What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

If you’ve seen ads for Trump Accounts for kids, but also know anything about Donald Trump, you might be wondering “Free $1,000 per baby? Okay, what’s the catch?” It’s a classic.  Guest: Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan , and founder of Platypus Economics . Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What...

Thanks for joining us during the holidays. White our team is taking a break, we want to share a series with you that we think you’ll love. It’s called Diving In.  Getting food delivered should be simple — but somehow it's gotten outrageously expensive. Economist Justin Wolfers breaks down why food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub make it nearly impossible to compare prices,...

Through stealing your job or simply tanking the stock market—whichever comes first—the rise of artificial intelligence (companies) is a very futuristic sounding problem. It may have some very old-fashioned sounding solutions however. Guest: Cory Doctorow , sci-fi author, journalist, blogger and author of “ The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. ” Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus...

People are asking artificial intelligence large language models how to do everything—even how to harm themselves and others. And while companies claim there are guardrails in place for those situations, we’ve already seen real-world instances of an LLM’s advice being used to plan a mass shooting. Guest: Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones and author of “ Trigger Points: Inside th...

Is Elon Musk’s SpaceX leading humanity to Mars? Or is that just grandiose window-dressing for an A.I. company leading several other A.I. companies to IPOs?  Guest: Max Chafkin , reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek and cohost of the Everybody's Business podcast. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favor...

It’s an awkward time to have a Department of Education that seems so disinterested in, uh, education. It’s leaving teachers to grapple with how to integrate artificial intelligence into the classroom—if at all.  Guest: Randi Weingarten , president of the American Federation of Teachers. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family...

How the Trump administration has tried to put pressure on Disney for opinions expressed by Jimmy Kimmel and the hosts of The View—and how the Mouse is fighting back. Guest: Anna M. Gomez , commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission since September 2023. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite...

The promise of an “internet for niche communities” and “the empowered independent creator” has been taking a beating as the web has become less open and increasingly dominated by a few platforms and players. But does it have to be that way? Guest: Jack Conte , CEO and cofounder of Patreon. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family an...

Under fire for what critics say is inadequate protection of its young user base, Roblox nevertheless remains incredibly popular. Are the company’s new ballyhooed protections up for the task of keeping kids safe? Or is that asking the wrong question entirely? Guests: Cecilia D'Anastasio , video game reporter for Bloomberg.  Mary Harris, host of the other What Next Stella Harris, daughter of Ma...

Between artificial intelligence, the Iran War, and the future of Taiwan, there’s a lot for the United States and China to hash out—not least of which being the pecking order. Guest: Josh Chin , senior global correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subs...

Everyone would probably hate A.I. less if we could just see some upside to it. But despite all the investment—into the companies, into infrastructure like data centers, so much into marketing—it’s widely known: artificial intelligence sucks. Guest: Nilay Patel, co-founder and editor in chief of The Verge.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the who...

The not-always-beloved-but-indisputably-useful Spirit Airlines has given up the ghost. What does this mean for the airline industry and your summer travel plans?  Guest: Will Guisbond , senior reporter for The Air Current. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Po...

In the early 2020s, Microsoft committed to buying 75 million tons of carbon removal—somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the entire carbon removal market. But the company just announced it was putting that ambition on pause..  Guest: Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of Heatmap News . Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next...

This week marks the beginning of the jury trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. There are massive implications for the A.I. industry here, but at the end of the day, the question might just boil down to - who do people dislike more? Guest: Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter at the Washington Post Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next fami...

The era of ads following you around the internet via cookies might be coming to an end. What’s replacing it? Guest: Sara Fisher, Axios' media correspondent , and media analyst at CNN. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of...

Is artificial intelligence a blessing to all humanity, or a demon sent to lead us astray from God’s path? MAGA is choosing between two extremes. Guest: Kiera Butler , national correspondent for Mother Jones. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “...

This very online administration is facing push back from Iran in their own home territory: the world of insipid memes, A.I. videos, and online mockery. Guest: Ali Breland , staff writer for the Atlantic. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try...

Back in the depths of the pandemic, what was an actor to do? Ben McKenzie started looking into cryptocurrency—and his research yielded both a book and a new documentary. The works are both non-fiction, which is more than McKenzie can say for crypto. Guest: Ben McKenzie, actor, director of the documentary Everyone Is Lying to You for Money , and co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capit...

If you had as much trouble getting along with other humans as Sam Altman does, you too might be eager to issue in the artificial intelligence revolution. Guest: Andrew Marantz , staff writer for the New Yorker.  Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by c...

As OpenAI prepares for its IPO, the company decided to…pay millions of dollars for a tech talk show? Is this just what rich tech guys like Sam Altman are like now?  Guest: Mike Isaac , tech reporter for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Po...

One of artificial intelligence’s most hyped “abilities” is how it writes computer code. So much so that seemingly anyone can do it. So we figured… why not us?  Guests:  Greg Lavalee, Slate’s Chief Technology Officer. Clive Thompson, contributing writer for the New York Times Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all...

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, private credit or “shadow banking” grew as an alternative to the regulations and shared risk that institutional banks operate within. What happens if a crisis hits the trillions of dollars that are outside of those guardrails? We may be about to find out.  Guest: Tracy Alloway , co-host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. Want more What Next TBD? Subscri...

Artificial intelligence is working its way into every aspect of our lives, including law and immigration enforcement, and the industry is spending millions of dollars to ensure it can continue to do so unregulated. But as evidence of bias appears in this nascent tech, this congresswoman wants to ensure we’re not just recreating our historical biases and problems all over again—which is to say, she...

What YouTube and Meta’s loss in the “social media addiction trial” could mean for your feed. Guest: Ryan Mac , business and technology reporter for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. S...

Why Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp views working with Western militaries not just as a business opportunity, but as a higher calling. Guest: Jacob Silverman , journalist and author of “ Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley .” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcas...