Ezra Klein

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1,272 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard yesterday

Ezra Klein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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Hard Fork · The Ezra Klein Show: The A.I. Revolt Is Here · 11 Sep 2026 podcast

But it also gets at a core truth, which is people don't actually want data centers around them. voice-verified

It is a cost. voice-verified

It is a concentrated cost for a diffuse benefit, if you believe in the benefit. voice-verified

So I think that's part of it. voice-verified

I want to go back to the first bucket you were talking about, which is like the race dynamics. voice-verified

Yes. voice-verified

So at the most generous, the thing that I've heard repeatedly is sort of what you're describing, which is it would be better if this were going slower. voice-verified

But I can't control that because I whether I'm at, you know. voice-verified

anthropic or open AI or Google or meta, you know, if we slow down, it just is our less ethical competitors over there who speed up. voice-verified

And even if you put down legislation slowing down all of America, then it's China, you know, the CCP, which is going to win the race. voice-verified

I guess one question is, do you buy this central metaphor of a race that has a, like a ticker tape line where at some point somebody passes it and then they have the recursive super intelligence and like the race is over? voice-verified

Or do you see this more as like most technologies, like a kind of like a linear set of gains? voice-verified

I mean, can be fast, can be slow, but that doesn't have that somebody is going to win dynamic. voice-verified

who will build voice-verified

The reason I want to focus in on this race metaphor for a minute is I've come to think it is really one of the central dividing lines in how you think about different kinds of AI policy. voice-verified

Whether you think that we are in a race with China to get to the point where one side or the other is going to pull endlessly and decisively ahead because they hit that recursive, self-improving level. voice-verified

Well, then that means what you do in the next one to three years is incredibly, incredibly definitionally important. voice-verified

But if you don't believe that, if you believe something more like, yes, this is a powerful technology, it's a powerful technology that might have a lot of downsides, might come with a lot of social instability. voice-verified

Its effect on a society may not be good. voice-verified

Then voice-verified

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