AI Researchers TAKE UP SMOKING: Expect DEATH Or CANCER CURE

We are very happy to welcome Kevin Russ today, a wonderful friend of our show. He is the author of a fantastic new book. Let's bring it to the screen: "The AGI Chronicles," the inside story of the race to create an artificial superintelligence. He is also the host of the upcoming podcast "The Machine Gods Pod." We

will link to both resources in the description. So, Kevin, let's talk a little bit about why you decided to write this book. The fact that it's coming out right now is incredibly relevant. I know you've obviously been on the forefront of this topic for the last couple of years, delving into the very

nature of the characters. Why did you decide to write it? And why is this relevant to today's discussion? Yes, I think so... The book is essentially a concise history of the last 10 years in AI and the race between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to create artificial general intelligence . This is a kind of "

holy grail" of computer science, AI, capable of doing everything that the human brain can. And at some point, I just felt like this story was slipping through my fingers. It was as if I was witnessing something like the " Manhattan Project" of the 21st century. And it was as if no one was recording the details, the

conversations, the breakthroughs, the feuds, and the rivalries. It all seemed very interesting to me. So I thought people needed some historical context to understand how we got to the point where three companies are competing to create something that they now say could kill us all. Therefore, to understand this and the thinking of the people

who create these technologies, you need to go back to 2016-2017, when they all worked together in a small company called OpenAI. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutzkever, and Dario Amodei were colleagues there at the time. And now they are sworn enemies and are suing each other on various issues. So this story is my