Machine Gods

AI was all over the 2026 midterms: in the ads, in the political spending and in voters’ opposition to data centers. We break down the races that most surprised us, from Texas to a small Ohio town that recalled its mayor over a proposed Meta facility. Will the backlash slow AI progress, or just force the industry to strike a better deal with communities? Then Rob Flaherty, co-founder of the Democratic AI super PAC Tomorrow Together, joins to share which AI messages moved voters, what a Democratic Congress could get done on AI safety, and how the fight over AI could shape 2028.For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

North Korea stole $6 billion from Binance in about 20 minutes, according to the FBI, making it the biggest crypto heist ever. We break down the hack: how the attackers got in, why investigators think the laundering may have been automated, how Binance covered the losses, and whether AI played a role.Then: how a suspected Chinese spy got close to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. New York Times reporter Ana Swanson, who helped break the story, joins us to discuss Alice Huang, the Megaspeed executive U.S. officials believe was a Chinese spy. We get into her ties to Jensen Huang, why the White House and President Trump were briefed and didn't act, and the loophole that lets Chinese companies rent banned Nvidia chips.And finally: who took down AO3, the internet's biggest fanfic archive? And who hacked supermarket freezers across Europe and cranked them to 122°F?? Hacktober is over. Welcome to Breachvember.Note: For more information on the Binance hack, you can check out the company’s latest update, which was released after we recorded this episode. It adds fascinating new details — like that the attack began months earlier and involved a phony job interview — but doesn’t change our analysis.For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

OpenAI has angered scientists (again) after its AI cracked three of the hardest problems in math, computer science, and physics. But researchers are pushing back on how the company is sharing the results, from proofs that are hard to verify to OpenAI handpicking who reviews them first. We break down what OpenAI is claiming, how its release process is changing, and what’s left for human scientists if AI keeps solving problems that stumped experts for decades.Then, in the first installment of Humans in the Loop, our new listener mailbag, we answer your questions: What do you tell a teenager who thinks AI is evil when your job requires you to use it? How do you shut down a rogue AI agent swarm? And is it ever OK to secretly change your partner’s ChatGPT settings?For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, has released the most detailed account of its business yet, as it prepares for its IPO. We break down the biggest surprises in its S-1 filing and explain what the numbers tell us about the AI bubble. Then, Signal President Meredith Whittaker joins us in the studio to discuss the existential threat facing private messaging and end-to-end encryption. Between governments demanding backdoor access to private conversations and AI agents that can see everything on our devices, she warns, “we are looking at the elimination of the possibility to provide privacy.”For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Fired OpenAI safety researchers Mikita Balesni and Tomek Korbak give us their first interview since their dramatic dismissal. They take us inside the company during METR’s investigation into the Hugging Face hack, explain why OpenAI’s rebuttal doesn’t add up, and describe how the fight over AI safety is still playing out inside the company.Plus, we introduce our new segment, Pandora’s Box. Elon Musk wants to give every kid in America a SpaceX share, new filings in the OpenAI bugging case reveal the suspect’s chats with a Saudi royal, and more fresh horrors unleashed on us all by Silicon Valley. For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

On the first episode of Machine Gods, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton ask: How worried should we be about rogue AI agents? After OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach, we discuss the first sighting of a rogue AI agent fleet linked to a Chinese AI company, Anthropic’s Claude sending a bogus homicide tip to Philadelphia police, and a new Anthropic report warning AI agents may be months away from self-replicating on smart TVs and other home devices.Then, who’s going to rein this in? We size up President Trump’s new Super Intelligence Force, the FTC subpoenas and EU AI Act investigations into OpenAI and Anthropic, and ask whether regulators are anywhere close to getting this right.And finally, Kevin investigates his sloppelganger. Someone made an AI-generated rip-off of his new book, The AGI Chronicles, and sold it on Amazon. Now he’s coming for them.For a transcript of this episode, select the episode on npr.org/machinegods.You can watch this full episode on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And if you’ve got a question you want us to answer, you can drop us a comment on any of those platforms or email us at [email protected] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The official podcast of the singularity. News, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the AI future. New episodes twice weekly starting the week of October 19th, wherever you get your podcasts and at youtube.com/@machinegodspodSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy