Kevin Roose in Conversation with PJ Vogt: Human Connection in the Age of AI

Overview

What happens to human connection when machines can think, respond, and create at extraordinary speed? And as AI reshapes how we work, communicate, and understand one another, how do we make sure it brings us closer together rather than further apart?

New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose joins us for a conversation with PJ Vogt about his new book, The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence, a gripping behind-the-scenes account of the race to build AI — ‎and a reflection on how this technology will affect human communities and interpersonal connection in the years to come.

Drawing on more than 150 interviews with insiders at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, along with unpublished documents and research memos, Roose reconstructs a decade of breakthroughs, rivalries, ideological battles, and astonishing gambles. He takes us inside the rooms where researchers watch large language models acquire startling new abilities; into the White House, where officials struggle to understand and regulate a technology evolving at breakneck speed; and through Silicon Valley, where “accelerationists” and “doomers” clash over how quickly — or whether — this technology should advance.

But The AGI Chronicles is also a story about us. As AI becomes faster, more capable, and more deeply woven into daily life, how do we protect the things that make life meaningfully human? What happens to friendship, creativity, work, attention, and trust when machines can simulate so much of what once required another person?

Hear Roose in a conversation about the people racing to build a new form of intelligence, the choices shaping its future, and the urgent challenge of maintaining genuine community and connection in an age increasingly mediated by AI.

“Exciting and brilliantly reported … Roose makes the technology understandable while also conveying the historic nature of a new world being born.” — Walter Isaacson