Inside the players and politics of the modern AI industry

We have a special episode of Decoder today – I was traveling last week, so Border Deputy Editor Alex Heath and our new senior AI reporter, Kylie Robison, are filling in for me, with a very different kind of AI episode.

But we don’t spend much time on the day-to-day happenings of the AI ​​industry itself. And that’s for good reason: it’s been evolving so quickly and changing so frequently that it’s almost impossible for the average person to keep up. Understanding all the different players, who is building what, and what people in the industry honestly think about where everything is going – it’s a lot.

So we thought it would be a good idea to take a break and ask Alex and Kylie to break down the modern AI boom as it exists today: the companies you need to know about, the most important news from the past few months, and what’s on the horizon. In fact, I enjoy being fully immersed in this industry every day.

You’ll hear Alex and Kylie talk about OpenAI, the gravitational pull it has on the entire technology sector, and how Google is trying to challenge that – with mixed results. But they also got into the relationship between the overzealous enthusiasm driving AI funding and product development and the very real paranoia in the Bay Area surrounding what you’ll hear Kylie refer to as p(disgrace)an abbreviation for the percentage probability that AI could actually kill us all.

They also look at all the top AI companies, how likely it is that some smaller AI startup will take down ChatGPT, the open versus closed source debate, and — as Alex says — the “Wall Street mythologizing” of AI.

Oh, and look for a mention of a effective accelerationist rave where Grimes DJed for OpenAI’s CTO. These are all real words, all together in the same sentence.