The AI arms race to build digital god

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today, we’re going to try and figure out "digital god." I figured we’ve been doing Decoder long enough, let’s just get after it. Can we build an artificial intelligence so powerful it changes the world and answers all our questions? The AI industry has decided the answer is yes.

In September, OpenAI’s Sam Altman published a blog post claiming we’ll have superintelligent AI in “a few thousand days.” And earlier this month, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic published a 14,000-word post laying out what he thinks such a system will be capable of when it does arrive, which he says could be as soon as 2026. Verge senior AI reporter Kylie Robison joins me on the show to break it all down.

Links:

• Machines of Loving Grace | Dario Amodei
• The Intelligence Age | Sam Altman
• Anthropic’s CEO thinks AI will lead to a utopia | The Verge
• AI manifestos flood the tech zone | Axios
• OpenAI just raised $6.6 billion to build ever-larger AI models | The Verge
• OpenAI was a research lab — now it’s just another tech company | The Verge
• California governor vetoes major AI safety bill | The Verge
• Inside the white-hot center of AI doomerism | NYT
• Microsoft and OpenAI’s close partnership shows signs of fraying | NYT
• The $14 Billion question dividing OpenAI and Microsoft | WSJ
• Anthropic has floated $40 Billion valuation in funding talks | The Information

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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