logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2023
51m 59s

The Sunday Read: ‘Wikipedia’s Moment of ...

The New York Times
About this episode
In early 2021, a Wikipedia editor peered into the future and saw what looked like a funnel cloud on the horizon: the rise of GPT-3, a precursor to the new chatbots from OpenAI. When this editor — a prolific Wikipedian who goes by the handle Barkeep49 on the site — gave the new technology a try, he could see that it was untrustworthy. The bot would readily mi ... Show More
Up next
Yesterday
How a Teenager Found Undiagnosed Brain Injuries in the Military
Warning: this episode contains mentions of suicide. New reporting has found that the impact of rough sea waves on rescue-boat crews in the Coast Guard can lead to long-term effects, including traumatic brain injury. Dave Philipps, who reports about veterans for The New York Times ... Show More
38m 43s
Aug 31
How Flock Cameras Took Over America
This summer, Fernando Alfonso, the Texas editor for The New York Times, got in a car with a man named Philip. They drove around the suburban streets of Dallas searching for traffic cameras — not for a red-light camera, or a speed-trap camera, but something new, an automatic licen ... Show More
29m 26s
Aug 30
Who Will Rule the 2026 U.S. Open?
The U.S. Open, the final tournament of the tennis season, is getting underway. The world’s best players are heading to the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, N.Y., to battle it out for the chance to play a championship match at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the la ... Show More
38m 46s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2023
The AI Revolution Could Be Bigger and Weirder Than We Can Imagine
Derek unpacks his thoughts about GPT-4 and what it means to be, possibly, at the dawn of a sea change in technology. Then, he talks to Charlie Warzel, staff writer at The Atlantic, about what GPT-4 is capable of, the most interesting ways people are using it, how it could change ... Show More
1h 1m
Mar 2023
The promise and pitfalls of GPT-4 (Ep. 221)
<p>In this episode, we explore the potential of the highly anticipated GPT-4 language model and the challenges that come with its development. From its ability to generate highly coherent and creative text to concerns about ethical considerations and the potential misuse of such ... Show More
29m 38s
Jun 2022
The Google engineer who thinks its AI has come alive
tail spinning
25m 9s
Apr 2023
Open AI’s ‘red team’
<p>BP has started pumping crude through a new $9bn offshore platform as it slows its transition out of fossil fuels, global equities have recovered from the banking crisis but risks remain, and experts are sounding the alarm over the latest version of Open AI’s artificial intelli ... Show More
10m 20s
Feb 2023
Wed. 02/15 – The New Bing Is Questioning Its Own Existence
More signs the chat bots are maybe a little undercooked, and whooo doggy. Wait until you hear what I mean. Some datapoints suggesting the faddish nature of these new tools. And wait until you hear the possible reason you’re seeing Elon’s tweets all of the sudden. This is maybe th ... Show More
17m 37s
May 2024
Love and deception in the age of AI
In a viral thread posted on X in January this year, a 23-year-old Russian man claims he used ChatGPT to filter through and chat thousands of women on Tinder, eventually proposing to one that was selected by the algorithm. The scale and success of his experiment sparked scepticism ... Show More
20m 19s
Jan 2023
Two Writers Wonder If They’ll Be Replaced By AI
Evan Puschak, also known as The Nerdwriter, joins Offline to discuss ChatGPT, the revolutionary artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI. In his most recent video essay, “The Real Danger of ChatGPT,” Puschak explores how AI could erode our fundamental ability to understand our ... Show More
47 m