It’s been approximately three years since the launch of ChatGPT vaulted “A(G)I” into public consciousness. No coincidence that, around the 2.5-3 year mark, a bunch of AI books have now hit the market…. Jasmine, Jacob, Shira, and I talk through as many as we can get to in this long(! sorry) podcast. In reverse chronological order: * The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025 by Dwarkesh Patel and Gavin Leech (October 2025) * If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill ...
Nov 23, 2025•1 hr 42 min
TL;DR: Reboot has a new mission: We are a publication by and for technologists . We are also open for pitches (and now pay $750 for newsletter essays!). Keep reading and listening for more context on how the editorial board came to this decision—this talk was first given at the Kernel 5 magazine launch in San Francisco—and for examples of the kinds of pieces we’d love to have. Talk: By and For Technologists Hi! My name is Jasmine, and I’m the director and cofounder of Reboot. Thanks so much for ...
Jul 27, 2025•12 min
Shortly after the AI 2027 report was released, my friend Saffron posted a tweet /mini-blog in response: Looking to “accurately” predict AI outcomes is… highly counterproductive for good outcomes. The researchers aim for predictive accuracy and make a big deal of their credentials in forecasting and research. (Although they obscure the actual research, wrapping this up with lots of very specific narrative.) This creates an intended illusion, especially for the majority of people who haven’t thoug...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr
Mr. Beast Saying Increasingly Large Amounts of Money By Morry Kolman Mr. Beast Saying Increasingly Large Amounts of Money is a compilation of over 2800 clips from 206 Mr. Beast videos. This is the abridged 12 minute version—both this and the full length hour-long cut are also available on my YouTube and my website . The work is intended to distill the content of the most popular YouTuber in the world down to one of its core motifs: the promise of the next number being even bigger. Mr. Beast, bor...
Dec 19, 2024•12 min
Surprise, another podcast! (Apparently Kelin’s was the “first”, so this is the “second.” But, from 2022-era Reboot, we have at least 3 older audio posts — I still think they’re excellent, so do check them out if you enjoy audio!) On certain slices of the internet, Ben Recht might be known as Substack power-user (“that one prof who blogs about math”), professional hot-take-haver , or “ recurring podcast guest .” He’s also a computer science professor and one of my PhD advisors at Berkeley. I rece...
Sep 15, 2024•56 min
Today’s episode features independent designer, artist, and programmer Kelin Carolyn Zhang. We cover: - What she learned designing for a studio, Twitter, political campaigns - Why and how she made the jump to independent work - Why she's excited about AI as a new design material - How she and her collaborator Ryan created Poetry Camera - How to find great creative collaborators - Using social media intentionally Find Kelin on Twitter (@kelin_online), her website ( kelin.online ), and on TikTok ( ...
Jul 06, 2024•54 min
Reboot cofounders Jasmine and Jessica reflect on four years of existence, the roles of luck & effort, what writing we're most excited to publish, and the eroticism of Google Doc comments. Subscribe at joinreboot.org! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinreboot.org
Apr 08, 2024•40 min
When I heard my friend Luke Igel was making a documentary about MIT, I was equal parts impressed and skeptical — impressed, because that sounds so incredibly difficult to do, and skeptical, because I wasn’t sure how much the history of MIT would matter to anyone who wasn’t already affiliated with the university. My skepticism was unwarranted. MIT: REGRESSIONS , which covers the period of time between World War II and the start of covid-19, is fascinating; over these decades, the same questions c...
Jul 24, 2022•1 hr 6 min
In our last audio post , organizer Emma Kinema references some labor history as well as the film industry when discussing unions for tech workers. I’m super excited to share this interview with labor historian Joshua Freeman, who has a wealth of knowledge about the American labor movement over the last century or so. It’s a long, fun conversation, and I recommend listening to the full audio to hear everything. One of the chunks that was personally most mindblowing to me: that Reagan’s political ...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 32 min
Organizing isn’t reading Das Kapital, it’s making spreadsheets and talking to your coworkers. That’s just one of Emma Kinema’s many zingers in this conversation with Reboot community member Chris Painter. I’ve transcribed some of my favorite sections below, but the full audio is worth listening to if you want to get the full scoop—on craft-based vs industrial unions, what it’s like to be a QA tester at a game studio, on software for organizing, on what Emma thinks of DAOs and similar approaches,...
Mar 11, 2022•1 hr 35 min
Today, we’re sharing both the full text and the audio version of a Kernel piece by Archana Ahlawat , to all subscribers (free and paid). Most other audio versions are paywalled — if you’d like access to audio versions for other essays but aren’t able to pay, email reboothq@substack.com and we can set you up with a complimentary subscription, no questions asked. In this essay, Archana brings her extensive organizing and nonprofit experience in conversation with the tech industry’s vision of progr...
Feb 03, 2022•24 min
Today’s Kernel piece is a deep dive by Bianca Aguilar into edtech programs like MOOCs and bootcamps, and how their empowerment of students can often be masqueraded exploitation. Fast Food Education By Bianca Aguilar (she/her) Speed and scale are redefining industries: fast food changes what we eat, fast fashion changes what we wear, and now, fast food education is changing how and what we learn. Powered by technology, fast food education is capable of disrupting the ancient higher education sect...
Jan 02, 2022•20 min
