The Inside Story of the 150 People Who Built Modern AI

Tomorrow, more than 400 founders, executives, and builders will gather in Brooklyn for Thesis: 2027 to explore what great human work looks like after automation. Speakers include OpenAI’s Andrew Ambrosino, Notion CEO Ivan Zhao, and Browser Company cofounder and CEO Josh Miller. Every editor in chief Kate Lee will also moderate “Media After AGI,” a conversation with the Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson and tech journalist Kevin Roose. If you can’t join us in person, register for free to watch the livestream.

Ahead of the conference, we sat down with Roose on The Every Podcast to discuss his new book and the people shaping AI’s future.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Kevin Roose is obsessed with the moments in history when “the fabric of the world changes or goes in a new direction.” The race to build artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a world-saving or world-ending technology, depending on who you ask—is one of those moments. Roose has spent the past decade reporting on that race, with access to the people and decisions shaping it at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

For his new book, The AGI Chronicles, Roose interviewed 150 people to uncover a history largely hidden within AI labs and guarded by nondisclosure agreements. The book goes inside the labs where researchers train and test AI models, including what went on behind the scenes of Sam Altman’s dramatic firing and reinstatement at OpenAI.