The Builders is a interview series hosted by bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson, who speaks with the most influential figures in AI and technology about the futures they are trying to create. Guests include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, Mustafa Suleyman, and Dario and Daniela Amodei, among others. They discuss their ambitions, their fears, how they think about humanity, and what pushes them to build on such a large scale. The conversations are intimate and engaging, and often unsettling, but hard to ignore. The premise is that we are increasingly living inside the imaginations of these builders, whether or not we agree with them.
Episodes
Alex Karp: Silicon Valley Broke Its Promise to America
To outsiders, Alex Karp seems an unlikely choice to lead Palantir. A philosopher by training, the billionaire co-founder has built his business at the intersection of intelligence, warfare and AI. To supporters, his software helps defend open societies. To critics, it gives governments troubling power to surveil and control. In this interview, Karp tells Walter how dyslexia helped him bring togeth
Garry Tan Decides Who Gets to Build the Future
As the leader of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind Airbnb, Stripe and DoorDash, Garry Tan backs founders with the ambition to change how we live. Tan wants more billionaires, but he also believes big tech has too much power. So, how does he square that? Garry and Walter discuss how a 10-minute interview is all you need to vet a transformative founder, why he fears a future control
After The Builders: On Dario & Daniela Amodei and Mustafa Suleyman
Episodes three and four of The Builders with Walter Isaacson explore two poles of the AI safety debate through interviews with Daniela and Dario Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic, and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. Joining Kaleidoscope co-founders Oz Woloshyn and Mangesh Hattikudur to unpack these interviews are two journalists who have spent countless hours trying to understand what d
Mustafa Suleyman: AI Should Serve Humanity, Not Replace It
As a co-founder of DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman helped launch the modern AI race. Now, he’s challenging the way it’s being built. As CEO of Microsoft AI, Suleyman believes the technology needs to be harnessed to transform medicine, energy and education. But he also warns that believing in AI consciousness could pose a real threat to humanity. Recorded live at the 92NY, Suleyman explains
Dario & Daniela Amodei: "This Is Gonna Determine the Fate of Nations and the Future of Humanity”
Dario and Daniela Amodei, the siblings behind Anthropic, left OpenAI to pursue a different, “more human” approach to the technology. Their promise is to put AI safety and ethics at the center of the tech race… but with an IPO around the corner, can those principles survive the pressure to win? Walter invites the co-founders to explain how they teach Claude right from wrong
After The Builders: On Musk and Thiel
Curious how those chronicling Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are feeling about their appearances on The Builders? There's an episode of TechStuff for that. Host Oz Woloshyn is joined by his Kaleidoscope co-founder Mangesh Hattikudur to talk about how The Builders with Walter Isaacson… and all the high-profile interviews featured in the podcast came together. Joining them to break
Peter Thiel: “We Need to Hit the Accelerator As Hard As Possible” on AI
Peter Thiel has become one of the most mysterious and controversial figures in tech. He’s a visionary investor who recognizes transformative ideas before everyone else. But he’s also seen as a shadowy figure whose network has accumulated extraordinary influence across Silicon Valley, national security and politics– proven by his bets on people like Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Sam Altma
Elon Musk: "Humans Won't Be in Control" When AI Becomes Smarter Than Us
Elon Musk has spent his career turning improbable ideas into companies that reshape the world. To some, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX is an engineering genius whose ambitions have transformed electric cars and space travel. To others, his politics and extraordinary influence raise serious questions about the future he is building. Either way, the world’s first trillionaire is bett
ON MUSK Episode Four: What is Musk's Legacy?
As a teaser to our upcoming series The Builders-- which kicks off with an interview with Elon Musk, we're re-airing our critically acclaimed 2023 podcast On Musk, Walter Isaacson's behind-the-scenes telling of writing the Elon Musk biography. We hope you enjoy it! Which of Musk’s efforts will mark his legacy? Will it be Starship and his work bringing Americans back into orbit, or will
ON MUSK Episode Three: Storytelling and Hot Takes
As a teaser to our upcoming series The Builders-- which kicks off with an interview with Elon Musk, we're re-airing our critically acclaimed 2023 podcast On Musk, Walter Isaacson's behind-the-scenes telling of writing the Elon Musk biography. We hope you enjoy it! Be a storyteller, not a preacher. That was novelist Walker Percy’s legendary advice to a young Walter Isaacson. One he take
ON MUSK Episode Two: Demons
As a teaser to our upcoming series The Builders-- which kicks off with an interview with Elon Musk, we're re-airing our critically acclaimed 2023 podcast On Musk, Walter Isaacson's behind-the-scenes telling of writing the Elon Musk biography. We hope you enjoy it! What kind of titan of industry has a "giddy mode"? Or a "demon mode"? The two aspects of Musk’s personality are forces that
ON MUSK Episode One: Genius
As a teaser to our upcoming series The Builders-- which kicks off with an interview with Elon Musk, we're re-airing our critically acclaimed 2023 podcast On Musk, Walter Isaacson's behind-the-scenes telling of writing the Elon Musk biography. We hope you enjoy it! Space travel, electric vehicles, future-powering batteries—the ability to push technology forward and to bring it into the
Coming Soon! The Builders
Whose imagination do you want to live in? In this new series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, Dario and Daniela Amodei, and more open up about their ambitions, what frightens them, how they think about humanity, and what drives them to
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