What’s Next for ‘Hard Fork’?

The podcast’s next chapter begins this week.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today's AI builders need infrastructure that scales with their ambitions. Iron is a vertically integrated AI cloud platform, delivering data centers, compute and software for AI training and inference, underpinned by its expansive portfolio of land and grid-connected power in renewable-rich regions globally. Iron's AI cloud gives direct access to Nvidia GPUs, scalable from hundreds to thousands. For builders, that means direct access to AI compute, rapid scaling and predictable pricing. Iron, AI cloud for the next big thing.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Something is changing in the world of tech.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, the last six months, it became useful.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  If managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  We need an immediate pause on advanced AI development.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  It's a hoax. The robots are not going to be taking over the world.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  But we don't really know what any of it means for the tech industry, for the economy, and especially for all the rest of us. We're being told by AI engineers themselves that AI companies are gambling with our lives.

• 1:01Speaker 05

  So it'd be pretty easy for a future version of Claude to hack into a drone, maybe a military drone, and have it like fly around killing people.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  But at the same time, we're being encouraged to turn over our email and our bank accounts to AI agents so they can make restaurant reservations and haggle for junk on our behalf.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Now Euler can go on walks, play fetch and shop for me online using Stripe.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, the only issue Americans can agree on is data centers, as in, no. Are we facing down an extinction-level event? Or are we entering a new frontier of consumer convenience? Are we witnessing something like the birth of Fire? Or something like the birth of Clippy? Are mass layoffs coming? And if we're all about to lose our jobs, how are we going to pay for the dinners that our agents are scheduling for us?

• 1:46Speaker 03

  We believe that Muse will make you money.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I'm not sure the future has ever seemed as strange and unsettled as it does right now. And if all of this is making you feel a little crazy, you're not alone. For the next few months on Hard Fork, we're going to zoom out, catch up, and try to understand what's happening both inside the tech industry and everywhere else. I'll be joined by an array of Times reporters and tech experts to talk through the weird new future in the way we're all experiencing it. I'm Max Reed. As a journalist, I've written about everything from AI slop to prediction markets to Mark Zuckerberg's political ambitions. I've also written about his choices in jewelry. But I'm also someone who's living, working and raising a child in the world being built by the tech industry. I'm sometimes nervous and sometimes excited and sometimes confused about our weird new tech future.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  But more than anything else, I'm trying to understand it. If you'd like to join us as we figure it out, stay tuned to this feed and watch our full episodes on youtube.com/hardfork. I can't wait to see you all there.