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Why did the “Hugging Face Incident” scare A.I. researchers so much? And if they are so confident artificial intelligence needs to be slowed down, why aren’t they slowing it down?Guest: Nate Soares, President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, co-…
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What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future
But HOW Might A.I. Kill Us All?
•Friday, September 18, 2026Why did the “Hugging Face Incident” scare A.I. researchers so much? And if they are so confident artificial intelligence needs to be slowed down, why aren’t they slowing it down?
Guest: Nate Soares, President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, co-author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.
Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.
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Can We Trust the Jobs Report?
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