O.s mean for the industry, charitable giving and anyone invested in an index fund. Then, more than 1,000 mathematicians signed a declaration this week raising concerns about the use of A.I. in their field. Author Kevin Hartnett joins to explain what the fuss is all about. And finally, we run through the biggest headlines of the week — including the new executive order on A.I. — in a round of HatGPT.   Guest: Kevin Hartnett, author of The Proof In the Code: How a Truth Machine is Transforming Math and AI Additional Reading: Anthropic Files to Go Public, Setting Stage for Huge I.P.O. As A.I. Makes Strides in Mathematics, Mathematicians Urge Caution ​​An SF Startup Is Secretly Testing Robots in Airbnbs, and Trashing Them, Lawsuit Claims Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models  U.S. Is Said to Be Investigating George Santos Over Kalshi Betting Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked United Flight Forced to Turn Around Because of a Bluetooth Speaker Name ‘Survivor’ Boss Jeff Probst Says Kalshi and Polymarket Are ‘Incentivizing People to Lie, Cheat and Steal’; Kalshi Is Now Considering Measures to Prevent Spoilers   We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 4min
  4. 22 May • Subscribers Only

    Our Field Trip to Google I/O + A Sit-Down With Sundar Pichai + System Update

    This week, we headed to Mountain View, Calif., for the annual developer event Google I/O. We share our reactions to Google’s biggest announcements, including a revamped search box, new agentic tools that compete with OpenClaw and an updated flash model of Gemini that the company says is faster than competitors. Then, we ask Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, how he’s responding to growing evidence that the public is souring on A.I., what advice he’d give to college grads frightened by the current job market and where the company stands relative to competitors in the A.I. race. Finally, we run through the other big tech headlines of the week in our segment System Update. Guest: Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google. Additional Reading: Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race Elon Musk Loses $150 Billion Suit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman Before Mass Layoffs, Meta Reassigns 7,000 Workers to Focus on A.I. Pope to Launch Encyclical on AI Alongside Anthropic Co-Founder Was a Story That Just Won a Literary Prize A.I.-Generated? Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I. We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    55 min
  5. 8 May • Subscribers Only

    Can the U.S. Rein in Prediction Markets? + Joanna Stern on Her Year of A.I. Experiments + Our Producer Goes to Attention School

    This week we’re taking another look at prediction markets and a new series of scandals. Is Congress finally ready to rein them in? Then, the journalist Joanna Stern returns to the show to discuss her new book “I Am Not A Robot,” all about turning her life over to a chatbot for a year. And finally, Hard Fork’s Rachel Cohn reports back on her month attending classes at the Strother School of Radical Attention, the center of a movement to resist the commodification of attention by technology companies.   Guests:  Joanna Stern, chief everything officer at New Things Rachel Cohn, producer of “Hard Fork”   Additional Reading: Soldier Used Classified Information to Bet on Maduro’s Ouster, U.S. Says Soldier Pleads Not Guilty in $400,000 Betting Case Over Maduro’s Ouster French weather service alerts police to tampering after suspicious Polymarket bets The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie   We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 12min
  6. 1 May • Subscribers Only

    OpenAI’s Big Reset + A.I. in the Doctor’s Office + Talkie, a pre-1930s LLM

    This week, OpenAI announced a loosened partnership with Microsoft and an aggressive new strategy to secure computing power. We unpack what these updates signal about OpenAI’s business strategy and whether the company can scale while balancing a trial against Elon Musk and investor concerns over missed financial targets. Then, the A.I. researcher Dr. Adam Rodman, of Harvard Medical School, returns to tell us about the most significant ways A.I. is changing how doctors treat patients. And finally, can an LLM trained only on very old texts predict the future? We’re talking with one of the creators of the chatbot talkie.   Guests: Dr. Adam Rodman, internal medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. David Duvenaud, associate professor at the University of Toronto, former team lead at Anthropic and co-creator of talkie.   Additional Reading: Microsoft and OpenAI Loosen Their Partnership Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court OpenAI Misses Key Revenue, User Targets in High-Stakes Sprint Toward IPO Take It From a Doctor: It’s OK if Your Medical Advice Comes From A.I.   We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 10min
  7. 10 Apr • Subscribers Only

    Anthropic’s Cybersecurity Shock Wave + Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Their Sam Altman Investigation + One Good Thing

    This week, we look at the cybersecurity threats that a new unreleased model from Anthropic are posing to software everywhere. And we ask whether Project Glasswing, the company’s bold new defense initiative, will give tech companies enough of a head start to secure the web. Then, we’re joined by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker to discuss their blockbuster new profile of Sam Altman. And finally, we look to the skies for this edition of One Good Thing.    Guests: Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. Andrew Marantz, staff writer at The New Yorker.   Additional Reading: Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’ Why Anthropic’s New Model Has Cybersecurity Experts Rattled Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted? Artemis II Moon Launch We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 4min

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About

“Hard Fork” is a show about the future that’s already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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