EP 5: Contact

In the strange months after ChatGPT’s release, the world made contact with something new. A tech CEO begged to be regulated, a chatbot seemed to fall in love, and the godfathers of AI became frightened by the implications of what they’d spent their lives building. THIS EPISODE FEATURES: Keach Hagey, Kevin Roose, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton LINKS: Keach Hagey’s book The Optimist Sam Altman testifies at Senate artificial intelligence hearing, May 16, 2023 Sam Altman testifies at Senate hearing on artificial intelligence, May 8, 2025 Kevin Roose’s article on Sydney Kevin’s podcast: Hard Fork CREDITS: This episode of The Last Invention was reported and produced by Andy Mills, Gregory Warner, Andrew Parsons, Megan Phelps-Roper, Matthew Boll, Seth Temple Andrews, and Ethan Mannello. It is hosted by Gregory Warner Music for this episode was composed by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Scott Devendorf⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Lanz⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Cobey Bienert⁠⁠⁠⁠, and Matthew Boll The Last Invention artwork by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jacob Boll⁠⁠⁠⁠ To become a Longview subscriber you can visit us ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you to our sponsors Ground News and FIRE ⁠⁠⁠⁠GROUND NEWS⁠:⁠⁠⁠ Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠groundnews.com/invent⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get 40% off unlimited access to global coverage of the stories shaping our world. ⁠⁠⁠⁠FIRE⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ This is a paid sponsorship link Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices