Hard Fork

Kevin reports on his monthlong experiment cultivating relationships with 18 companions generated by artificial intelligence. He walks through how he developed their personas, what went down in their group chats, and why you might want to make one yourself. Then, Casey has a conversation with Turing, one of Kevin’s chat

We asked listeners to tell us about the wildest ways they have been using artificial intelligence at work. This week, we bring you their stories. Then, Hank Green, a legendary YouTuber, stops by to talk about how creators are reacting to the prospect of a ban on TikTok, and about how he’s navigating an increasingly fra

On Wednesday, President Biden signed a bill into law that would force the sale of TikTok or ban the app outright. We explain how this came together, when just a few weeks ago it seemed unlikely to happen, and what legal challenges the law will face next. Then we check on Tesla’s very bad year and what’s next for the co

This week, we drop the Hard Fork Music Megamix. Plus, we talk to two of the New York Time's composers who make the music for our show. It’s all the tracks you know and love, all in one place.  Today’s Guests:Dan Powell, creative technical manager at The New York TimesElisheba Ittoop, sound designer and composer at The

This week, the companies building artificial intelligence are facing a limit to what training data is publicly available on the internet. Will that stop them from building God? Then, a new bipartisan national privacy law proposal just dropped. We ask what’s in it. And finally, ByteDance is building new apps instead of

This week we look at how AI is affecting jobs. As companies start announcing AI-related job cuts and experimenting with customer service bots, economists are placing bets on whether AI will lead to major gains for companies and workers. Some are even predicting it will help rebuild the middle class.  Then, multidiscipl