A.I. Agents: Cute, Cuddly and Maybe Catastrophically Dangerous?

This week, after months in which rogue agents have caused havoc across the internet, tech’s most powerful leaders joined President Trump at the White House to rebrand A.I. At the same time, two of the biggest companies in the field — OpenAI and Meta — released what they say are their most useful (and cutest) A.I. tools to date: personal assistants. To discuss it all, we’re joined by the Times tech reporters Mike Isaac, Erin Griffith and Eli Tan. We’ll discuss how things can be more dangerous and potentially more transformative than ever, and what it’s like to hand your life over to Meta’s Muse.

Panelists

• Erin Griffith, a reporter for The New York Times who covers start-ups and venture capital.

• Mike Isaac, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Silicon Valley and artificial intelligence companies.

• Eli Tan, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Meta and the tech industry.

Additional Reading

• ​​OpenAI Ignored Employees’ Warnings About Safely Testing A.I. Models

• Who Attended Trump’s A.I. Luncheon, and Who Sat Where

• F.T.C. Investigates OpenAI and Anthropic Over Potential Consumer Harms

• I Gave My Life Over to Meta’s A.I. Agent and Was Blown Away

• OpenAI Unveils Dots, New A.I. Agents to Rival Meta’s Muse

• Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs

• How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes

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Credits

This episode of “Hard Fork” was hosted by Max Read, produced by Whitney Jones and edited by Vjeran Pavic, with additional editorial support from Brendan Klinkenberg, Lisa Tobin and Brooke Minters. Engineering by Chris Wood and original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Rowan Niemisto and Alyssa Moxley. Additional video production by Eddie Costas and Rebecca Blandon. Fact-checking by Will Peischel.

Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Jessica Testa, Pui-Wing Tam, Maddy Masiello and Dahlia Haddad.