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Kevin Roose Launches 'The AGI Chronicles' Alongside Johns Hopkins Book Talk

Former New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose officially releases 'The AGI Chronicles', tracing a decade of Silicon Valley's sprint toward artificial superin

tau · October 6, 2026

#Kevin Roose #The AGI Chronicles #OpenAI #Anthropic #AGI #AIBooks

On October 6, 2026, acclaimed journalist Kevin Roose, longtime technology columnist for The New York Times, officially released his investigative book, The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG).

Coinciding with the book's official launch, Roose will take the stage on the evening of October 6 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., joining three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman for a special discussion in the university's "Authors & Insights" series.

Chronicling Silicon Valley's AGI Race Through Over 150 Insider Interviews

Spanning 448 pages, The AGI Chronicles offers an exhaustive behind-the-scenes account of what has become the twenty-first century's Manhattan Project: the trillion-dollar sprint to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence capable of outmatching human capabilities across nearly all domains.

Rather than offering generic technical speculation, Roose draws upon more than 150 firsthand interviews with key researchers, founders, and executives at leading frontier labs, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

  • The Sam Altman vs. Dario Amodei Rivalry: The book provides an in-depth reconstruction of the ideological rift and safety disputes between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei that fractured OpenAI and led to the founding of Anthropic.
  • Behind Closed Doors with Tech Titans: Drawing on direct accounts, Roose chronicles critical turning points and strategic debates involving Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and other pivotal figures shaping the global AI landscape.
  • Unvarnished Institutional Insights: The narrative captures rare cultural details inside research labs, such as Anthropic president Daniela Amodei and Holden Karnofsky employing a designated council of named stuffed animals with distinct management profiles to navigate organizational disagreements.

Roose documents how the technology evolved within a single decade—from rudimentary assistants to models capable of cracking century-old mathematical and scientific challenges—while dissecting the conflicting motivations between technological messianism and existential catastrophe.

Launch Event at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center with Thomas L. Friedman

To inaugurate the book's release, Johns Hopkins University is hosting a live event titled "Authors & Insights: Kevin Roose and the History of AI" from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM EDT on October 6 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, located at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.

The forum pairs Roose with Thomas L. Friedman, bestselling author of The World Is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, to examine the far-reaching societal and geopolitical ramifications of the AI boom.

  • Geopolitical Stakes: Assessing how the private race among Silicon Valley firms intersects with national security and international technological dominance.
  • Safety Versus Acceleration: Exploring the growing friction between relentless commercial pressures to deploy advanced models and the governance frameworks intended to mitigate systemic risks.
  • Attendance Logistics: In-person attendance at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center requires advance online registration via JHU Hub or Eventbrite.

The Author's Perspective and Global Publishing Availability

Roose, who previously co-hosted The New York Times's flagship tech podcast Hard Fork and created the investigative series Rabbit Hole, currently co-hosts the weekly AI podcast Machine Gods in partnership with NPR. In a recent profile by the San Francisco Chronicle, Roose noted that The AGI Chronicles will be his last book, reflecting on how AI advances are making some of his own reporting skills obsolete.

Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS News, Roose warned that society is confronted with "very intelligent, charming sociopaths," emphasizing that researchers studying mechanistic interpretability remain largely in the dark regarding how these models reason and behave internally.

  • English Editions: The book is available starting October 6 in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook formats across major retailers.
  • International Editions: The publication schedule for an official Korean translation has not yet been determined, with English-language editions released first.

Sources