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The Birth of AGI (Ep. 499)
A Conversation with Kevin Roose
Sam Harris
Oct 20, 2026
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Sam Harris speaks with Kevin Roose about the race to build artificial general intelligence. They discuss Roose’s book
The AGI Chronicles,
the scaling laws behind AI’s rapid progress, Dario Amodei’s “big blob of compute” memo, the birth of reasoning models, Roose’s encounter with Bing’s Sydney chatbot, the roughly 50 people deciding humanity’s future, the rivalries among lab leaders, AI agents and recursive self-improvement, the absence of regulation, and other topics.
Kevin Roose
is an award-winning technology journalist and the author of four books, most recently
The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence.
He is the host of the NPR podcast
Machine Gods
.
From 2017 to 2026, he was a technology columnist at
The New York Times,
where he co-hosted the podcast
Hard Fork
with Casey Newton and hosted the series
Rabbit Hole.
His work examines artificial intelligence, automation, social media, and the effects of technology on society.
Website:
MachineGods.fm
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Making Sense Podcast
Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and five-time New York Times best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the mind, society, current events, moral philosophy, religion, and rationality—with an overarching focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
Sam is also the creator of the Waking Up app. Combining Sam’s decades of mindfulness practice, profound wisdom from varied philosophical and contemplative traditions, and a commitment to a secular, scientific worldview, Waking Up is a resource for anyone interested in living a more examined, fulfilling life—and a new operating system for the mind.
Waking Up offers free subscriptions to anyone who can’t afford one, and donates a minimum of 10% of profits to the most effective charities around the world. To learn more, please go to WakingUp.com.
Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and five-time New York Times best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the mind, society, current events, moral philosophy, religion, and rationality—with an overarching focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
Sam is also the creator of the Waking Up app. Combining Sam’s decades of mindfulness practice, profound wisdom from varied philosophical and contemplative traditions, and a commitment to a secular, scientific worldview, Waking Up is a resource for anyone interested in living a more examined, fulfilling life—and a new operating system for the mind.
Waking Up offers free subscriptions to anyone who can’t afford one, and donates a minimum of 10% of profits to the most effective charities around the world. To learn more, please go to WakingUp.com.
Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
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