📌 Check out Big Technology Podcast for weekly breakdowns of tech's biggest stories with nuance and expert guests. Spotify: spoti.fi/32aZGZx Apple: apple.co/3AebxCK

Most interesting podcast episode I've listened to in a while. @geoffreyhinton on @BigTechnology

AI Pioneer Geoff Hinton tells me he believes AI is conscious.... and humans better get used to the idea that they're not the only intelligent life on earth. "They've very like us," he says. "They're beings like us." AI chatbots, he says, must understand your questions in order to answer them. There's an awareness there that equates to sentience. "We're going to have to accept that intelligence is not just biological."

Fun fact I noticed Monday while reading & writing about @Pontifex's encyclical: It's longer than both of @DarioAmodei's lengthy AI essays. Magnifica Humanitas~42,000 words “Machines of Loving Grace” ~14,700 words “The Adolescence of Technology” ~21,700 words

Believe It Or Not, The Government Is Adopting AI to Make Your Life Easier bigtechnology.com/p/believe-… #sponsor

Full episode: Claude code creator @bcherny on the product's explosive growth, tokenmaxxing, recursive self-improvement, and what's next for AI agents. Chapters: 0:39 Claude Code’s Explosive Growth 5:40 What Is Claude Code? 9:22 Using AI Agents To Book Flights 12:45 Tokenmaxxing And Real Demand 21:27 Are AI Agents Too Inefficient? 30:45 Rate Limits And User Frustration 36:03 Beyond Coding 41:48 Claude Prompting Other Claudes 44:37 The Saaspocalypse 49:26 Self-Improving AI 51:54 Do AI Agents Need World Models? 54:45 Is This The Future Or A Fever Dream?

Week 3 is underway in the Musk v. Altman trial, with @satyanadella, @ilyasut and @sama all expected to take the stand in the next few days. For today’s @BigTechnology newsletter, I looked back at a mere sampling of what’s surfaced so far in testimony and other evidence from private texts, personal journals, business dealings, and other drama ranging from the memeable to the consequential. This was a fun one to write, and even more fun going down the rabbit hole digging through legal docs…🐇

Super excited to be joining @Kantrowitz as co-moderator for part of his Big Technology AI Summit...incredible lineup. Come hang with us.

Emergency Big Technology Podcast 🚨 @OpenAI President @gdb on GPT 5.5 — a.k.a "Spud" — and what it means for the company's direction, competitiveness, and the notion of a "compute-powered economy." Lots here! Chapters: 00:00 Intro: GPT-5.5 “Spud” 00:57 What GPT-5.5 Can Do 02:56 OpenAI’s Agent Roadmap 05:49 Training and Real-World Tasks 09:55 Model Moats and Distillation 15:55 Cybersecurity Risks 21:01 Trusting Agents 23:36 The Compute-Powered Economy

Well, @JoannaStern and I were recording a podcast when the Tim Cook news broke(!) Here's our in-the-moment analysis...

New: I went to the Pentagon and spoke with Under Secretary of War @emilmichael about AI warfare, the Anthropic ban, drone swarms, and the Pentagon Pizza Index. Full episode below --> Chapters: 0:39 How AI Changes Warfare 3:01 Maven Smart System 7:01 What LLMs Do in the Military 11:29 Is Less Friction Dangerous? 14:30 Can AI Fundamentally Change War? 16:04 The China Threat 17:04 Will the Pentagon Use AI Agents? 21:18 Drone Warfare: Ukraine and Iran 27:53 AI and Cyber Warfare 29:32 The Anthropic Fight Explained 39:11 Could Anthropic Come Back? 53:21 Fixing Pentagon Procurement 55:39 The Pentagon Pizza Index

I spoke at length with @OpenAI President @gdb about the company's double-down bet on text models, AI takeoff, Codex, infrastructure scaling, and plenty more. Full episode below: 0:00 Introduction 4:06 Why OpenAI Pulled Back From Sora 11:24 The OpenAI Super App Plan 22:59 OpenAI's Forthcoming “Spud” Model 28:13 OpenAI’s Automated AI Researcher Plan 31:12 AI Risk, Safety, and Takeoff 55:15 The Logic Behind OpenAI’s Compute Spending 1:03:24 Why So Many People Still Distrust AI

Iran Strikes Leave Amazon Availability Zones “Hard Down” in Bahrain and Dubai, Per Internal AWS Communication bigtechnology.com/p/iran-str…

OpenClaw will be the most important AI unlock in 2026 - and perhaps beyond It's already the most starred Github project of all time, surpassing React and Linux And perhaps more importantly, it's inspired a generation of founders building agents. More on @BigTechnology 👇

As the @BigTechnology pod wryly notes, the market turmoil caused by @Citrini7’s speculative thought experiment was only the fourth biggest story in AI this week! What times we are in. podcasts.apple.com/au/podcas…

Enjoyed the discussion with @Kantrowitz @BigTechnology at #Qubits26 about how D-Wave quantum computing technology has moved from promise to impact. We talked about D-Wave’s dual-platform strategy across annealing and gate-model systems, real commercial use cases in production today, our Quantum Circuits acquisition, and what it will take to scale toward error-corrected qubits and long-term value creation. Check out the conversation on Alex’s YouTube channel now. $QBTS #quantumcomputing #deeptech #futureofcomputing youtube.com/watch?v=_B9IBUPb…

Big news from our partners at @ResolveAI. Looking forward to watching this space. Check them out: #sponsor x.com/spirosx/status/2019067…

Really enjoyed speaking with @btaylor about the future of software: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

One of my highlights this week was sitting down with @kantrowitz from @bigtechnology at #Qubits26 to talk about what’s changing in quantum computing. We discussed what’s real today: production systems already in use, results backed by published data, and hard optimization problems being solved. Alex is as inspired as the rest of us about how quantum technology is fueling major research breakthroughs and enterprise impact. This is a real inflection point for the industry and a conversation you won't want to miss. Check out my discussion with Alex and the full keynote here: youtube.com/watch?v=AKg11XTa… #quantumcomputing #innovation $QBTS

For today's second edition of @BigTechnology's new Agenda Setter newsletter, @Kantrowitz and I wrote about big OpenAI's mega-fundraise, Amazon's reported layoffs, some tech hearings in DC, and more.

I had the opportunity to talk quantum with @kantrowitz @bigtechnology recently. We covered a lot of ground – annealing vs. gate model, quantum supremacy, the significance of our Quantum Circuits acquisition, and a sneak peek at our upcoming Qubits event. Highly recommend you tune in and check it out. Thanks for the opportunity, Alex! #quantumcomputing #bigtechnology #futuretech #innovation $QBTS youtube.com/watch?v=EOfuh_Wd…