Hard Fork
“Hard Fork” is a show about the future that’s already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
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The leaders of the biggest A.I. labs argue that artificial intelligence will usher in a new era of scientific discovery, which will help us cure diseases and accelerate our ability to address the climate crisis. But what has A.I. actually done for science so far? To understand, we asked Sam Rodriques, a scientist turne
This week, iRobot, the pioneering American robotics company behind the Roomba, filed for bankruptcy and announced that it would be taken over by its Chinese creditor. Colin Angle, a co-founder and a former longtime chief executive of the company, joins us to explain why the company lost its market dominance and what Am
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
This week, Australia implemented the most aggressive social media ban in a democracy to date, kicking children under 16 off 10 of the most popular social platforms. We discuss how the platforms lost the argument around child safety and whether others will follow Australia’s lead. Then, the blogger Andy Masley joins us
OpenAI Calls a ‘Code Red’ + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
It’s A.I. model rollout season in Silicon Valley, and OpenAI appears to be feeling the pressure. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sent a memo to staff on Monday declaring a “code red” effort to improve ChatGPT and delay other initiatives. We explain why the latest frontier models from Google and Anthropic hav
Last year we debuted Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies list, in which we ranked the technologies from across all of history that best define life as we know it. To our surprise, it became one of our most popular episodes ever. So now we’re doing it again — with a twist. All year, we’ve been collecting ideas for
Last month our colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro had a conversation with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales about the challenges the site is facing — including by right-wing influencers who claim it is biased and by A.I. chatbots that compete with its content. We found the conversation interesting, and think you might too.
