A Lot Has Happened in A.I. Lets Catch Up.
Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT. A lot has happened since. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, recently dominated headlines again after the nonprofit board of directors fired C.E.O. Sam Altman, only for him to return several days later.\n\nBut that drama isn\u2019t actually the most important thing going on in the A.I. world, which hasn\u2019t slowed down over the past year, even as people are still discovering ChatGPT for the first time and reckoning with all of its implications.\n\nTech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are hosts of the weekly podcast \u201cHard Fork.\u201d Roose is my colleague at The Times, where he writes a tech column called \u201cThe Shift.\u201d Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer, a newsletter about the intersection of technology and democracy. They\u2019ve been closely tracking developments in the field since well before ChatGPT launched. I invited them on the show to catch up on the state of A.I.\n\nWe discuss: who is \u2014 and isn\u2019t \u2014 integrating ChatGPT into their daily lives, the ripe market for A.I. social companions, why so many companies are hesitant to dive in, progress in the field of A.I. \u201cinterpretability\u201d research, and America\u2019s \u201cfecklessness\u201d that cedes major A.I. benefits to the private sector, and much more.\n\nRecommendations:\n\nElectrifying America by David E. Nye\n\nYour Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill\n\n\u201cIntro to Large Language Models\u201d by Andrej Karpathy (video)\n\nImport AI by Jack Clark.\n\nAI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor\n\nPragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\nThis episode of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show\u2019s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.