Kevin Roose Launches New Tech Podcast "Machine Gods" After Leaving The New York Times

American technology journalist Kevin Roose, long a reporter at The New York Times, has left the paper together with colleague Casey Newton to start a new podcast called "Machine Gods". It focuses on the artificial intelligence industry, and its first episode was released a week ago. Roose spoke about the change on The Verge's Decoder podcast, where he also discussed his new book, "The AGI Chronicles", which examines the companies racing to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a system able to handle a broad range of tasks.

From Hard Fork to Machine Gods

"Machine Gods" is the successor to the popular podcast Hard Fork, which Roose and Newton made at The New York Times. The new show is produced in partnership with NPR, the US public radio organization. Roose revealed that he formally holds the title of CEO because someone had to be listed when the company was set up, and a coin flip decided it.

According to him, the project will be video-first, mainly on YouTube, which he regards as the most important media platform in the world. Journalism has historically had no central place there, and one goal is to find an approach to video that is sustainable both economically and creatively. Content will also be distributed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so as not to depend on a single platform.

Audience and approach

Roose said the audience is changing. In his view, there was for a time demand for content claiming AI need not be taken seriously, but many people have now either accepted its presence or approach it with interest. The show wants neither to glorify the technology nor to deny its impact. Newton's term for this approach is "AI realism".

Roose also said he has unexpectedly enjoyed the business side of the work, although not every part, such as sorting out insurance terms for defamation coverage, is appealing.