NYT reviews Kevin Roose's 'The AGI Chronicles': how close is the race to superintelligence?
kevinroose · x · 2026-10-06
Kevin Roose's new book The AGI Chronicles gets a New York Times review by Tom Bissell.
- Roose's core claim: in the eyes of those chasing AGI, the distance between today's AI and AGI has grown alarmingly short.
- The book chronicles the companies and people behind the race to artificial superintelligence, repeatedly drawing Manhattan Project analogies.
- The review frames the book's central tension: "Sure, Robots Might Kill Us All. But Do They Have Souls?" — Roose looks for clues that AI may already be smarter than humans.
- Notably, Roose has since left the Times to become a full-time podcaster.
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