Our 2026 Tech Resolutions + We Answer Your Questions

Summary

Hard Fork – "Our 2026 Tech Resolutions + We Answer Your Questions"

The New York Times | Aired: January 2, 2026
Hosts: Kevin Roose & Casey Newton

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Overview

In this lively and reflective New Year's episode, Kevin and Casey revisit their 2025 tech resolutions (with palpable honesty and humor), lay out ambitious (and sometimes personal) new goals for 2026, and dive into a wide-ranging mailbag of listener questions on tech, AI, ethics, and even the ancient mystery of the Turing Test. The show moves deftly from big-picture industry trends to granular advice and classic "Hard Fork" banter, all while surfacing moments of vulnerability, sincerity, and plenty of laughs.

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1. Review of 2025 Tech Resolutions

(See: 03:20–10:14)

Casey’s 2025 Resolution: “Medium Good at Meditation with AI”

• Result: Admitted flop. Casey candidly recounts how despite good intentions, his meditation routine never developed into a sustained habit, even though AI (specifically Claude) offered thoughtful guidance.
  • Casey: “Every single time I did it, I felt very good. However, my instinct to meditate again was non-existent... it never became a habit.” (04:05)
• He shares that, instead, rediscovering “a sense of purpose” at an AI conference and re-energizing his journalistic mission helped his well-being more than tech or any cognitive intervention.
  • Casey: “The best thing I did for myself, though, was...I just kind of rediscovered my sense of purpose. That did more for me than any individual meditation session.” (05:08)

Kevin’s 2025 Resolution: “Be the Poster I Wish to See”

• Kevin resolved to be more active and authentic on social media rather than just lurking and complaining about online toxicity. Reports “medium good” success.
  • Kevin: “I posted more freely. I was less worried about...trying to sort of anticipate all of the potential objections or people who might get mad. I would just kind of let it rip.” (08:19)
• Casey counters, praising Kevin’s visible engagement and fun interactions online, but both agree that embracing a lower-stakes, niche-posting approach is healthy.
  • Kevin: “It is actually not possible to please everyone in your audience...I’ve started to feel okay with niche posting...It is salutary for me to sort of put my feelings out into the world to get some feedback.” (09:26)

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2. Tech Resolutions for 2026

(See: 10:14–22:54)

Kevin’s 2026 Resolutions

• Get Good at Short-Form Video
  • Rationale: As all social platforms shift toward video, especially short-form, Kevin wants to figure out a style of high-quality, journalistic video that feels authentic for him—without succumbing to viral gimmicks.
    • Kevin: “Everything is TV now...There’s a lot of low quality short form video out there...But there are many more people in the world who like getting their news and information in the form of short videos.” (12:23)
  • He acknowledges the challenge for journalists: “There’s something about that format, combined with the earnestness of the average journalist...it does come across like a fifth grader giving a book report.” (14:39)
• Personal Resolution: Practice “Being Where I Am”
  • Inspired by observing highly successful people’s ability to be fully present (i.e., not checking their phones during important conversations), Kevin wants to compartmentalize his digital life and monotask more.
    • Kevin: “It was a lesson that you actually don’t have to know what’s going on in all the pockets of your life at once...I find it very difficult to just be present.” (15:11)

Casey’s 2026 Resolution

• Stop Changing Productivity Systems
  • The self-professed “world’s twitchiest and most promiscuous user of productivity software” pledges to stick with his current system—Capacities—for the entire year.
    • Casey: “I finally cracked it, Kev. I think I’ve cracked it.” (16:54)
  • He details his approach, mixing a daily journal, lightweight to-do list, and “blips” (tiny idea notes inspired by Andy Matuschak) which resurface via spaced repetition for inspiration and research.
    • Casey: “Every morning, it randomly selects five of these blips and shows them to me...it has made researching my columns so much easier.” (18:34)
  • He acknowledges the temptation to be lured by ever-improving AI journaling tools, but remains hopeful that his current stack will evolve with him.

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3. Listener Mailbag: Tech, Ethics, and Balatro

(See: 24:57–59:56)

A. Podcast Name Origin

• The show’s initially intended focus was crypto; “Hard Fork” is a blockchain term for a chain-splitting event, symbolizing a break from old to new. The runner-up title was “Not Gonna Make It (ngmi),” vetoed by NYT lawyers to avoid conflict with Slate. Both hosts now prefer the current name.
  • Kevin: “A hard fork...is when you fork a chain like Bitcoin or Ethereum...and start over.” (28:05)
  • Casey: “Thank God for the lawyers at the New York Times, otherwise this show would be very cringy.” (27:53)

B. AI Santa Ethics

• A listener asks whether deepfaking Santa into home security footage for his young children is “going too far.”
  • Both hosts find it charming (and funny). Kevin’s only concern: “I am a little curious about the fact that you have so many security cameras installed around the interior of your home, but I won’t ask any further questions.” (32:03)
  • Casey warns, semi-jokingly: “There might be some blowback if you give your children the idea that...they can't actually separate truth from fiction anymore.” (32:35)

C. Corporate AI Hype vs. Broken Basics

• A pharma worker is frustrated that their company dedicates vast resources to AI while basics like WiFi fail daily.
  • Casey: “There is a view...which I call the New York view of AI, which is, ‘what can’t it do?’...But if you have a boss who says, ‘use AI for everything,’ and gives you no additional instructions, I understand why you’re very frustrated.” (34:08)
  • Kevin: “It is not mutually exclusive to say that AI can do incredible things, even within an organization that still struggles with basic technology stuff.” (35:51)

D. Data Centers in Space & Jurisdiction

• Listener asks if the real reason for data centers in space is to evade earthly regulation.
  • Kevin: “I don’t actually think that space is as lawless as it may seem...We have something called the Outer Space Treaty that says nations are responsible for what their citizens do in outer space.” (38:28)
  • Casey (riffing): “Space law is maintained by the Green Lantern Corps...they’re going to have Hal Jordan to answer to.” (38:51)

E. Model Poisoning and LLM Hallucinations

• Could bizarre chatbot hallucinations be due to AI rivalry and model poisoning?
  • Casey: “I would be very surprised if what you’re reading is the result of an effort to poison each other’s models.” (39:51)
  • Kevin: “The one other possibility...A lot of sort of AI companies...are doing distillation...whenever these models start seeming confused about which model they are.” (41:31)

F. Humanoid Robots & Child Attachment

• How concerned should parents be about delegating childcare to future humanoid robots?
  • Casey: “This has been a huge question throughout science fiction...Can mechanical love substitute for the biological kind?” (42:25)
  • Kevin: “Some tasks...are just that—they’re tasks...But I think Emma’s instinct to guard these interactive moments is right.” (44:58)

G. Deciding Which AI Models to Cover

• Several listeners ask why Hard Fork focuses on certain AI models (e.g., skips Copilot, barely mentions Grok).
  • Casey: “For us to be delivering you something every week that feels fresh and exciting, we’ve got to get to the frontier.” (48:00)
  • Kevin: “We should at some point do an episode about the boring AI tools that people are using...But as for Grok, I actually do think we should probably talk about Grok at some point.” (50:53)

H. Customer Service Chatbots & Responsibility

• Is a company responsible when its AI customer service agent promises something it doesn’t deliver?
  • Casey: (References “Moffatt v. Air Canada”) “...the tribunal in Canada called this argument, ‘remarkable,’ and said, the chatbot is just part of your website, Air Canada...You should absolutely go hog wild...you might be able to get it.” (52:41)
  • Kevin: (On chatbot mischief): “Do you remember that Chevrolet of Watsonville chatbot?... people were just going nuts trying to jailbreak it.” (52:46)

I. The (Post-) Turing Test

• Why was there no grand moment for passing the Turing Test?
  • Casey: “In some ways, the Turing Test was discredited before it was passed. Because...just because it can issue a convincing response, a machine is actually thinking.” (54:16)
  • Kevin: “The ability to hold a conversation is not actually intelligence...But this is a case of shifting goalposts. I think we should have marked this in some way.” (55:34, 57:02)

J. Balatro Strategy (Closing Fun)

• Daniel requests Casey’s latest strategies for the roguelike card game Balatro. Casey nerds out, giving specific joker combos and tips.
  • Casey: “Pair [Hanging Chad] with the Photograph Joker...that is usually enough to win the game. That’ll get you to your a hundred thousand score.” (57:38)
  • Kevin: “A thing that I have learned through playing Balatro is that addition and multiplication are different things...Balatro really teaches you to feel the exponential.” (59:03)

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kevin’s Parental Realization: “Now that I have a three year old, I see that [talking to your kid about shipping logistics] was not perhaps the best plan.”
• On Social Media Courage: “There is actually not failing at meditation. You just haven’t succeeded yet.” – (06:58, via one of Kevin’s ‘meditator friends’)
• On Short-Form Video’s Rise: “Podcasters feel like they're being dragged into this video thing...I am trying to take a more open-minded and curious approach.” (13:44)
• On Expanding “AI” Coverage: “We should talk about the boring AI tools that people are using...I take this feedback, especially about Copilot.” – Kevin (50:53)
• On AI Ethics & Parenting: “There might be some blowback if you give your children the idea that...they can’t actually separate truth from fiction anymore.” – Casey (32:35)
• Casey on Productivity Monogamy: “You are becoming monogamish with your productivity stack.” – Kevin (17:41)
• The Turing Test’s Passing: “If you had shown a large language model to a computer scientist back in the early days...they would have died like a medieval peasant encountering Mountain Dew.” – Kevin (56:01)
• Balatro Wisdom: “You want all of your jokers to just be XML as fast as you can. Make that happen and you will win the game.” – Casey (59:42)

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5. Episode Flow & Tone

• Language/Tone: The usual Hard Fork blend: wry, honest, self-deprecating, sometimes competitive (“my boyfriend... saw through space and time... well, great job, sweetheart.”), but also filled with real admiration for new tools and a sense of responsibility towards the listening audience.
• Pacing: Quick transitions (often via light roast between hosts) and a rhythm of deep dives punctuated by fun tangents, e.g., AI Santas, Green Lantern Corps as space law, closing Balatro nerd-out.

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6. Timestamps for Key Segments

• 2025 Resolution Review: 03:20–10:14
• 2026 Resolutions: 10:14–22:54
• Mailbag, Part 1 (Name, Santa, Corporate AI): 24:57–38:53
• Mailbag, Part 2 (Data Centers, LLM Poisoning, Robots, Models): 38:53–50:55
• Mailbag, Part 3 (Chatbot Liability, Turing Test, Balatro): 50:55–59:56

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7. Summary Takeaways

• 2026's tech landscape will demand adaptability—whether in media skills (short-form video), healthy digital boundaries, or sticking with what works (even software!).
• AI’s limitations are as real—and as worth discussing—as its powers; cultural and philosophical challenges (truth in media, labor, law, and parenting) abound.
• Hard Fork remains a space where curiosity, humor, and humility shape the conversation—the new “frontier” is as much about how we use technology, not just what’s next.

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Transcript

[Whitney Jones]

Support for this podcast comes from Indeed.

[Jenny Slate]

Hi, I'm Jenny Slate and I'm the host of off the Clock with Indeed, a new series where we discuss the biggest questions in the world of hiring. Like, did you know AI is transforming job hunting? I didn't. And honestly, I still don't fully understand AI, like, at all. But I talked to some very smart people who do or work well being. Apparently, it's more than just a nice chair with lumbar support. It can also help your company's performance. See it for [e-mail] indeedofftheclock.

[Kevin Roose]

I have a story about technology saving my ass.

[Casey Newton]

Let's hear it.

[Kevin Roose]

So I was on a flight across the country yesterday with my kid and I made a huge mistake parenting wise. I did not understand that when you download things off of Netflix to use on a kid's iPad, for example, during a long flight, they expire. They don't stay there forever.

[Casey Newton]

Oh, yes.

[Kevin Roose]

So we got on the plane and I pull out the iPad, which is, you know, the only way to take a flight with a three year old if other parents are doing this without it. God bless.

[Casey Newton]

God bless.

[Kevin Roose]

For me, not gonna happen.

[Casey Newton]

Can't happen.

[Kevin Roose]

Pull out the iPad, get his little, like Bluetooth headphones on, I go to Netflix. Nothing downloaded. Everything's expired. Oh, no. I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna be the longest five hours of my life.

[Casey Newton]

Absolutely.

[Kevin Roose]

Then I learn via my seatmate that you can now connect your Bluetooth headphones to the TV on, on the back of the seat in front of you.

[Casey Newton]

That finally works.

[Kevin Roose]

That finally works. And it saved me. And so to the person at United Airlines IT department who figured out how to connect the Bluetooth headphones to the in seat tv, I salute you. You saved me.

[Casey Newton]

Absolutely. Is that something you could have figured out in 2011? Sure. But look, we've all been busy and you got to IT now, and that's what matters. And we say, thank you, United Airlines.

[Kevin Roose]

Thank you, United Airlines.

[Casey Newton]

Beautiful.

[Kevin Roose]

I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist for the New York Times.

[Casey Newton]

I'm Casey Noon from Platformer, and this is Hard fork. This week 2026 is here and we're sharing our New Year's tech resolutions. And then we're taking listener questions.

[Kevin Roose]

Kevin, we'll answer all your questions about AI space data centers and whether you should deep fake Santa into your home security footage.

[Casey Newton]

You know, I've been wondering about.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, Casey, it's a new year.

[Casey Newton]

It's a new year. Happy 2026 to you and your Family, Kevin.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

And notice that he didn't say it back. Go on.

[Kevin Roose]

Happy 2026.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

Are you supposed to wish people a happy year that just ended or a happy year that's beginning?

[Casey Newton]

I think it's more traditional to wish them a happy new year.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a lot of happy old year.

[Casey Newton]

Cards flying, all happy old year out there. But, hey, start a new tradition if you want.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, happy old year and happy New year.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you so much.

[Kevin Roose]

What a joy it is to get to do this show with you week after week, year after year.

[Casey Newton]

Likewise, my friend.

[Kevin Roose]

And we have something special today, which is that we are going to do our New Year's tech resolutions as we do every year, and then we're going to answer some listener questions.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. And we truly love doing this. I wish we did it more, to be honest with you, but we have so many great questions from you, our devoted Hard Fork listeners, and we thank you for them, and we can't wait to dive into them, so.

[Kevin Roose]

So before we set out our new resolutions, let's check in on what we resolved last year at this time. Kasey, your resolution last year was, to, quote, get medium good at meditation using AI And I want to ask you how that went.

[Casey Newton]

Well, Kevin, I'm afraid I would have to categorize this one as a major flop. I'm not going to front. When we came into the studio last year to record our resolutions, I had the best of intentions. I had recently begun a meditation practice, and I had found that after I meditated, I could go back to Claude. I was using, in this case to say, hey, I noticed this thing while I was meditating. Give me some guidance maybe for the next time that I do that. And Claude was very good on this front. The thing is, and this is the great mystery of meditation. Every single time I did it, I felt very good. However, my instinct to meditate again was. Was non existent. You know what I mean? Where it was like I would have to get to a state of feeling incredibly overwhelmed to say, you know what? I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a timeout. I'm gonna sort of, you know, go. Go to the spot in my house where I meditate, and I'm gonna do this. Every time I did it, I felt great. It just never became a habit. So I do not blame the technology for this one. I have many, many friends who also have tried to start meditation practices over the years, and they seem to crash on these very same rocks. If I were to give myself any credit at All I would say that I did just sort of develop other strategies to, like, address the feelings that were leading me to want to meditate last year. So if I'm happy about anything at all, it is that I feel like I got sort of those aspects of my life under control. Although I am, of course, quite embarrassed that I failed this hard at my resolution.

[Kevin Roose]

What are these other techniques that you found? Do they involve ketamine?

[Casey Newton]

I'm going to. I'm going to do something strange and be sincere. And yes, they did involve ketamine. What I found was that in 2024, when I was feeling burned out, the thing that wound up kind of pulling me out of that was, like, one things that you would expect, like, you know, taking breaks, like going on vacation, putting the phone down, these things. You could probably guess. The best thing I did for myself, though, was I feel like I just kind of rediscovered my sense of purpose. I went to a conference with you about AI, met a lot of really interesting people, kind of got some new ideas percolating in my head, renew my sense of, like, what my job is in this moment as a journalist. And that did more for me than, like, any individual meditation session. Which isn't to say that the meditation wasn't great, because it was, but it was that thing that. That feeling of sense of purpose that wound up benefiting me more than anything else.

[Kevin Roose]

I love that for you. I know. I know you were burned out. I hope that you are less burned out. I know you work very hard and you deserve a break and you deserve to feel passionate about what you're doing. And so I'm glad that. That I actually, like. Something similar happened to me this year, which is that I feel like going to events like the one you brought up and also writing this book have really connected me again to, like, what I love about the work that we do. And we're just.

[Whitney Jones]

We're.

[Kevin Roose]

I feel so lucky to get to do this, and I think that's. Yeah, that helps a lot with burnout. You can do a lot more when you're excited about what you're doing.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Kevin Roose]

So. And I. For what it's worth, I do not fault you at all for failing or flopping at your New Year's resolution. I have set out a goal many times of trying to meditate and develop a practice, and I have failed every time. And every time I go to my more experienced meditator friends and I say, I feel terrible about this, and they say, there's no failing at meditation. You just haven't succeeded yet.

[Casey Newton]

Oh, I like that. I like that very much. I will say that, you know, my. My boyfriend and I can be somewhat competitive, and he's, like, quite good at meditating. So he went on a meditation retreat this year, and he came back and I was like, how did that go? And he's like, well, you know. You know, I, like, saw through space and time and connected with the source energy of the universe. On my first night there, I was like, well, great job, sweetheart.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I'm.

[Casey Newton]

I'm good at other things. All right, let me now shift the spotlight away from myself, Kevin, and ask you to remind us what was your resolution from last year?

[Kevin Roose]

So my resolution from last year was to be the poster I wished to see in the world. Basically. I was tired of just sort of lurking on the Internet and complaining about the state of social media, and I wanted to engage more and post more of the kind of stuff that I personally think is good. And I should be honest about this one, too, and say that I think I only did a medium good job at this one.

[Casey Newton]

Well, I was. I'm going to interrupt you and say that from my perspective, you really succeeded at this, because I feel like I saw your tweets popping up all over the place. I feel like you were having conversations with interesting people online, and I was often jealous of the conversations that you were because it seemed like you were having a lot more fun out there than I was.

[Kevin Roose]

That's really interesting, because I feel like my primary win toward this resolution this year was that I did post more and I posted more freely. Yeah, I was less worried about, you know, trying to sort of anticipate all of the potential objections or people who might get mad at any one thing. I would post and I would just kind of let it rip. And I would do this not all that frequently, but when I did it, it was always very gratifying because that's how I used to use social media. And then we kind of, like, you know, got all these followers and, like, people started, like, criticizing journalists in new ways. And it just felt for a minute like it was. It was unsafe to post. And I think what I've done this year is reminded myself that, like, the stakes actually aren't that high. It's not the end of the world if people get mad at you and you can just kind of say what you think.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. Particularly on X, where everyone who is still there is a goblin. And so there really is just.

[Kevin Roose]

No.

[Casey Newton]

Because here's the thing. No, what you post on X on Any given day, something infinitely worse will have been said and will have gotten much more attention than it. So, you know, if you want to bring in your AI take on X, you're going to be just fine.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, I will also say that one other thing that I have found helpful, and I hope this is helpful to other people out there who may be feeling some trepidation about posting online, is that it is actually not possible to please everyone in your audience or in the audience. And so I have started to feel okay with like niche posting, even if I know that, like only 10% of the people who follow me are going to understand or care about the thing I'm posting about. I'm trying to do that anyway. I think it is salutary for me to sort of put my feelings out into the world to get some feedback on those and to sort of stress test ideas before I put them into a column or onto a podcast.

[Casey Newton]

So I feel like for my next year I will meditate whenever I want to, if I want to. But I would say that this has moved out of the category of resolution for me. How are you thinking about posting in 2026?

[Kevin Roose]

So this gets to do you want to start with our New Year's resolutions? Oh, we haven't.

[Casey Newton]

Is your new New Year's resolution connected to this resolution?

[Kevin Roose]

It is sort of tangentially connected to it.

[Casey Newton]

Let's get into it.

[Kevin Roose]

So my resolution for 2026 is to get good at short form video. Because here's the thing, everything is TV now. This is not a point that I am coming up with. Derek Thompson recently had a very good post about this sort of shift of every platform, every social media experience is now sort of becoming dominated by video, and specifically short form video. And I have been observing this from afar for several years, feeling like, oh, someone should actually like get good at this. Who is a journalist? Because the people who are good at it are generally not journalists. The people who are going viral on these platforms are generally not doing it because they like want to get good, accurate, true information out into the world. There's a lot of low quality short form video out there. And so I think a lot of journalists have been kind of repelled by the whole medium because this is not a place where serious people go to do serious things. At least it doesn't seem that way from the outside. This is like a place for goofy, you know, rage bait and stunts and people trying to go viral by doing like sort of catering to the lowest common denominator. And I understand that reaction I have very ambivalent feelings about the rise of short form video as a replacement for text. We are people of the word, we are writers. But I do think this is something that I expect to continue. I think that we are learning that there are just many more people in the world who like getting their news and information in the form of short videos than in the form of 1200 word newspaper articles. And so my resolution is to explore and experiment and try to figure out something that I can do on short form video that feels good and authentic and not like I'm trying to be someone I'm not, or, you know, latch onto some trending TikTok thing, but like something that is actually high value and journalistic and experiment there until I figure it out.

[Casey Newton]

Now, I feel like everyone who succeeds at this short form video game has some kind of gimmick. Have you thought about what your gimmick might be? I'll give you an example. Someone showed me one the other day where there's a guy who just eats strange foods in public. So he'll film himself, like eating a whole onion on a plane and he'll just sort of, you know, take video of the person next to him without their consent and then he'll get a lot of likes for that. So is that the sort of thing you're thinking about doing?

[Kevin Roose]

I don't know. This is more of an, like, I don't have a real story strategy in mind yet. I think more of what I want to do is just experiment and see what feels good. I'm not that interested in going viral. Like, it's not my primary, you know, job to be an influencer. But I think you and I, you know, are both pushing into video now. This has been a part of the podcast growth strategy, not just for us, but like, across the industry. And I think a lot of podcasters feel like they're kind of being dragged into this video thing. Like, oh, we have to do this because that's where the audience is and that's what they want. And I am trying to take a more open minded and curious approach and saying, like, yeah, if the world is moving in this direction, it's good for us strategically, but also probably for our career longevity to find a way to do this that feels good and energizing and to sort of figure out what the high quality short form video landscape looks like and what it should look like.

[Casey Newton]

That's very interesting. I will say I have had a similar thought about whether this is something that I should look into for the Same reasons. And I actually have a very short list of like short form videos that I want to make. And I do think about making them all the time. And so maybe I should just do that. But then sometimes I just get hung up on, like, is me making this going to accelerate to the cooking of a child's brain? You know what I mean? Like, am I going to make something that's like, good that like somebody's going to swipe past like on the way to get their eating disorder content?

[Kevin Roose]

I don't know.

[Casey Newton]

I just have like some concerns about the sort of full throated embrace of the video revolution. I get that.

[Kevin Roose]

But I do think that, like, I do think that that impression of short form video is based on like what is out there now and not what could be out there. And I think if you are looking at like, you know, the 30 worst shows on TV, you're going to have a very different impression than if you're looking at like the highest quality stuff that's on tv. I think, I think we need to like avoid confusing the medium and the message.

[Casey Newton]

That's fair. Well, I'm curious to see how this turns out because I will say a lot of times when I see journalists doing direct to camera videos where they're like talking about their story, there's just something about that format, like, combined with the earnestness of the average journalist, which is so wonderful in print, that does come across like a fifth grader giving a book report. And I think that's like a really challenging tone to make succeed in the realm of short form video. So I want to encourage you to shitpost and to troll and to clown and I think if you can sort of combine those things, you may have something.

[Kevin Roose]

All right, well, that's my resolution for next year. My other one is more, that was more of a professional resolution. I do have a personal one too, which is that I am going to be where I am in the broadest sense. Like, I think one thing that has stood out to me, you know, we've spent the year like talking with important and successful people. And one thing that always strikes me when I meet these people is that they are never looking at their phone when they're talking to you. And we were at our dinner last week, in fact, and I can't say who it was with, but it was with someone who is very busy, very successful, presumably has people making requests of them at all hours of the day. And we sat down to dinner with this person for like two plus hours. And I did not see Them look at their phone one time. And to me, that was a lesson that you actually don't have to know what's going on in all of the pockets of your life at once. And I think I am very bad at monotasking at being in the place where I am, you know, I'm at home, I'm cooking dinner, or I'm, you know, cleaning the house. I'm listening to a podcast. I'm catching up on some texts or emails. I find it very difficult to just, like, be present with the person or in the situation that I'm in. So I'm not saying I'm going to use my phone less, but I do want to compartmentalize it a little bit so that I actually have an easier time, like, focusing on the thing in front of me.

[Casey Newton]

Interesting. Have you considered meditating? It can be very. I've heard it can be very effective in achieving that objective. Something to think about.

[Kevin Roose]

Okay, Kasey, what is your resolution for 2026?

[Casey Newton]

Okay, this is a big one, Kevin. You're going to have to hold me accountable to this, but here's the resolution. For the next one year, I am going to try not to make any meaningful change to my productivity system. Wow. Because I think I finally cracked it, Kev. Really? I think I've cracked it. Okay, so I want to tell you about this, and I hope you don't find this too boring.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, can I just give our. For listeners who may be newer to the show.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

You are the world's twitchiest and most sort of promiscuous person user of productivity software.

[Casey Newton]

That is correct.

[Kevin Roose]

You will try any database, any personal knowledge graph, anything that promises to make you 5% more productive. You will spend two to three months using it and then ditch it for something else.

[Casey Newton]

Yes. If I read about it, I will install it, and there's a very high chance I will buy a lifetime subscription to it for no reason.

[Kevin Roose]

So you are becoming monogamish with your productivity stack.

[Casey Newton]

That's the idea. And look, the whole reason to have a productivity stack is, like, accomplish a set of goals. And so I think if you want to be serious about this, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, like, well, what are your actual goals? And over the past year, I feel like I figured out what I actually want out of this system, and then I built the dang thing. Now it's just kind of working for me, so I want to see if I can stick with it.

[Kevin Roose]

Tell me what it is.

[Casey Newton]

All right, so I'm going to tell you A little bit about my system. I happen to run my system in an app called Capacities. I do think you could do a version of this, though, in a lot of other apps. Here's what I need out of a system. Number one, I need a place where I can write a daily journal. This has just become something that's really important to me. I sit down in the morning, I have a cup of coffee, I empty my brain of whatever's on it. It's a mix of personal stuff, professional stuff, but this just kind of clears the decks for me, clears my head, puts me in the right frame of mind. Okay, number two, I need a very lightweight task management system. I need a place where I can put my TO dos. And it so happens in capacities, I can have that right in the same place where I have my journal every morning. So that's kind of n. And then we get to number three, and this is where I actually feel like I'm at the frontier a little bit. Okay, so as a journalist, Kevin and I, we're tracking all kinds of different little narrative threads, right? Are we in an AI bubble? Is Apple ever going to figure out its AI approach? What is the leading frontier model of the moment? And we read stories about these things every day. And for me, those stories that bubble up can become the beginnings of columns, or they could become the beginnings of a story that I might want to report myself. The problem is, how do I keep track of them? Earlier this year, I read a blog post by a guy named Andy Matuschak, and he had the idea of what he calls blips, which are essentially just little notes that might be a single sentence, such as, we're in an AI bubble, and that's the beginning of something that you might flesh out over time. So what I have done inside Capacities, Kevin, is I have just been creating these blips. As news stories come along that speak to whether we might be in an AI bubble, I add them into that little blip. And then inside the little daily journal page that I have in capacities, I've set up a live query. So every morning, it randomly selects five of these blips and shows them to me. And this is the key, because you can create as many little notes as you want, you're gonna lose track of them, you're gonna forget to update them. But I now have a system that is doing random spaced repetition. And so as I'm doing my little journal, I'll see the little note that says, we're in an AI bubble. And I will think oh, my gosh. I just saw, like, the craziest deal that Nvidia signed this week. I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna add that to the list. And I've been doing this for about four months now, so I'm not brand new to this, but I have to say it has made researching my columns so much easier now. Cause things come up, I know exactly where to go to look to find the past five stories that I saw about this. And I just feel like it's truly been making my life easier. So in this moment, I could not tell you one thing that I do not have out of my productivity system. Like, I actually feel like I have the thing that I want. And so for the next year, I am just going to try to use it.

[Kevin Roose]

Okay, this is progress.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

I think I would be happy if this one stuck because among other things, I think you need some stability when it comes to this part of your life. And it's time for you to settle.

[Casey Newton]

Down and make an honest woman out of Capacities.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. And I love this for you. Do you have any fear that the AI tools that sort of exist in this sphere are going to get so much better over the next year that you will be forced to abandon your beloved capacities based system and switch to something new?

[Casey Newton]

It's a great question because I do think that there is still room to integrate AI into journaling a little bit more. Right. Like, I think a journal that talks back to you is a really interesting thing. Capacities has some sorts of AI integrations. They say they plan on doing a lot more. So I'm just going to kind of cross my fingers that that happens. Can I imagine an AI journal coming out in the next year that I'm definitely going to want to try? Yes. And like, I probably will try it, but ultimately, day to day, like, I'm not trying to have like, you know, hour long, you know, chatbot interactions where I'm really trying to get to the bottom of something. So I think I can just kind of stay where I'm at.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, that's really interesting. I am going to run a natural AB test with you on this where I'm going to continue to flail around using no coherent productivity system. In particular my notes app, emailing myself, voice mem, little scribbles on scraps of paper, and we can compare notes at the end of the year and see who's been more productive.

[Casey Newton]

I think that sounds like a great plan. I'm excited about it.

[Kevin Roose]

All right, Kasey, that is our resolutions for this coming year. When we come back, we will hear from our listeners and many of the questions that they have been asking us. We'll try to answer them.

[Casey Newton]

We'll see what's on their minds. Yeah.

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[Lori Leibovich]

Hi, this is Lori Leibovich, editor of well, at the New York Times, there's a lot of misinformation in the health and wellness space. But at the New York Times, we no matter what the topic, we apply the same journalistic standards to everything we write about, whether it's the gut microbiome or how to get a good night's sleep, even if we're talking about something like is it bad for me to drink coffee on an empty stomach? Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts calling dozens of people doing the research. It can go on for months so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are counting on us. If you already subscribe, thank you. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, Casey, it's time to open up the mailbag.

[Casey Newton]

It is. Kevin. What better way to kick off the new year than by hearing what is on our listeners minds?

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, we truly have the greatest listeners in the world. They surprise and delight us every time they send us something. And we really love hearing from you and we wanted to end this episode by answering a few of your questions. So here to help us out we have hard Fork senior producer Whitney Jones.

[Casey Newton]

Hi Whitney.

[Whitney Jones]

Hey everybody. Hey. Great hat.

[Kevin Roose]

Good to be back.

[Casey Newton]

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that Whitney's wearing a very handsome hard fork hat that I believe is available for [e-mail] it is.

[Whitney Jones]

I just purchased mine this week, which is a little bit ridiculous because the old stock from the previous hat ventures are all sitting at my desk and so I have a whole bunch of them there.

[Kevin Roose]

You have 500 hats at your desk.

[Whitney Jones]

But only one of these, which are now available.

[Kevin Roose]

Where do people get those?

[Whitney Jones]

If they're interested, you go to the New York Times store online and you type in Hard Fork hat and this will pop up.

[Kevin Roose]

Great, Perfect. We'll link it in the show notes.

[Casey Newton]

It's a perfect gift for this upcoming Christmas.

[Whitney Jones]

Yes, 2020.

[Casey Newton]

Don't let Christmas sneak up on you this year.

[Kevin Roose]

Okay. Well, Whitney, what do you have for us?

[Whitney Jones]

So I have the first. These are just a couple of quick ones to get us warmed up here. Okay. The first letter is from Cody from Taiwan. Cody writes, love your show very much, but I am still confused with the name Hardfork. What does it stand for? I will be very happy if you could explain it to me. Thank you so much.

[Casey Newton]

Sure. I'll tell you what it stands for. Free expression, equality, justice and goodwill towards mankind.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah. Well, it is a name that we came up with in 2021. And a thing to know about 2021 is that crypto was the biggest story in technology.

[Casey Newton]

You wouldn't believe how huge it was at the time.

[Kevin Roose]

And when we pitched this show to the New York Times, we thought it was gonna be a show mostly about crypto. And so we, we should have like some sort of crypto term that we could put as the name of the show.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, I'll. I'll maybe tell a story that I haven't told before about this, which is that the original name for Hard Fork was going to be Not Going to Make it or ngmi, which was at the time something that crypto people would post on social media a lot. Like if you weren't part of the crypto revolution, you were not going to make it. And I just thought it'd be very funny to start a podcast every week with like, hi, I'm Casey. I'm Kevin. And we're not going to make it. Okay. So that was what we pitched. And then the Times lawyers looked into it and Slate magazine had written one column under the name Not Gonna make it about Crypto. They. They never wrote a second edition of this column. But on that basis the Times was like, we don't wanna pick up a fight with slate.com and so we chose Hard Fork. And I have to say I'm actually like much happier that we chose that instead of not.

[Kevin Roose]

Thank God for the lawyers New York Times, cuz otherwise this show would be very cringy. I would hate saying that every week.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. But yeah, needless to say, we love the name and we'll never change it.

[Kevin Roose]

So Cody to answer your very specific question, a hard fork is a term in crypto programming, blockchain programming. Basically it is when you fork a, a chain like Bitcoin or Ethereum, and fork it in a way that renders previous additions to that chain obsolete. So, like, basically you are, you're taking something that exists and you are starting over.

[Casey Newton]

And it's usually because a disaster has happened, like there's been a horrible breach, like there's been a huge theft, and you say, essentially we are going to rewind back in time and start over. And in 2021, it felt to us like that was what was happening in Silicon Valley was they were saying, hey, this whole social media era, it's over and it's going to be crypto from here on out.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, and I think there were rumblings about AI. This was like sort of before ChatGPT, but this was sort of when things were starting to heat up. And I think we, we sort of of collectively thought it would be a good name because it would signify this sort of break between the old Silicon Valley and the new one. And that part, I think, has panned out the way that we expected it to. Even though I think if we were starting the show today, we would probably not pick a crypto related name.

[Casey Newton]

That is probably true. Although, as Kevin said to me when we were having this discussion almost five years ago now, and I'll never forget when we said this, he said, it doesn't matter what the name of a podcast is. And it sounded like so wrong to me at the time. But I have to say, you were completely right about it.

[Kevin Roose]

It's true. Like, names just become name at a certain point. Like everyone when, when Google first came out was like, what a stupid name for a company that'll never work.

[Casey Newton]

And look at them now. Huge. Huge. All right, Whitney, next question, next question.

[Whitney Jones]

This one is a bit more of a moral ethical question. Also another question to sort of, you know, preparing for Christmas next year.

[Casey Newton]

Good.

[Whitney Jones]

This one came in over the holidays from Brett Cochran from Acton, Mass. He says, hi, Kevin. I guess Casey, you don't exist in this question. I'm sorry. As a fellow dad of young kids, you should be able to empathize with my moral quandary. I'm considering using AI to add Santa to security camera footage from inside my home to show my children on Christmas morning. They are three and six. I work for a security company and have cameras all over our interior that I'm testing for work. I have one pointed at the Christmas tree and fireplace an excellent backdrop for AI Kris Kringle. However, I'm dealing with much soul searching if this might be taking AI Too far. Am I taking work away from an actual Santa impersonator whose livelihood depends on this season? If my children misbehave, would I be a bad father if I added Krampus instead? Would love to hear your and Casey's take on this. Oh, there you are. Love the show. P.S. before and after image using Nano banana.

[Kevin Roose]

Is attached and I will say, looks very realistic. We got Santa kneeling down by the tree, stuffing presents into a sack or taking them out of a sack, I suppose. So Brett's question is, can he use AI to add Santa to his security footage to show to his kids? Casey, what's your take?

[Casey Newton]

Look, I think it's clear the only ethical solution here is to hire a human Santa impersonator to break into your house to capture that footage and to show it to your children to terrify them. And I think if you take any other approach, shame on you. What do you think, Kevin?

[Kevin Roose]

Well, so I have mixed feelings about Santa as sort of a cultural phenomenon, in part because, well, so before I had a child, I had this idea that I was going to be an enlightened parent. And when the subject of Santa came up, I would use it. My plan was to pivot to try to get my kid excited about shipping logistics. I would say, you know, like, I get that you're excited about Santa, but let me tell you about the miracle of container ships and how our goods and presents actually get from the factory to our house. Now that I have a three year old, I see that that was not perhaps the best plan.

[Casey Newton]

He's less interested in that than you.

[Kevin Roose]

Might have guessed, less interested in containerization than I would have predicted. And so I've been forced to make other tough calls about what we are telling him and not telling him about Santa. I will say this does not bother me one bit. I think this is a very funny gag. I am a little curious about the fact that you have so many security cameras installed around the interior of your home, but I won't ask any further questions.

[Casey Newton]

Maybe he lives in a rough neighborhood.

[Kevin Roose]

He's testing them for work. Yeah, no, I think this is fine. Keep us posted on how it goes. And yeah, I don't have any problems with this.

[Casey Newton]

Listen, I think it's fine too. But here's what I'm gonna say. There might be some BL blowback if you give your children the idea that when you show them video, they can't actually separate truth from fiction anymore. Like once they realize what you did when they were kids, I think, you know, there's going to be some trust issues there they might be talking about in therapy.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, just, just stick with the conventional telling your kids that Santa comes down the chimney and puts the presence under the tree. Let's not stretch credulity here by adding some AI.

[Casey Newton]

I have to say, when I found out, you know, obviously I was very sad that, you know, Santa wasn't real, but I was. Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

No, wait, what did you just say?

[Casey Newton]

You know what, nevermind, let's move on.

[Whitney Jones]

Okay, next question, Next question from disgruntled optimist. They write, I am mind boggled at the hopes and dreams we load into AI while I watch extremely basic technology fail. For context, I work at a large, well capitalized public company in the pharma industry. I see both of these worlds literally every day, day. I understand that we have to invest now for technology in the future. It's just really crazy to see large enterprises like mine announce massive AI initiatives for R and D when the WI fi is not working. No joke. I tethered my work computer to my personal hotspot for two hours while mandatorily in the office last week. Who is working to reconcile these two worlds? Are these corporates just hoping I burn out so they can replace me with AI? If I hear one more person say that an AI agent can do quote that, I'm going to scream. What do you make of this?

[Casey Newton]

Well, I fear that nothing may have made our listeners scream more in 2025 on the hard Fork podcast because we are people who believe that, like, AI systems can accomplish tasks. Right? I think there is a view here which I've talked about on the show, which I call the New York view of AI, which is what can't it do, right? You look around, you see all the examples of it failing all over the place and those real things, and they are extremely annoying. And if you are in a workplace where you have a boss who says, hey, I want you to start using AI for everything, and gives you no additional instructions, I understand why you're very frustrated and I do think that is silly. And I do think you should essentially, you know, try to work around whatever bad boss that you have. I think Kevin and I believe that a role that this podcast should serve is to just gesture at what AI can do. Not because we think it is always good, in fact, we think it's often bad, but because we think it is going to change your life. In ways that are good and bad. And we believe that we can't do a good job of that unless we're telling you about what it can do at least half of the time. Right. We're living at a time when the capabilities of these systems are improving. We think that that is absolutely going to accelerate this year. And so at least when it comes to the Hard for podcast. I hate to say it, listener, but like, you might be screaming this year when you hear us talk.

[Kevin Roose]

No, I will sort of defend our listener here and say that I think this is like a valid and legitimate frustration. It is obvious that the companies, especially the big sort of legacy companies that are trying to sound very future oriented and forward thinking are like announcing all these buzzy AI pilots and programs when they still haven't like they're still using database software from 2003.

[Whitney Jones]

Right.

[Kevin Roose]

Right. And I think there's some, some tension there and I think it's, it's real and fair to call that out. I think this goes to the point that we've talked about on a few shows this year, which is like there is no, no AI shaped hole in most big companies. It does not fit easily into the work that you're already doing. And it does not fix every problem. It does not fix the broken printer. It does not fix the WI FI issue. It does not fix the sort of, you know, thousand and one mundane things that can go wrong with an IT department on any given day. And it is not mutually exclusive to say that AI is and can do incredible things, even within an organization that still struggles with some basic technology stuff. And so I think that's the question is like, can the big corporate customers of this stuff figure out ways to use it without breaking more than they're fixing? And how quickly does that all happen? I've become very pessimistic about the potential for large, slow moving companies to adopt this stuff quickly. I think it is that is not my, my theory of change here for how this stuff kind of takes over the economy, but I'll be interested to see how it happens.

[Casey Newton]

All right.

[Kevin Roose]

Right.

[Casey Newton]

Next question.

[Whitney Jones]

Whitney, Next question from Jochen asks about our Data Centers in Space episode. Jochen says when you mused about the advantages of building data centers in space, you only focused on energy cooling and avoidance of NIMBY issues. Am I too paranoid to think that the very big and obvious reason is that these data centers will not fall under any earthly jurisdiction? Data centers in space are outside the reach of any standard legal code, so any earthly regulations do not apply. It's like what happens in space stays in space. Space. Is this too far fetched?

[Kevin Roose]

Here's what I'll say about this. I think that one of the considerations for the companies that are trying to build data centers in space or talking about building data centers in space is that it is just easier to imagine putting up a giant data center in space than having to like go through all the permitting and the land use and the zoning and getting the permission of city council to put up the data center on the physical Earth. I do not think this is the primary consideration and I don't actually think that the that space is as lawless as it may seem. We have something called the Outer Space Treaty that was signed in 1967 that says that nations are responsible for what their citizens do in outer space. So if, you know, Google were to build a data center in space and something, you know, horrible were to happen for it, they would be actually liable for that and the United States would be liable as Google's sort of host nation.

[Casey Newton]

Let me throw one more wrinkle into the mix, Kevin. If you've read DC comics, you know, know that space law is maintained by the Green Lantern Corps and that if some of these jokers, pun intended, think that they can just put a rogue Dana center up in space and that there are going to be no consequences, they're going to have Hal Jordan to answer to. So something to think about and be curious to see how this one develops.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

Next question.

[Whitney Jones]

This is from someone who works in tech who wanted to remain anonymous given that they work in tech and this is sort of on their personal side, not really. Writes about an experience they had. I had a weird experience tonight when experimenting with Gemini 3 deep research. I was prompting a deep dive into family genealogy. I watched the model think and research all the expected sources based on my prompt. But the analysis at Spit out was a complete hallucination outlining Elon Musk's ancestry and going down unhinged paths about how this shaped Elon's amazing personnel. Question, could this be a hallucination based on some poison in Gemini model by Elon? Might sound crazy, but the experience made me think about Mecha Hitler. Was this potentially triggered by some poison inadvertently injected into Grok's model? Are companies poisoning each other's models outside of the public's view?

[Kevin Roose]

Casey, what do you think about this?

[Casey Newton]

I mean, this is a very fun and outlandish theory. Look, we can't actually tell you what was happening here. We don't know what the prompt was we didn't read the output. I would be very surprised if what you're reading is the result of a effort to poison each other's models. But I will say that people have floated the idea. You know, I, I remember just as ChatGPT was taking off, there was talk about creating radioactive data around the Internet. And the idea was to kind of try to trip up people's models as a way to discourage them from scraping websites without permission. In the end, it seems like all of the big frontier labs were just able to find ways around this. So in short, I think that even if they wanted to do this, I don't think it would work that well. And I don't think that that is what has happened to you.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I don't think this is what's happened either. I think this is probably just a hallucination. The one sort of other possibility, it's not exactly poisoning. It's not done with malicious intent. But a lot of sort of AI companies, especially outside the top few, are doing distillation, which is sort of when you take a model that's out there, whether it's an open source model or something else, and you say sort of use outputs from that model to train your own model, that is not a standard industry practice. That is still somewhat frowned upon, but it is still happening. Is it theoretically possible that Gemini was distilled from Grok? I actually don't think that's probably true. I think you'd probably make your model worse if you distilled from Grok that way. But that is sort of one other possibility. Whenever these models sort of start seeming confused about which model they are, are.

[Casey Newton]

Next question.

[Whitney Jones]

All right, next question comes from Emma Dominguez. She's a new mom and she writes, this is in response to the Neo robot episode. She writes, I'm the mother to an amazing 7 month old baby girl. I love her and also fully understand the exhaustion and timec consuming nature of taking care of a baby. If Neo is doing a host of household chores, I can see parents being tempted to also delegate things like diaper changes, bottle feeding, staring at the baby and making her laugh. So you get 20 minutes to do something else. You could have the robot stay in your baby's room all night like a monitor and try to soothe the baby when they wake up. Sounds really helpful. But what are the long term implications? Will a baby who is biologically programmed to bond with and love her caregivers develop a similar attachment and love for the robot is that healthy for child development?

[Casey Newton]

So this has been in a huge question throughout the history of science fiction. 1940, Isaac Asimov writes a story called Robbie about a little girl named Gloria who becomes attached to her robot nursemaid. And it freaks her parents out because they're like, hey, you know what's going on here? Ray Bradbury, 1969 I Sing the body electric. A family gets a robot grandmother after their mother dies. The kids get super attached to her. And it raises all sorts of questions about can mechanical love substitute for the biological kind? So, so this is something that we have just been wondering about since the dawn of robotics. And the crazy thing is, Kevin, we have robots now, so we're gonna get to find out.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, I imagine that a lot of parents are going to be sort of experimenting with these humanoids for various child rearing related tasks. I remember, you know, this was sort of just pre humanoid era, but when, when my kid was born, there were vigorous debates, debates on the Internet that I saw about whether using a snoo, which is one of these sort of robot bassinets that sort of automatically senses when your baby's crying and sort of, you know, gently rocks them back to sleep, was kind of taking away from some bonding because there was some, there were some people who thought this is essentially letting a robot soothe your child. And I don't like that. I made the decision, my wife and I made the decision that we were going to use this new. And I think that was a justifiable decision because I actually think that when your child is that young, they need parents who are well rested.

[Whitney Jones]

Right?

[Kevin Roose]

There are trade offs. You are giving up some of the intimacy of like soothing your child. But like you also, if you are a child, you need parents who have slept the night before. And part of that is having a robot rock your baby back to sleep. I think there are some tasks within parenting that are just that. They're tasks, right? They're washing the bottles, doing the laundry, they're sort of restocking the diapers, they're, you know, doing all these sort of tasks that are not, not the kind of intimate, face to face bonding attachment tasks. Go with God, outsource those to Neo or whatever humanoid robot you want. I do not think you are at risk of damaging your relationship with a child. But I think Emma's instinct to guard these like interactive moments is right. I think that is actually where people start to develop these early attachments. This is part of the bonding process both for the parent and the child. So I would not completely outsource newborn parenting to Neo but by all means, do it for the drudgery and get some sleep.

[Casey Newton]

It is worth saying about Neo, this thing is nowhere near being able to safely hold and rock your baby. So don't try that at home or anywhere. But, you know, is something like that imaginable? Within the next few years, maybe. But as always with these things, you don't have to be the first person to try it. Okay?

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

Let.

[Kevin Roose]

Let Casey and I make that mistake.

[Whitney Jones]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Let us entrust our baby to a robot. We're having a baby, by the way.

[Kevin Roose]

You and me.

[Whitney Jones]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

News to me.

[Whitney Jones]

Congratulations.

[Casey Newton]

All right, well, that brings us to about the halfway point through the mailbag. Kevin, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have more listener questions.

[Solana Pyne]

Hi, I'm Solana Pyne. I'm the director of video at the New York Times. For years, my team has made videos that bring you closer to big news moments, Videos by Times journalists that have the expertise to help you understand what's going on. Now, we're bringing those videos to you in the Watch tab in the New York Times app. It's a dedicated video feed where you know you can trust what you're seeing. All the videos there are free for anyone to watch. You don't have to be a subscriber. Download the New York Times app to start watching.

[Casey Newton]

Welcome back, everybody. We're answering your listener questions, and we're gonna reach back into the mailbag here with our producer, Whitney Jones. And, Whitney, why don't you tell us who's next up, up.

[Whitney Jones]

Who's next up? The next letter is actually like a three, maybe three and a half parter from Tim Gerardo.

[Kevin Roose]

And more of a comment than a question.

[Whitney Jones]

Yeah, more of a comment than a question. These all have to do about, like, the sorts of models that you talk about and use. I'll just get into this. Tim says, hey, guys, bottom line, how come you don't talk about Copilot? I know it's not a sexy frontier thing, but it's used by a lot of folks. Gerardo says, I'm wondering why on earth you're not reviewing Deep Sea. Matt says, I've noticed something while listening to the past few months of episodes. You cover basically every major LLM, but Grok barely gets a cameo. Any chance we could get a proper hard fork segment on Grok one of these weeks? So I think my question sort of distilling from all this is how do you guys decide what models to pay attention to, which ones to try out, which ones to cover on the show and which ones to sort of ignore.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, I appreciate the questions to Matt, if you want to hear a great segment about Grok, we did one called Me Hitler that you can Google that I think you'll get a lot out of. But in terms of, you know, how do we decide which models to cover day to day? We are in a moment where all of the chat bots that got mentioned by those listeners are for, let's say, 80 plus percent uses, roughly equivalent.

[Kevin Roose]

Right.

[Casey Newton]

You can use Copilot, Deep Seek, and maybe even Grok to get a decent answer to a lot of questions in our world. That just makes them kind of boring. Right. For us to be delivering you something every week that feels really like fresh and exciting, we've got to get to the frontier. We have to be talking about the models that are inventing new capabilities that we think are actually going to change our lives and maybe even all of society. So for us to do a whole segment about it, it has to be a model that we think might be able to get you there.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I think we should at some point do like an episode about the boring AI tools that people are using. And I would put Copil Pilot in that category. Like, no one thinks this is a frontier model. I looked it up last night. Copilot's Mai1, which is their preview model for the sort of proprietary Microsoft model, is currently ranked 62nd in LM arena, which is the sort of AI chatbot leaderboard.

[Casey Newton]

Huge congratulations to the team over at Microsoft. Maybe if they just had a few more financial resources, they'd be able to compete with the big guys.

[Kevin Roose]

So, look, I think we could be snarky about these, but I do actually think we should. Should look at, among other things, not just whether a model is on the frontier technically or not, but like, how many people are using it and in what contexts. Right. So I. I take this feedback, especially about Copilot. I think we should do a kind of look at some point this year. We should kind of look at the more sort of staid enterprise tools that people are using to address the other two. I think Deep Seek we did do you know, several episode. We have talked about that a lot on the show. It was on our iconic technologies list. I think the Deep SEQ models themselves have mattered less than I thought they would. I think Deep Seek has mattered more for what it represents in terms of China catching up, these efficiency gains, the state of open source, than for sort of whether people in the United States or our listeners should be using the deep SEQ models like Agreed. As for Grok, I actually do think we should probably talk about Grok at some point. I think that it's a hard topic. It's sort of loaded with all this baggage about Elon Musk and what he's trying to do with Grok. Obviously they had a big sort of fiasco when Mecca Hitler was happening, but Grok does actually seem to be a good model. It is up there with Gemini and Claude and the GPT series on some of these benchmarks. And it does have some interesting features. Not just the porny anime characters, but other like it has real time access to X data. That is the only time I have found myself using Grok is when I want to look up someone's tweets from a long time ago. So it does have some features that may be interesting to people. And I take the note, we should be expansive in the models that we talk about.

[Casey Newton]

All right, next question.

[Whitney Jones]

Next one is from Ellen Russell in Tucson, Arizona. Says, initially I thought I was chatting with a human customer service rep. A conversation about an incorrect shipment that was characterized by a plethora of courteous words, specific promises, and zero actual performance when it came to delivering. On the agreed upon resolution to the problem. Dozens of dead end exchanges spanned almost two weeks. Still no resolution question. If a chatbot agrees to specific action, then does not deliver, who is responsible and what's a customer to do?

[Casey Newton]

Love this question. Lets me talk about one of my favorite legal cases in recent years, Kevin Moffett versus Air Canada. You know this one?

[Kevin Roose]

I was wondering when you were going to bring up Moffat versus Air Canada.

[Casey Newton]

Well, Moffat versus Air Canada, of course, involves the protagonist Jake Moffett, who asked Air Canada's chatbot about bereavement fairs and the bot said he could book a full price ticket now and claim a partial refund within 90 days of travel. And so that's what he tried to do. But when he applied for the refund, Air Canada denied Hide it. They pointed to a PDF buried on their website saying that bereavement fares do not apply to completed travel. And so in the legal case, Air Canada argued they aren't liable because the chatbot was a separate legal entity that was responsible for its own actions. And the tribunal in Canada called this argument, quote, remarkable and said, actually the chatbot's just part of your website, Air Canada. And so Air Canada had to pay up. Really? Yeah. So this one is not completely settled, but when I have sort of surveyed the landscape, it seems like we are sort of leaning in the direction of liability for these chatbots. So you should absolutely go hog wild when you're talking to these chatbots. Try to get them to promise you anything, because you might be able to get it.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, it reminds me of, like, do you remember that Chevrolet of Watsonville chatbot?

[Casey Newton]

Yes.

[Kevin Roose]

This is, like, right when ChatGPT was starting to, like, become a thing thing. There was this, like, Chevy dealer in California that, like, installed a customer service chat bot using chat cbt, and people were just going, that's trying to, like, jailbreak it and get it to promise to, like, sell them a Durango for like, a dollar.

[Casey Newton]

A 20, 24 Tahoe for a dollar is what actually happened. That's correct.

[Kevin Roose]

And you're saying that in Canada, at least, that would be a valid and binding contract.

[Casey Newton]

Well, here's the thing. In Contract Lock, Evan, in which I am in expert, if an offer is considered too good to be true, courts generally don't enforce it. And so in this case, the. The. The little prankster here was not able to get a $1 Chevy Tahoe.

[Kevin Roose]

Oh, damn.

[Casey Newton]

So sort of be careful. You know, you got to get them to promise you something reasonable, I guess, if you want this scam to work. But we do wish you the best and keep us posted in your efforts.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

Next question.

[Whitney Jones]

Next question from Matt Goldberg. Altman writes, when I was growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, at least in the computer science and sci fi communities, one of the topics of conversation was always the Turing Test. Now it feels like the test has been completely left behind, but I don't recall any announcements that it was ever officially passed. I'm curious why there was seemingly no cultural moment of us realizing the Turing Test had been passed. Or alternatively, if it hasn't been passed, then what? Why are the goalposts just continuously moved out? And what we used to think of as the Turing Test has now just morphed into the AGI test.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, so this is an interesting one, and there are a couple answers to it, but one of them is just that in some ways, the Turing Test was discredited before it was passed. Because I think when Turing created the test, there was an assumption that if a machine could pass this test, it would mean that they were thinking like us. Okay. And then this philosopher named John Searle comes along, and he introduces this concept of the Chinese Room. You know the Chinese Room.

[Kevin Roose]

Sure do.

[Casey Newton]

So the idea of the Chinese Room is if you have somebody in a room and you pass them notes that are written in Chinese and the person doesn't speak Chinese, but they have a rule book that explains the rules, and they can so. So sort of go in and match the characters that instruct them how to respond, and they can pass those responses back out of the room to the person who's receiving those responses. Responses. It's going to seem like the person inside is speaking Chinese. Right. They clearly, fluently speak Chinese. In fact, they're not doing that. They're just sort of following the system of rules. This is the way that machine learning systems have actually worked. And they have thrown cold water on the idea that just because it can issue a convincing response, a machine is actually thinking. So that idea kind of got into the bloodstream, and philosophers kind of threw out the Turing Test as something that was going to be useful in helping us understand. Understand when machines could actually think.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I would just take the Chinese room experiment out of it and say, like, we have realized as these systems have gotten better, that the ability to hold a conversation is not actually intelligence. Right. There are things other than conversational fluency that matter more. But I will also say, like, this is a case of shifting goalposts. I think if you had shown a large language model to a sort of philosopher or a computer scientist back in the early days of the Turing Test.

[Casey Newton]

They would have been died.

[Kevin Roose]

They would have. They would have died like a medieval peasant encountering Mountain Dew. Yes. And we have actually had some attempts to sort of run the Turing Test on these newer models. In May 2024, there was a study that found that GPT4 was judged to be human 54% of the time. In 2025, researchers showed that newer models were judged to be human 73% of the time, which is a better than chance rate. So, yes, the Turing Test has been passed classical formulation, and people who are moving the goalposts now want to talk about the things that AI can't do. But I actually think we should have marked this in some way. I think this was a big deal when chatbots started to pass the Turing Test. And I think we kind of. Just because of the, you know, the sort of landscape of shifting expectations, the hedonic treadmill, whatever you want to call it, we just kind of all went on to look at the next milestone, and we didn't really acknowledge the fact that this incredible sort of Rubicon had been crossed.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, absolutely. All right, just a couple more questions, Whitney.

[Whitney Jones]

There's just one. One last one.

[Casey Newton]

Just one last question, Whitney.

[Whitney Jones]

This is specifically for Kasey from Daniel. He writes. Kasey Talks about how he likes Balatro. Will you have him share his recent accomplishments? Whether he's hit ante 12, the 100 mil hand yet, what his favorite jokers are and his preferred strategies? I must admit I don't understand any of the words. I just red. But I'm hoping you can shed some light on it.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you so much for the question. To answer your question, I have made it to Anti 13, where I think to pass the first ante there, you need 300 billion to do that. I've never successfully done that. That's where I've died every single time. But I'm going to give you a little strategy that works super well for me. And it's two jokers, and they're both common jokers. So these show up all the time and they're pretty cheap. One is called the hanging ch. That is the one that essentially counts your card three times when you play it. So if you have like a little bit of molt on that card or some extra chips, you're going to sort of rack that up and then pair that with the photograph joker. Kevin. That's the one that gives the first played face card to xmt. Okay, so basically what that means is every single round, if you're playing a face card front first, you're getting x6 mult on the entire enchilada. That is usually enough to win the game. Okay, That'll get you to your a hundred thousand score. So I hope that was useful to you. If you don't understand what it means yet, put the podcast down and go devote your life to Balatro. You'll become a happy person. Do it. Do it.

[Kevin Roose]

No, I actually. This is breaking news. I got my first million point hand, like, last night.

[Casey Newton]

Really? For 1 million points. Congratulations.

[Whitney Jones]

Thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

I know you're way past that, but I'm catching up here.

[Casey Newton]

500 million is my biggest answer, buddy.

[Kevin Roose]

So a thing that I have learned through playing Balatro is that addition and multiplication are different things. And I'll tell you, I mean, you know, theoretically, I knew this, but, you know, they always talk about feeling the exponential.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

Balacho really teaches you to feel the exponential because there are two ways to grow your score. One is that you can give your cards the ability to add multiplication to the multiplier when it tallies up the score for your hand. The other is to add to the multiplication to the exponent of what you are doing. And it is that second thing, that mysterious multiplication, that gets you the high score.

[Casey Newton]

That is what you want to do for for way too long in Balatro. I was trying to like add more chips. I was trying to add more plus mult. Eventually I was like no. You want all of your jokers to just be XML as fast as you can. Make that happen and you will win the game.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

Best of luck to you and Godspeed and Happy New Year.

[Kevin Roose]

Godspeed. Please don't download this game. It's a trap.

[Casey Newton]

Do it.

[Kevin Roose]

Casey before we go, let's make our AI disclosures. I work at the New York Times Company which is suing open AI and Microsoft over alleged copyright violations and my.

[Casey Newton]

Boyfriend works at Anthropic. Hot Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. Were edited by Jen Poyat, were fact checked this week by Will Peish. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Nimisto and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer ok, Pat Gunther, Jake Nichol and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on [e-mail] hardfork Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Qui Wing Tam and Talia Haddad. You can email [e-mail] with a question that we'll probably get to sometime and about a year.