AGI Believers: Kevin Roose on the Race

Kevin Roose (0:00)

I'm in DC now. It is definitely the second most AI-pilled city in America. Demis and Dario and Sam, they are some of the most competitive people who have ever lived.

Jordan Schneider (0:13)

The thing about the Manhattan Project is once they build the bomb, the scientists don't matter.

Kevin Roose (0:17)

The generals really take over. They're like, thank you for your work, we'll take it from here. Question of like, why is Dario such a China hawk? Dario's first job in tech was at Baidu.

We have no explanation for why this works. Who closes an academic machine learning paper that way? Do you think people actually hate AI as much as they say they do?

Jordan Schneider (0:40)

If unemployment goes up by two points, that turns into an extremely real hate.

Kevin Roose (0:47)

But they're not going to stop using it. It sounds like they're not sufficiently AGI-pilled. What could possibly be more important than teaching sand to think?

Jordan Schneider (0:59)

Well, maybe I'm a little too sane. I think that's the feedback I really got from this episode.

Kevin Roose, formerly of Hard Fork, author of the frankly brilliant AGI Chronicles, with an assist from Jasmine Sun, who is a researcher on the book, joins, I guess we're calling this Model Talk, because we're mostly talking about models, not about China, today to go through his recent history of OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and the community of people who think and worry too much about artificial intelligence. Kevin has left the New York Times mothership, is launching his own show called Machine Gods later in October. You don't need me to tell you to subscribe to that. Kevin, congratulations.

Kevin Roose (1:52)

What a buck. Thanks so much, Jordan. First time, long time. Have I been on ChinaTalk before? No, you've been on Hard Fork before.

Jordan Schneider (2:00)

I made it on Hard Fork in the...

Kevin Roose (2:02)

But I have not gotten the honor of getting on to one of your esteemed shows. So this is a real pleasure.

Jordan Schneider (2:10)

So AGI Chronicles, I didn't really know what to expect. You know, I expected I would end up skimming it, and I didn't. I read every single page and I read it over the course of 36 hours. It had life, it had humor, it had journalism and factoids, it had brilliant observations, it had brilliant writing as well. You just got these like great analogies, great quotes, and you weaved it all together in something that I, as someone who has lived this for the past five years, learned something fun, but also as something that I am going to buy for my family, for the holidays to get them caught up on my universe. So I want to thank you and congratulate you because books are hard.

Kevin Roose (2:53)

Thanks, Ben.

Jordan Schneider (2:56)

You could have just been messing around like me, podcasting all the time, but you took it on yourself to do the thing. So thank you so much, Kevin.

Kevin Roose (3:04)

Thanks so much. That's very kind of you to say, and I should say, this was my idea.

Someone like you, and maybe actually literally you, was in my head as I was writing, because I did want to write the kind of book that a total outsider could come in from a cold start and pick it up and know nothing about AI and come away with a working knowledge. But I also really thought it was important for people who are on the inside, in the bubble, to learn new things and to get some perspective on it. So I think of you as a consummate insider, and I was trying to make it so that people like you would learn something. So that means a lot to me. That is exactly what I was going for.

Jordan Schneider (3:47)

And to be clear, it wasn't something. It was like every single page. I was like, huh, I guess that's what happened, or huh. That's like an interesting characterization of this person that I've already spent dozens of hours of my life consuming them having talked already. So these are not like the axios for wrinkles is the end of it.

It's really something where the, you know, page by page and the entire narrative, I think, brings you some new stuff. So let me like workshop some takes that I have had after reading your book. So this idea of believers and believers having what they believe come true and then kind of like what happens to you, what happens to your worldview, what happens to the world. And because we're on the ChinaTalk feed, the first person that came to mind was Vladimir Lenin. So look, this idea that like you have Marx and Marxism and these like abstract things that, you know, like historical inevitability, you think are going to end up manifesting. But at the same time, look, Lenin is not like sitting there in, you know, the equivalent of church, just like waiting for God to do it. He's, you know, running, he's organizing, he's writing articles, he's sneaking back into, sneaking back into Moscow. He is like creating the revolution. And then all of a sudden, the revolution happens. And then all of a sudden, he wins and he's like running the country. And it's just like the sort of, the before and after of the sort of, not just Lenin, but any kind of like political revolutionary of believing in a thing that no one else believes in. And all of a sudden, you're a writer than you could have ever imagined, like within the span of a year.