IM 854: Welcome to the Pitt - AI: A Brand or a Breakthrough?
Intelligent Machines (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.2 • 895 Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2026
⏱️ 140 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Think you know the story of AI's rise and fall? This episode upends conventional wisdom with guest historian Thomas Haigh, who reveals why the infamous "AI winter" might just be a myth and why the field's biggest failures fueled today's breakthroughs.
- Two Thinking Machines Lab Cofounders Are Leaving to Rejoin OpenAI
- NVDA, GOOGL, META: AI Spending Forecast to Hit $2.53 Trillion This Year
- Nvidia, Eli Lilly just say yes to making drugs together, using Vera Rubin GPUs
- Claude Cowork Exfiltrates Files
- We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon
- How Generative AI is destroying society - by Gary Marcus
- Anthropic rewrites Claude's guiding principles—and entertains the idea that its AI might have 'some kind of consciousness or moral status'
- Claude's new constitution
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau
Guest: Thomas Haigh
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's time for intelligent machines. |
| 0:02.5 | Paris Martino is here. |
| 0:04.1 | Jeff Jarvis is here. |
| 0:05.9 | We didn't expect this. |
| 0:07.4 | He's joining us from his hospital bed because he was so excited about our interview. |
| 0:12.2 | This week we talked to Thomas Haig, the author of a new history of AI. |
| 0:17.4 | Intelligent Machines from the Pit is next. |
| 0:23.3 | Podcasts you love. |
| 0:25.3 | From people you trust. |
| 0:27.9 | This is Twit. |
| 0:31.8 | This is Intelligent Machines with Paris Martineau and Jeff Jarvis. |
| 0:36.2 | Episode 854 recorded Wednesday, January 21st, 2026. |
| 0:42.3 | Welcome to the Pit. |
| 0:44.3 | It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show where we cover the latest in AI robotics and all the smart do dads all around you and your home these days soon someday we'll be doing this show in a |
| 0:57.0 | humanoid robot will creep up behind me and brain me probably uh say hello to our wonderful |
| 1:03.1 | paris martineau from a consumer reports where she's an investigative reporter hello i will be |
| 1:10.0 | sad the day a robot brains you, but I will respect the robot's authority regardless. |
| 1:15.6 | I will have earned it, no doubt. The robot may be remotely controlled by one Paris-Martin, no, we're not sure. |
| 1:23.0 | We don't know. It could be. Now, this is a little weird. I'm going to have to set this up. |
| 1:29.3 | We did not expect Jeff Jarvis to be here today because Jeff... |
| 1:33.3 | In fact, we expected the opposite because that's the only thing that would make sense, given |
| 1:38.3 | what you're about to say. |
... |
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