OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit meant to conduct artificial intelligence research that would benefit the general public. In the company's early days, reporter Karen Hao arranged to spend time in OpenAI's offices and noticed the culture there was incredibly secretive. That secrecy raised questions for Hao that ultimately resulted in her new book, Empire of AI. The book is an intimate look at the company behind ChatGPT, but also at the industry-wide race to control AI. In today's episode, she speaks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about early disagreements between founders Sam Altman and Elon Musk, Altman's talents for fundraising and storytelling, and how the AI race is reproducing elements of colonial empire.
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In 1610, a European astronomer used a new invention called the telescope to observe the planet Jupiter. What he found revolutionized the science of astronomy and our entire understanding of the universe.
Galileo also observed Jupiter that same year.
The observation of Jupiter led to the discovery of the first objects in the solar system since antiquity.
Today, astronomers are hoping that some of these moons of Jupiter might have the best hope of harboring life outside of Earth in our Solar System.
Learn more about the moons of Jupiter, the controversy surrounding their discovery, and why they are so important on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
After the American Revolution, the United States economy was in trouble. One solution proposed to solve the crisis was the establishment of a national bank.
The bank wasn’t just an economic issue; it also sparked one of the first constitutional debates in the nation’s history.
Fast-forward several decades, and the United States found itself debating the exact same issue, with very similar results.
Learn more about the first and second Banks of the United States, why they were created, and how they ended on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Romans were familiar with Africa. At one point, they controlled everything on the north coast of Africa from Morocco to Egypt.
However, below their African territories was the vast Sahara Desert, which was extremely difficult to cross. For all practical purposes, it served as a permeable barrier between the people above and below the desert.
As such, historians have wondered just how much the people above and below the Sahara knew about each other.
Learn more about Rome and Sub-Saharan Africa, and what contact they had with each other on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Can you tell me how to get... how to get to Indicators of the Week? This week's econ roundup looks at Target's sagging sales, Klarna's pay-later problem, and Sesame Street's new streaming address.
Ocean Vuong's debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous placed him in an elite club of American writers. He teaches at NYU and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other honors. But before all this, the author was raised by working-class Vietnamese immigrant parents in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong's new novel The Emperor of Gladness takes place in a similar environment and centers on an unlikely friendship between a 19 year-old college dropout named Hai and an 82-year-old with dementia named Grazina. In today's episode, Vuong joins NPR's Ari Shapiro for a conversation about reframing our view of the United States and the American dream, describing ugly things in a beautiful way, and Vuong's experience working in close quarters at a fast food restaurant.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday