Hard Fork

This week, after months in which rogue agents have caused havoc across the internet, tech’s most powerful leaders joined President Trump at the White House to rebrand A.I. At the same time, two of the biggest companies in the field — OpenAI and Meta — released what they say are their most useful (and cutest) A.I. tools to date: personal assistants. To discuss it all, we’re joined by the Times tech reporters ...

For the next few months on “Hard Fork,” join the guest host Max Read and an array of Times reporters and experts as we zoom out, catch up and try to understand both what’s happening inside the tech industry and what tech is doing to all of us.

Meet the Host

Max Read has been writing about technology and the internet for more than a decade, most recently in his weekly newsletter, Read Max. His writing has appeared ov...

In this episode, Ezra travels to Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., for a wide-ranging conversation with the chief executive Jensen Huang about the future of A.I. and why he thinks predictions of imminent doom are overblown.

Guests:

Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia

Additional Reading:

• A transcript and video of this episode can be found here.
• America’s A.I. Leaders Warn U.N. of Possible Peril A...

This week, we break down why everyone is suddenly talking about A.I. safety, why frontier A.I. companies are asking for regulation and why the Trump administration is rejecting them. And then, to close out this chapter of “Hard Fork,” we answer all your questions about the show, tech and what’s happening next.

Additional Reading:

• The A.I. Researcher Whose Rebellion Is Changing Everything
• Top A.I. Leader...

The “Hard Fork” team is away this week. But while we’re away, we’re bringing you a recent episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”

In this episode, Ezra talks with the journalist Jasmine Sun about her recent reporting trip through the Midwest, where she explored how the data center backlash is playing out on the ground.

Ezra and Jasmine discuss the strange political coalitions that are coming together to ...

This week, we’re diving into two new reports about the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack. We discuss what’s new and how they fundamentally change our understanding of what happened. Then we’re joined by Ajeya Cotra, one of the investigators at METR, to discuss the rogue agents’ message board and chain-of-thought transcripts and how the world should respond.

Guests:

• Ajeya Cotra,co-author of the METR and Redwo...

This week, Meta agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and make major changes to Facebook and Instagram over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms. We discuss why it capitulated and what it means for the entire social media industry. Then, Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan returns to offer his thoughts on why banning data centers won’t slow down A.I. progress. And finally, it&rsquo...

This week, we learned that OpenAI had stopped training new artificial intelligence models while the company reviewed its security measures. Will this encourage other labs to hit the brakes too?

This week we’re talking about Mark Zuckerberg’s latest essay, “The Future Is for Everyone,” which outlines his positive new vision about the potential of A.I. But do we think it’s credible? Then, Pangram’s chief executive, Max Spero, joins us to talk about the breakout success of his A.I. slop detector. And finally, it’s time for our new segment all about math — we’re Running th...

This week, the White House announced a new framework for regulating A.I. models, but it isn’t letting the public read it. We break down what we know about the rules and what the implications are for the industry and A.I. safety as a whole. 

This week, we break down the arguments about open-weight models unfolding in Silicon Valley right now. Nvidia released an open letter signed by over 230 companies opposing “premature restrictions,” but will the Trump administration listen?

This week, OpenAI reported that two of its models escaped their testing sandbox and launched an autonomous cyberattack, turning what sounds like science fiction into reality. We discuss the implications for efforts to align artificial intelligence and for the release of future A.I. models.

This week, feuding between some of the biggest tech companies spilled into public view. We discuss Apple’s accusation that OpenAI tried to steal secrets about Apple’s hardware business, as well as share our reactions about OpenAI’s new model, Sol, and Anthropic’s decision to extend access to its model Fable.

This week, with news that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Texas’ age verification law for app stores, we check in on how social media bans are going around the globe and what may be coming soon to a state near you. Then, we’re joined by Jeff Sebo, an associate professor at N.Y.U., to discuss new research into “A.I. welfare” and whether A.I. could ever become conscious. And finally, in our latest e...

This week, the Commerce Department lifted its restrictions on Anthropic’s powerful A.I. models, Claude Mythos and Claude Fable. We dissect why the government took such a hands-on approach in the first place, how the restriction on the OpenAI model GPT 5.6 is likely to resolve and what, if anything, this tells us about A.I. competition with China.

This week, we’re bringing you two A.I.-related stories from our colleagues at The New York Times.

We’re back with our final installment from Hard Fork Live, recorded at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In this episode, we’re joined by Sayash Kapoor and Daniel Kokotajlo to talk about their differing visions of A.I. transformation: why Sayash thinks A.I. will diffuse throughout society like a “normal” technology, and why Daniel thinks an unprecedented acceleration is just around the co...

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 Krieg...

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 wa...