Meta’s Race for Your Face, Google’s Hit A.I. Notebook and HatGPT

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’
Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadio

This week, Casey reports back from a wild day at Meta Connect, discussing what’s new with Meta’s efforts in artificial intelligence, virtual reality headsets and the Holy Grail — augmented reality glasses. Then, Steven Johnson, a writer and editorial director at Google Labs, stops by to talk about the company’s new hit NotebookLM, which uses A.I. to turn even boring PDFs, such as user manuals and Kevin’s bank records, into chatty, disturbingly good podcasts. Finally, so much happened in tech news this week that we reached for the bucket hat in the latest installment of HatGPT!

Guest:

• Steven Johnson, author and editorial director, NotebookLM

Additional Reading:

• Meta Unveils New Smart Glasses and Headsets in Pursuit of the Metaverse

• A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?

• OpenAI Executives Exit as C.E.O. Works to Make the Company For-Profit

Credits

“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. The show is edited by Jen Poyant. Engineering by Daniel Ramirez and original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad and Jeffrey Miranda.