Hard Fork
Episodes
Can the U.S. Rein in Prediction Markets? + Joanna Stern on Her Year of A.I. Experiments + Our Producer Goes to Attention School
08 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re taking another look at prediction markets and a new series of scandals. Is Congress finally ready to rein them in? Then, the journal...
OpenAI’s Big Reset + A.I. in the Doctor’s Office + Talkie, a pre-1930s LLM
01 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, OpenAI announced a loosened partnership with Microsoft and an aggressive new strategy to secure computing power. We unpack what these updat...
Tim Cook’s Legacy + The Future of U.B.I. With Andrew Yang + HatGPT
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Tim Cook announced he would step down as chief executive of Apple. We discuss what he got right and what he got wrong, and we offer some un...
A.I. Backlash Turns Violent + Kara Swisher on Healthmaxxing + The Zuck Bot Is Coming
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, amid violent attacks on the homes of the OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and the Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson, we debate why artifi...
Anthropic’s Cybersecurity Shock Wave + Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Their Sam Altman Investigation + One Good Thing
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we look at the cybersecurity threats that a new unreleased model from Anthropic are posing to software everywhere. And we ask whether Proje...
The Future of Addictive Design + Going Deep at DeepMind + HatGPT
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, two separate juries held social media companies liable for harming young users. We unpack what these landmark decisions mean — not only f...
The Ezra Klein Show: How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy?
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The “Hard Fork” team is off this week, taking a much-needed break. While we’re away, we wanted to draw your attention to a recent episode of “...
‘A.I.-Washing’ Layoffs? + Why L.L.M.s Can’t Write Well + Tokenmaxxing
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we start by talking about the new wave of tech layoffs at Atlassian and Block, as well as reports that Meta plans to cut up to 20 percent o...
A.I. Goes to War + Is ‘A.I. Brain Fry’ Real? + How Grammarly Stole Casey’s Identity
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A.I. is changing the ways war is waged. This week, we explore how the U.S. and Israel are using A.I. to identify targets in the conflict with Iran —...
OpenAI's Fog of War + Betting on Iran + Hard Fork Review of Slop
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the fallout continues as OpenAI scrambles to rework its deal with the Pentagon, while government agencies adapt to life without Claude. The...
At the Pentagon, OpenAI is In and Anthropic Is Out
01 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday, President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s A.I. systems and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company...
Is A.I. Eating the Labor Market? + The Latest on the Pentagon, OpenClaw and Alpha School
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the economist Anton Korinek joins to break down how artificial intelligence is driving volatility in the job and stock markets. Then, the b...
The Pentagon vs. Anthropic + An A.I. Agent Slandered Me + Hot Mess Express
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Anthropic is refusing to let the government use the company’s technology for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. In response, t...
‘Something Big Is Happening’ + A.I. Rocks the Romance Novel Industry + One Good Thing
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss Wall Street’s software-stock sell-off and a viral essay on X about the potential for widespread job displacement from A.I. The...
Elon Musk’s Mega-Merger + We Test Google’s Project Genie + What’s Next for Moltbook Creator
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the A.I. initial-public-offering race is heating up! We break down SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, as well as OpenAI and Nvidia’s messy si...
Moltbook Mania Explained
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A Reddit-style web forum for A.I. agents has captured the attention of the tech world. According to the site, called Moltbook, more than 1.5 million a...
Tech Grapples With ICE + Casey Tries Clawdbot, a Risky New A.I. Assistant + HatGPT
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re talking about the tech industry’s response to the killings by federal agents in Minneapolis and the federal government’s strateg...
Will ChatGPT Ads Change OpenAI? + Amanda Askell Explains Claude's New Constitution
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ads are coming to ChatGPT’s free and low-cost subscription tiers. We explain what they’ll look like, why OpenAI is taking this approach and whethe...
Jonathan Haidt Strikes Again + What You Vibecoded + An Update on the Forkiverse
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” returns to the show to discuss new research about how social media is harming teens...
Can We Build a Better Social Network?
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past year we’ve been working with the podcast “Search Engine” on a project that reimagines what the internet can be. What if instead of...
Grok’s Undressing Scandal + Claude Code Capers + Casey Busts a Reddit Hoax
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Users of X are asking the platform’s built-in A.I. chatbot, Grok, to remove clothing from images of celebrities and everyday people. We talk with th...
Our 2026 Tech Resolutions + We Answer Your Questions
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Happy New Year! We’re kicking things off by sharing our tech resolutions for 2026 and reflecting on how we fared with our social media and meditatio...
The Wirecutter Show: Tips for Using A.I. Smartly With Kevin Roose
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin recently joined the hosts of The Wirecutter Show for a conversation about the A.I. products he’s using, strategies to make chatbots work bette...
Where Is All the A.I.-Driven Scientific Progress?
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The leaders of the biggest A.I. labs argue that artificial intelligence will usher in a new era of scientific discovery, which will help us cure disea...
Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin’ Xmas Song
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, iRobot, the pioneering American robotics company behind the Roomba, filed for bankruptcy and announced that it would be taken over by its C...
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Australia implemented the most aggressive social media ban in a democracy to date, kicking children under 16 off 10 of the most popular soc...
OpenAI Calls a ‘Code Red’ + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s A.I. model rollout season in Silicon Valley, and OpenAI appears to be feeling the pressure. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sent a m...
Hard Fork’s 50 Most Iconic Technologies of 2025
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last year we debuted Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies list, in which we ranked the technologies from across all of history that best define ...
The Interview: How Wikipedia Is Responding to the Culture Wars
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last month our colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro had a conversation with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales about the challenges the site is facing — ...
We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense.
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Roblox's popularity has exploded among kids since the pandemic. Today Roblox has more than 150 million daily active users, and functions as one of the...
Google's Gemini 3 Is Here: A Special Early Look
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Google’s much anticipated new large language model Gemini 3 begins rolling out today. We’ll tell you what we learned from an early product briefin...
What’s a Hard Fork?
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore stories from the wild frontier of tech.What’s real? What’s hype? “Hard Fork” is here to help you ma...