Kevin Roose
Technology journalist and author covering AI and the labs building it, and a former New York Times technology columnist.
“I often tell people that being in San Francisco these days feels like living in Europe during the Reformation, where you just have like crazy, like wild-eyed prophets like waving their pamphlets around and like trying to get you to join their thing. Like this is what walking down Market Street in San Francisco feels like.”
Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Nilay Patel asks whether the religiosity in Silicon Valley is connected to building AI. Roose says yes, and predicts AI religions, because AI raises the questions people used to ask of God: purpose, meaning, why we're here.
Transcript
…transforming inputs into outputs. And look, I know that is like the least romantic, most San Francisco way of explaining what human cognition is. I just have not heard a compelling argument that it is not how our brains work that doesn't involve some sort of supernatural or immaterial substance.
…confident. Let me just ask you this. There's like a surprising amount of religiosity in Silicon Valley right now. We just published the Peter Thiel lectures on The Verge. He's talking about the Antichrist. Do you think these ideas are connected? That we are building gods such that they seek God?
Yes. I think we will absolutely have AI religions. I think AI is posing all of the same questions as a religion that we would not otherwise be asking of God. What is our purpose? What is our meaning? Why are we here? These are the questions that people now talk about in the context of AI. And then, yeah, obviously, like I often tell people that being in San Francisco these days feels like living in Europe during the Reformation, where you just have like crazy, like wild-eyed prophets like waving their pamphlets around and like trying to get you to join their thing. Like this is what walking down market street in San Francisco feels like.
Yeah. What dropped the scales from your eyes? What made you AGI pilled?
Being Sydney, believe it or not. Yeah. I mean, that was the start. And then from there, it was just kind of a gradual process. And one day I realized when I used these things, I wasn't treating them like an intellectual inferior. I was, in some ways, treating them as a peer. And that's when I…
Well, Kevin, I'm confident the next time you come on the show, I will have set up a fully AI influencer to make money doing UGC ads, which is the true future of, I think, all of our businesses. The podcast is Machine Gods. It's very good. You hosted Casey Newton. The book is excellent. It's the AGI…
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