Financial markets went into a panic last week over an obscure Chinese tech start-up called DeepSeek. The company now threatens to upend the world of artificial intelligence and the race for who will dominate it. Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at The Times, discusses how DeepSeek caught us all off guard.
Nov 20
Is There an A.I. Bubble? And What if It Pops?
<p>After years of soaring optimism and colossal investment, Wall Street has begun to seriously question whether the frenzy for A.I. is justified.</p><p>Cade Metz, who covers technology for The New York Times, explains why Silicon Valley companies believe so fervently in A.I. and ... Show More
25m 1s
Feb 2025
Anthropic’s C.E.O. Dario Amodei on Surviving the A.I. Endgame
<p>This week, Anthropic’s C.E.O., Dario Amodei, returns to the show for a candid, wide-ranging interview. We discuss Anthropic’s brand-new Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, the A.I. arms race against China, and his hopes and fears for this technology over the next two years. Then, we gath ... Show More
1h 7m
Jan 2025
Your Guide to the DeepSeek Freakout: an Emergency Pod
<p>A Chinese firm called DeepSeek managed to upend global markets at the start of the week, to drag down chipmaker Nvidia — and to surge to No. 1 in the iPhone app store, all in basically no time at all.</p><p>Today, in this bonus episode, we talk through the news behind the frea ... Show More
24m 4s
Jan 2025
Goodbye TikTok, Ni Hao RedNote? + A.I.'s Environmental Impact + Meta's Masculine Energy
<p>The deadline for TikTok to sell or to face a ban is fast approaching. We discuss how Supreme Court justices — who opted on Friday to uphold the law — reacted to arguments in the case, whether the Chinese government might allow Elon Musk to buy the app, and why self-proclaimed ... Show More
1h 13m
May 2025
Decolonizing the Future: Karen Hao on Resisting the Empire of AI
In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, “a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley.” H ... Show More
44m 32s
Jan 2025
How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms
The tech investor Marc Andreessen and his fellow Silicon Valley giant Elon Musk weren’t always the Donald Trump supporters they are today. In this episode, Ross asks Andreessen, a founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, about what led to Silicon Valley’s rightwar ... Show More
1h 1m
Jul 2025
Interesting Times: A Mind-Bending Conversation with Peter Thiel
<p>This week, we’re bringing you a recent interview from “Interesting Times with Ross Douthat,” one of The New York Times’s newest podcasts. In this episode, Ross sits down with Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and one of the most contrarian thinkers in tech. To ... Show More
1h 2m