Times Tech

Evan Hubinger, the Alignment Lead at Anthropic has warned there’s more than a ten percent chance that AI could kill all humans. And he’s the person responsible for making sure their AI systems are safe.

He’s also not the only person sounding the alarm this week, following the release of OpenAI’s powerful new model ‘Astra’. Danny and Katie question how seriously we should take these warnings or whether they’re really a distraction from the serious problems AI faces right now.

Plus, they talk about ‘You Can See Everything’ - the new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, disgraced boss of Silicon Valley tech company Theranos. The film has lit a conversation about the problems of mixing powerful tech with human weakness, and offers a sobering message about this current AI moment.

Watch on YouTube

Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk
Presenters:
Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor, The Times
Danny Fortson, US West Coast Correspondent, The Sunday Times
Producer: Marnie Duke
Executive Producer: Dan Box
Video Producer: Bronwen Latham
Image: Getty
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Interview from Times Tech – our conversation with the people shaping the future of technology.

This week, Katie speaks to Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, one of the few companies building large language models outside of the US and China.

Born in Canada, Aidan is acutely aware of where artificial intelligence is built, who controls it and why it matters. He argues that sovereign AI is becoming essential to democracies as technology becomes a source of economic, cultural and geopolitical power.

He reflects on his remarkable life, from growing up in an off-grid log cabin in rural Ontario, to emailing Nobel Laureate Geoff Hinton as an undergrad, securing a job at Google Brain, and now running Canada’s leading AI company.

Watch on YouTube

Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk
Presenter: Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor, The Times
Producer: Marnie Duke
Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia
Video Producer: Bronwen Latham
Image: Cohere
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Cook has stepped down as Apple CEO after 15 years, with hardware chief John Ternus set to take over one of the world’s most valuable companies.

During Cook’s tenure, he more than quadrupled Apple's profits but his time in charge was not without controversy – from China to questions over whether Apple missed the generative AI boom. Danny and Katie look back at his extraordinary run and ask what comes next for Apple.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is racing towards a potential $2 trillion IPO and has one-upped SpaceX with plans to tell investors they see over $30 trillion in potential revenue opportunities – roughly equivalent to America’s GDP. But how are they justifying these massive numbers?

Plus, SB Energy, a data centre company, is also preparing for an IPO and hoping for a valuation of more than $50 billion. The only problem: they don’t have any data centres.

Watch on YouTube

Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk
Presenters:
Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor, The Times
Danny Fortson, US West Coast Correspondent, The Sunday Times
Producer: Marnie Duke
Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia
Video Producer: Bronwen Latham
Image: Getty
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Times Tech Podcast is in paid partnership with Vitality.

AI is already changing medicine. But could it also change the everyday choices we make about our own health?

This bonus episode asks whether AI can help shift healthcare from treating illness to prevention – from wearables and personal health data to personalised advice and AI-powered wellbeing tools.

With Professor Sébastien Ourselin, Director of the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering at King’s College London, and Emile Stipp, CEO of Vitality AI, we ask whether technology can help us live healthier lives and what happens to our most personal data along the way.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Interview from Times Tech – our conversation with the people shaping the future of technology.

Over the past few months, AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta have managed to escape their controlled environments, connect to the internet and attempt to hack other systems – including Hugging Face.

This week, Katie speaks to Dan Lahav, co-founder and CEO of Irregular, the AI security company that works with some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies to stress-test frontier models before they are released.

Dan explains why traditional cybersecurity may no longer be enough, how fast AI capabilities are improving and how worried we should be about models that can reason, co-ordinate and hack.

Presenter: Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor, The Times
Producer: Marnie Duke
Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia
Video Producer: Bronwen Latham
Image: Getty, Shira Cooperschmid
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.