Is AI Too Big to Fail or Too Dangerous to Succeed?
Offline with Jon Favreau
Crooked Media
4.7 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the AI bubble pop or will AI permanently reshape our society? Jon sits down with Stephen Witt, an investigative journalist and author of “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip” to talk about Stephen’s dire warning in the New York Times about an AI prompt that could end the world. The two discuss the data centers taking over towns across America (and propping up our economy), young people’s quickly evolving relationship to “chat,” and what hope they both have — more than you would expect — for our AI future.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Alex Goldman, host of the Hyperfixed podcast. Each week, we take listeners' problems and try to solve them for them. |
| 0:09.1 | Problems like, I'm 30 and I'm scared to drive in New York, or why can't I adjust the volume of my car stereo when I'm in reverse? |
| 0:15.9 | We also solve non-car-related problems. If you have a problem, not only will we fix it, |
| 0:23.7 | we'll expose the hidden systems that cause that problem in the first place. |
| 0:26.7 | That's the Hyperfixed podcast from Radiotopia. |
| 0:30.6 | Find it wherever you find podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com. |
| 0:37.9 | The biggest risk is that it works. |
| 0:40.2 | And then what happens? |
| 0:43.2 | Human race goes obsolete. |
| 0:45.7 | I'm not sure what we're going to do in a world where hyper-intelligent computing systems |
| 0:48.0 | handle most of our cognitive tasks |
| 0:49.9 | and highly skilled robots handle most of our physical tasks. |
| 0:54.5 | What does that leave us? |
| 0:55.6 | I guess it leaves us kind of the last frontier is face-to-face human interaction. |
| 1:00.2 | So maybe live theater will become popular. |
| 1:09.3 | I'm John Favreau, and you just heard from our guest this week, author and investigative journalist Stephen Witt, who was written and reported extensively about the world of artificial intelligence. |
| 1:19.0 | But before we get to that, I have two quick stories about AI, both of which may terrify you for different reasons. |
| 1:25.4 | Someone gave an AI model called Lightrix, a prompt that said, |
| 1:30.0 | A Scene from Friends. Here's the clip it spit out that went insanely viral. I'm telling you, |
| 1:36.3 | it was a deliberate move. There's no way that could be intentional. Oh, you guys are so funny! |
| 1:46.0 | Now, one reaction I've seen to this clip has been, wow, that's not bad at all for now. |
| 1:52.0 | Imagine how much better it will get over the next few years. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Crooked Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Crooked Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.