EP 5: Contact

In the strange months after ChatGPT’s release, the world made contact with something new. A tech CEO begged to be regulated, a chatbot seemed to fall in love, and the godfathers of AI became frightened by the implications of what they’d spent their lives building.

THIS EPISODE FEATURES:

Keach Hagey, Kevin Roose, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton

LINKS:

Keach Hagey’s book The Optimist (wwnorton.com/books/9781324075967/about-the-boo…)

Sam Altman testifies at Senate artificial intelligence hearing, May 16, 2023 (youtube.com/watch?v=TO0J2Yw7usM%E2%81%A0)

Sam Altman testifies at Senate hearing on artificial intelligence, May 8, 2025 (youtube.com/watch?v=pxGE41V04fs%E2%81%A0)

Kevin Roose’s article on Sydney (nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot…)

Kevin’s podcast: Hard Fork (nytimes.com/column/hard-fork)

CREDITS:

This episode of The Last Invention was reported and produced by Andy Mills, Gregory Warner, Andrew Parsons, Megan Phelps-Roper, Matthew Boll, Seth Temple Andrews, and Ethan Mannello. It is hosted by Gregory Warner

Music for this episode was composed by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Scott Devendorf⁠⁠⁠⁠ (instagram.com/distantstation/?utm_source=qr), ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Lanz⁠⁠⁠⁠ (instagram.com/lanzprojects), ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cobey Bienert⁠⁠⁠⁠ (open.spotify.com/artist/1cHhFEJWNq6SVKlIqoTy5o…), and Matthew Boll

The Last Invention artwork by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jacob Boll⁠⁠⁠⁠ (jacobboll.com)

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