Kevin Roose
Technology journalist and author covering AI and the labs building it, and a former New York Times technology columnist.
“Google had all of the resources, all of the talent. They made all of the breakthroughs. They had all the ingredients except for belief… If you don't have the belief, or you only kind of halfway have it, you don't make the kind of crazy sounding bets that you need to make.”
Big Technology · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Asked why OpenAI is still at or near the front despite losing so many of its best people, Roose says his book about AI turned out to be a book about belief. He argues the labs that most believe they are building AGI are the ones willing to make enormous compute bets before they look obvious.
Transcript
…book was that I thought it was going to be a book about technology, but it was a book about belief. And for all of its flaws and stumbles, for all the people who have left, OpenAI and Anthropic are the two most believing organizations. They're AI-pilled, AGI-pilled, whatever you want to call them.
SI-pilled.
…Along. So I think that this explains a lot of why OpenAI is still in the lead. Obviously, they have very talented people still there. I've talked to their top scientists. They're quite smart. But they also have this ingredient of like everyone is kind of aligned behind the belief that they are building the sort of super intelligence that is going to change the world. And if you don't believe, if you don't have the belief, or you only kind of halfway have it, you don't make the kind of crazy sounding bets that you need to make. Like, I remember like a year ago when everyone was like, oh, OpenAI is really investing a lot in compute. Yeah.
Dario is like, they're YOLOing away. They're
YOLOing. Even Dario is like, these guys are crazy. Like, why would you bet this much on compute? And now it's like, everyone's making that bet. But they have an advantage because they made the bet before it was obvious. So I think that, I think belief, conviction, whatever you want to call it, is…
That's such a good answer. Belief. You got to believe. It makes sense. I mean, even within Google. I mean, one of the things that you bring up in the book is there was a, say, AGI moment that there was like someone who literally was like, Google is such non-believers that we have to start saying…
More from Big Technology
