Hard Fork

Dozens of state attorneys general has sued Meta, alleging the company knowingly created features that induce “extended, addictive, and compulsive social media use” among teenagers and children. In a country without wide-reaching internet regulations, are lawsuits the way to reign tech companies in?  Then, for our first episode on YouTube , we talk with YouTuber and tech reviewer Marques Brownlee a...

A.I. models are black boxes. You input a prompt and the model outputs nearly anything: a sonnet, an image or a legal brief riddled with lies. Today, a look at three ways that researchers are unlocking that black box in hopes of bringing transparency to A.I. Then, Marc Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto has left us asking, Is he OK?! Plus: decoding a 2,000-year-old ancient scroll with the help...

As the Israel-Hamas war broke out, misinformation and fake imagery surged on X, the platform formerly known at Twitter. Can Meta’s Threads fill the real-time news hole that X created? Should it? Then, Kevin debriefs us on his reporting on Manifold Markets, where Silicon Valley Rationalists bet on the likelihoods of different events. Plus: The company digitizing smell. Today’s Guest: Alex Wiltschko...

The antitrust trial against Google has led to some of tech’s biggest players testifying in court, and things have gotten spicy. The New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang tells us the wildest moments in the trial so far. Then, A.I. is jumping off the screen and into your wardrobe. Has the personal assistant of the future finally arrived? Or a dystopian panopticon? Plus: happy first birthday, Hard Fo...

ChatGPT can now hear, see and speak — and that’s just the start of the deluge of A.I. news this week. Kevin and Casey unpack the lightning-speed updates. Then, Meta’s next-generation headset, Quest 3, is here. Is there still hope for the metaverse? And: An interview with a prompt engineer. Yes, that’s a real job.   Today’s Guest: Riley Goodside is a prompt engineer at Scale A.I., a San Francisco s...

Today’s Guests: Kashmir Hill is a Times business reporter covering technology and privacy. Additional Reading: Google unveiled new features for its A.I. chatbot, Bard . Kashmir Hill’s “ Your Face Belongs to Us ” tracks the rise of Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up.   Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast...

Is Google allowed to spend billions of dollars to make its search product the default browser? That is the question at the center of U.S. et al. v. Google — the most important tech trial of the modern internet era — and Kevin and Casey disagree on the answer. Then, a conversation with the journalist who spent the last two years shadowing Elon Musk. Today’s guest: Walter Isaacson is a writer and au...

This week: How tech executives’ favorite place to take their pants off turned into a muddy hellscape. We talk to one executive who couldn’t just call a helicopter to escape. Then, Jonathan Greenblatt, C.E.O. of the Anti-Defamation League, on how his organization went from having a “productive” meeting with X’s C.E.O., Linda Yaccarino, last week to being threatened with a lawsuit by Elon Musk on Mo...

A group of tech titans is gobbling up land north of San Francisco with aspirations to alleviate the Bay Area’s housing crisis, promote innovation, and experiment with new forms of governance. It’s not the first time ultra-wealthy people have tried to build the place of their dreams. Will this time be any different? Then, note-taking apps claim to make us smarter. Usually, they don’t. Casey Newton,...

Are New York City’s new rules for short-term rentals like Airbnb effectively a ban? And will they accomplish what proponents want them to? Then, The New York Times tech reporter Erin Griffith on Silicon Valley’s mad dash for GPUs. And finally, we take stock of the A.I. songs of the summer and discuss YouTube and Universal Music Group’s plan to make synthetic voices profitable. On Today’s Episode:...

When Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in December, he was confined to his parents’ house — but he was left free to roam the internet. Today, the New York Times reporter David Yaffe-Bellany talks about how access to the cyberworld allowed Mr. Bankman-Fried to violate his bail terms and land himself in jail. Then, how universities can manage a generative A.I. world. Plus: another look at autonomous ve...

Users are protesting Zoom’s liberal data-collection policy. Authors are shutting down websites that scrape their work. And, in a concession to users, OpenAI is allowing websites to opt out of web scraping. The era of A.I. backlash has begun. Then, street activists are deterring self-driving cars by placing traffic cones on the hoods of vehicles. Plus: How Reddit has squashed the Reddit Revolt. Tod...

Researchers in Korea claim they’ve identified a material that could unlock a technological revolution: the room temperature superconductor. Material scientists are skeptical, but enthusiasts on Twitter are enthusiastic. Why is the internet so excited about superconductors? Then, the Kids Online Safety Act is headed to the Senate floor. Would it actually keep children safe? And how would it change...

On Sunday night, a crane arrived in downtown San Francisco to take down the Twitter sign from the company’s office building. The crane’s arrival marked the death of Twitter, the brand, and the start of X, Elon Musk’s everything app. Today, why Elon’s acquisition feels more and more like cultural vandalism and what, if anything, will replace the global town square. Then, is Sam Altman’s universal b...

Dario Amodei has been anxious about A.I. since before it was cool to be anxious about A.I. After a few years working at OpenAI, he decided to do something about that anxiety. The result was Claude: an A.I.-powered chatbot built by Anthropic, Mr. Amodei’s A.I. start-up. Today, Mr. Amodei joins Kevin and Casey to talk about A.I. anxiety and why it’s so difficult to build A.I. safely. Plus, we watche...

This week, we answer more of your questions, like: What is ChatGPT’s carbon footprint? Why are engineers so sure artificial intelligence will keep getting better? And, why are there so many venture capital bros? 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=pod...

Instagram is no stranger to taking product ideas from other companies and turning them into their own successes. Just ask Snapchat about Instagram Stories or TikTok about Instagram Reels. This time, the company is coming for Twitter with Instagram Threads. Today, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, on why the company now wants to take on Twitter. Today’s guest: Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagr...

Whether it’s on TikTok or Twitter, A.I.-generated content is already flooding the web. So, what happens when the technology — prone to confidently making things up — starts ingesting itself? Then, the New York Times reporter Joe Bernstein talks about why Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight Elon Musk in a cage match. Plus, we put ChatGPT’s recipe generation to the test with A.I. cocktails. Today’s guest...

This week, advertisers swarmed the beaches of southern France for the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Kevin says artificial intelligence is all anyone there can talk about, but admits the conference is making him rethink how quickly generative A.I. will take over the industry — despite the buzz. Then, the New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg on when remote work stopped being the future for tec...

Moderators on Reddit have shut down their forums in protest of a new policy that charges users for access to the site’s API. The revolt has put Kevin in child care-wisdom-withdrawal (RIP r/daddit ) — and left many other users without their favorite subreddits. But does the incident say something more about the future of the internet? Then, the MrBeast Philanthropic-Industrial Complex. Plus: Platfo...

Apple kicked off the week with the announcement of a mixed-reality headset: the Apple Vision Pro. Putting a computer on your face may seem weird AF, but if there’s one company that knows how to make nerdy stuff into the thing that everyone wants, it’s Apple. Will these fancy goggles be the next Apple revolution? Then, crypto had (another) terrible week after the S.E.C. filed lawsuits against the c...

A few days after a lawyer used ChatGPT to write a brief filled with made-up cases, a group of A.I. experts released a letter warning of the “risk of extinction” from the technology. But will A.I. ever be good enough to pose such a threat? Then, FAANG is now MAAAN, with the addition of Nvidia. Here’s how the GPU company became a trillion-dollar behemoth. Plus: Kevin, Casey and the New York Times te...

The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, says social media poses a “profound risk of harm” to young people. Why do some in the tech industry disagree? Then, Ajeya Cotra, an A.I. researcher, on how A.I. could lead to a doomsday scenario. Plus: Pass the hat. Kevin and Casey play a game they call HatGPT. On today’s episode: Ajeya Cotra is a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy Additional r...

In a congressional hearing this week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared to be on the same page as lawmakers: It’s time to regulate A.I. But like so many other proposals to regulate tech, will it actually happen? The Times’s technology reporter Cecilia Kang helps us understand whether Congress will actually act, and what that could look like. Then, Casey talks with Twitter’s former hea...

At its biggest event of the year, Google announced an avalanche of A.I. product releases: A.I. in search, A.I. that writes emails and A.I. that generates slides. Is Google pulling ahead in the A.I. arms race? And, after years of hype, self-driving cars are finally hitting the streets of American cities. Kevin and Casey take a ride through San Francisco in Banana Slug — an autonomous vehicle from t...