The Government's Awareness of AGI Arrival 🤖

Artificial general intelligence — an A.I. system that can beat humans at almost any cognitive task – is arriving in just a couple of years. That’s what people tell me — people who work in A.I. labs, researchers who follow their work, former White House officials. A lot of these people have been calling me over the last couple of months trying to convey the urgency. This is coming during President Trump’s term, they tell me. We’re not ready.

One of the people who reached out to me was Ben Buchanan, the top adviser on A.I. in the Biden White House. And I thought it would be interesting to have him on the show for a couple reasons: He’s not connected to an A.I. lab, and he was at the nerve center of policymaking on A.I. for years. So what does he see coming? What keeps him up at night? And what does he think the Trump administration needs to do to get ready for the A.G.I. – or something like A.G.I. - he believes is right on the horizon?

0:00 Intro
1:44 Artificial General Intelligence
3:40 Labor market impact
5:58 Race against China
28:17 A.I. safety vs. AI accelerationism
45:58 A.I. in the federal government
49:46 Making A.I. pro-worker
59:03 The need for better A.I. policy
1:01:46 Book recommendations

Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ben-buchanan.html

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You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.