We bring you a special episode decoder Today I went on a trip last week Verge Deputy Editor Alex Heath and our new senior AI reporter, Kylie Robison, will be taking over for me with a very different kind of episode on AI.
But we don’t spend much time following the day-to-day happenings of the AI ​​industry itself, and for good reason: the industry moves so fast and changes so often that it’s nearly impossible for the average person to keep up. It takes a lot to understand the different players, who’s building what, and what people in the industry honestly think about the overall direction.
So we thought it would be a good idea to take a moment and have Alex and Kylie fill us in on today’s AI boom: the companies you need to know about, the most important news stories of the past few months, and what it’s really like to be immersed in the industry every day.
Alex and Kylie talk about OpenAI, the gravitational force it has on the entire tech industry, and Google’s attempts to challenge it (with mixed results). But they also talk about the relationship between the hype driving AI funding and product development and a very real paranoia in the Bay Area that Kylie calls p(doom), which is shorthand for the percentage chance that AI will actually kill us all.
We also analyze all the most important AI companies, discuss the possibility of smaller AI startups overtaking ChatGPT, the open source vs. closed source debate, and, in Alex’s words, the “Wall Streetization” of AI.
Oh, and note the mention of an effectively accelerationist rave that Grimes DJed for the CTO of OpenAI. These are all actual words, and all in the same sentence.
