Episode notes
A tip alleging a Silicon Valley conspiracy leads to a much bigger story: the race to build artificial general intelligence — within the next few years — and the factions vying to accelerate it, to stop it, or to prepare for its arrival. FEATURING: Mike Brock, Kevin Roose, Geoffrey Hinton, Connor Leahy, William MacAskill, Liv Boeree, Sam Harris, and Yoshua Bengio LINKS: Sam Harris 2016 TED Talk, Can We Build AI Without Losing Control Over It Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence Sam Harris' Making Sense podcast Center for AI Safety Hard Fork podcast Geoffrey Hinton’s resignation coverage: Why…
Podcast
The Last Invention
Longview · Tech & Science · English
The AI revolution has begun – the product of a seventy-year quest by scientists, mathematicians, and visionaries who set out to build machines that could think. But what began as a fringe idea has now become one of the most powerful forces of the 21st century. This is the story of that journey: its
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S1 · E6 · 6 Nov 2025 · 57 min
EP 6: The AI Doomers
What happens when some of the most idealistic techno-optimists come to believe that superintelligence poses a threat to humanity's survival? Today, the best case for the worst case scenario. We sit down with Nate Soares and Connor Leahy and ask them to make their case for why we need to stop ASI, before it’s too late. THIS EPISODE FEATURES: Connor Leahy, Natasha Vita-More, Max More, Keach Hagey, Nate Soares LINKS: Nate Soares’s book (with Eliezer Yudkowsky) If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies Connor Leahy’s AI safety startup Conjecture Natasha Vita-More’s books CREDITS: This episode of The…
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S1 · E5 · 23 Oct 2025 · 52 min
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 Sam Altman testifies at Senate artificial intelligence hearing, May 16, 2023 Sam Altman testifies at Senate hearing on artificial intelligence, May 8, 2025 Kevin Roose’s article on Sydney Kevin’s podcast: Hard Fork…
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S1 · E4 · 16 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
EP 4: Speedrun
Is the only way to stop a bad guy with an AGI… a good guy with an AGI? In a twist of technological irony, the very people who warned most loudly about the existential dangers of artificial superintelligence—Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei among them—became the ones racing to build it first. Each believed they alone could create it safely before their competitors unleashed something dangerous. This episode traces how their shared fear of an “AI dictatorship” ignited a breakneck competition that ultimately led to the release of ChatGPT. THIS EPISODE FEATURES: Karen Hao, Keach Hagey,…
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S1 · E3 · 9 Oct 2025 · 51 min
EP 3: Playing the Wrong Game
What if the path to a true thinking machine was found not just in a lab… but in a game? For decades, AI’s greatest triumphs came from games: checkers, chess, Jeopardy. But no matter how many trophies it took from humans, it still couldn’t think. In this episode, we follow the contrarian scientists who refused to give up on a radical idea, one that would ultimately change how machines learn. But their breakthrough came with a cost: incredible performance, at the expense of understanding how it actually works. THIS EPISODE FEATURES: Yoshua Bengio, Liv Boeree, Geoffrey Hinton, Karen Hao, Keach…
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S1 · E2 · 2 Oct 2025 · 54 min
EP 2: The Signal
In 1951, Alan Turing predicted machines might one day surpass human intelligence and 'take control.' He created a test to alert us when we were getting close. But seventy years of science fiction later, the real threat feels like just another movie plot. THIS EPISODE FEATURES: Connor Leahy, Max Tegmark, Robin Hanson, Karen Hao, Nick Bostrom, Sam Harris, and Justin Murphy LINKS: Karen Hao’s book “Empire of AI” Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence" CREDITS: This episode of The Last Invention was reported and produced by Andy Mills, Gregory Warner, Andrew Parsons, Megan Phelps-Roper, Matthew…
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15 Sep 2025 · 2 min
Introducing: The Last Invention
For over seventy years, technologists have dreamed of building a true “thinking machine.” An artificial intelligence so powerful it would reshape every aspect of human life. Would it unlock unimaginable abundance? Or bring about our destruction? Today, many of the people closest to the latest A.I. breakthroughs believe that moment has arrived. Some are walking away from their jobs to sound the alarm. Others argue it can’t be stopped, and the only choice is to unite as a society and try to get ready. Still others dismiss the fears, convinced we’re entering a thrilling new chapter of human…
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