AI can stand between you and getting a job. That means for you to make money and support yourself and your family, you may have to convince an AI that you’re the right person for the job. And yet, AI can be biased and fail in all sorts of ways. This is a conversation with Hilke Schellmann, investigative journalist and author of ‘The algorithm” along with her colleague Mona Sloane, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Data Science and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. We discuss Hilke’s...
Jun 26, 2025•42 min•Season 2Ep. 54
We want accurate AI, right? As long as it’s accurate, we’re all good? My guest, Will Landecker, CEO Accountable Algorithm, explains why accuracy is just one metric among many to aim for. In fact, we have to make tradeoffs across things like accuracy, relevance, and normative (including ethical) considerations in order to get a usable model. We also cover whether explainability is important and whether it’s even on the menu and the risks of multi-agentic AI systems. Advertising Inquiries: https:/...
Jun 19, 2025•49 min•Season 2Ep. 53
Should we allow autonomous AI systems? Who is accountable if things go sideways? And how is AI going to transform the future of military work? All this and more with my guest, Rosaria Taddeo, Professor of Digital Ethics and Defense Technologies at the University of Oxford. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Jun 12, 2025•39 min
The Silicon Valley titans talk a lot about intelligence and super intelligence of AI…but what is intelligence, anyway? My guest, former philosopher professor and now Director at Gartner Philip Walsh argues the SV folks are fundamentally confused about what intelligence is. It’s not, he argues, like horsepower, which can be objectively measured. Instead, whether we ascribe intelligence to something is a matter of what we communally agree to ascribe intelligence to. More specifically, we have to c...
Jun 05, 2025•54 min
How can we solve AI’s problems if we don’t understand where they came from? Originally aired in season one. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
May 29, 2025•34 min
Tech companies are racing to build and sell agentic. The vision is one in which countless AI agents are acting on our behalf: searching the web, making transactions, interacting with other AI agents. But my guest Avijit Ghosh, Applied Policy Researcher at Hugging Face, explains why we’re not even close to having the appropriate safeguards in place. What are the massive gaps and what would it take to close them? That’s the topic of our discussion. AI Agent Framework: SmolAgents : https://huggingf...
May 22, 2025•53 min
We’re told that algorithms on social media are manipulating us. But is that true? What is manipulation? Can an AI really do it? And is it necessarily a bad thing? These questions and more with philosopher Michael Klenk. Originally aired in season one. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
May 15, 2025•48 min•Season 2Ep. 48
We often defer to the judgment of experts. I usually defer to my doctor’s judgment when he diagnoses me, I defer to quantum physicists when they talk to me about string theory, etc. I don’t say “well, that’s interesting, I’ll take it under advisement” and then form my own beliefs. Any beliefs I have on those fronts I replace with their beliefs. But what if an AI “knows” more than us? It is an authority in the field in which we’re questioning it. Should we defer to the AI? Should we replace our b...
May 08, 2025•48 min•Season 2Ep. 47
Are claims about AI destroying humanity just more AI hype we should ignore? My guests today, Risto Uuk and Torben Swoboda assess three popular arguments for why we should dismiss them and focus solely on the AI risks that are here today. But they find each argument flawed, arguing that, unless some fourth powerful argument comes along, we should devote resources to identifying and avoiding potential existential risks to humanity posed by AI. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Pr...
May 01, 2025•42 min•Season 2Ep. 46
I have to admit, AI can do some amazing things. More specifically, it looks like it can perform some impressive intellectual feats. But is it actually intelligent? Does it understand? Or is it just really good at statistics? This and more in my conversation with Lisa Titus, former professor of philosophy at the University of Denver and now AI Policy Manager at Meta. Originally aired in season one. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/pr...
Apr 24, 2025•47 min•Season 2Ep. 41
By the end of this crash course, you’ll understand a lot about the AI ethics landscape. Not only will it give you your bearings, but it will also enable you to identify what parts of the landscape you find interesting so you can do a deeper dive. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Apr 17, 2025•27 min•Season 2Ep. 44
People want AI developed ethically, but is there actually a business case for it? The answer better be yes since, after all, it’s businesses that are developing AI in the first place. Today I talk with Dennis Hirsch, Professor of Law and Computer Science at Ohio State University, who is conducting empirical research on this topic. He argues that AI ethics - or as he prefers to call it, Responsible AI - delivers a lot of bottom line business value. In fact, his research revealed something about i...
Apr 10, 2025•43 min•Season 2Ep. 43
Automation is great, right? It speeds up what needs to get done. But is that always a good thing? What about in the process of scientific discovery? Yes, AI can automate a lot of science by running thousands of virtual experiments and generating results - but is something lost in the process? My guest, Ramón Alvarado a professor of philosophy and a member of the Philosophy and Data Science Initiative at the University of Oregon, thinks something crucial is missing: serendipity. Many significant ...
Apr 03, 2025•46 min•Season 2Ep. 46
Behind all those algorithms are the people who create them and embed them into our lives. How did they get that power? What should they do with it? What are their responsibilities? This and more with my guest Chris Wiggins, Chief Data Scientist at the New York Times, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, and author of the book “How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms”. Originally aired in season one. Advertising Inquiries: https:/...
Mar 27, 2025•48 min•Season 2Ep. 41
People in the AI safety community are laboring under an illusion, perhaps even a self-deception, my guest argues. They think they can align AI with our values and control it so that the worst doesn’t happen. But that’s impossible. We can never know how AI will act in the wild any more than we can know how our children will act once they leave the house. Thus, we should never give more control to an AI than we would give an individual person. This is a fascinating discussion with Marcus Arvan, pr...
Mar 20, 2025•49 min•Season 2Ep. 40
Developers are constantly testing how online users react to their designs. Will they stay longer on the site because of this shade of blue? Will they get depressed if we show them depressing social media posts? What happens if we intentionally mismatch people on our dating website? When it comes to shades of blue, perhaps that’s not a big deal. But when it comes to mental health and deceiving people? Now we’re in ethically choppy waters. My discussion today is with Cennydd Bowles, Managing Direc...
Mar 13, 2025•48 min•Season 2Ep. 39
There’s a picture in our heads that’s overly simplistic and the result is not thinking clearly about AI risks. Our simplistic picture is that a team develops AI and then it gets used. The truth, the more complex picture, is that 1000 hands touch that AI before it ever becomes a product. This means that risk identification and mitigation is spread across a very complex supply chain. My guest, Jason Stanley, is at the forefront of research and application when it comes to managing all this complex...
Mar 07, 2025•40 min•Season 2Ep. 38
From the best of season 1: Microsoft recently announced an (alleged!) breakthrough in quantum computing. But what in the world is quantum computer, what can they do, and what are the potential ethical implications of this new powerful tech? Brian and I discuss these issues and more. And don’t worry! No knowledge of physics required. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Feb 27, 2025•46 min•Season 2Ep. 37
Every specialist in anything thinks they should have a seat at the AI ethics table. I’m usually skeptical. But psychologist Madeline Reinecke, Ph.D. did a great job defending her view that – you guessed it – psychologists should have a seat at the AI ethics table. Our conversation ranged from the role of psychologists in creating AI that supports healthy human relationships to when children start and stop attributing sentience to robots to loving relationships with AI to the threat of AI-induced...
Feb 20, 2025•42 min•Season 2Ep. 36
A fun format for this episode. In Part I, I talk about how I see agentic AI unfolding and what ethical, social, and political risks come with it. In part II, Eric Corriel, digital strategist at the School of Visual Arts and a close friend, tells me why he thinks I’m wrong. Debate ensues. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Feb 13, 2025•30 min•Season 2Ep. 35
Jaahred Thomas is a VC friend of mine who wanted to talk about the evolving landscape of AI ethics in startups and business generally. So rather than have a normal conversation like people do, we made it an episode! Jaahred asks me a bunch of questions about AI ethics and startups, investors, Fortune 500 companies, and more, and I tell him the unvarnished truths about where corporate America is in the AI ethics journey and what startup founders should and shouldn’t spend their time doing. Advert...
Feb 06, 2025•54 min•Season 2Ep. 34
From the best of season 1: The hospital faced an ethical question: should we deploy robots to help with elder care? Let’s look at a standard list of AI ethics values: justice/fairness, privacy, transparency, accountability, explainability. But as Ami points out in our conversation, that standard list doesn’t include a core value at the hospital: the value of caring. And that’s one example of one of three objections to a view he calls “Principalism.” Principalism is the view that we do AI ethics ...
Jan 30, 2025•51 min•Season 2Ep. 33
From the best of season 1: Innovation is great…but hype is bad. Not only has all this talk of innovation not increased innovation, but it also creates a bad environment in which leaders can make reasoned judgments about where to devote resources. So says Lee Vinsel, professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virgina Tech, in this Ethical Machines episode. ALSO! We want proactive regulations before the sh!t hits the fan, right? Not so fast, says Lee. Proactive regulations p...
Jan 23, 2025•50 min•Season 2Ep. 32
“Sustainability,” “purpose/mission/value driven”, “human-centric design.” These are terms companies use so they don’t have to say “ethics.” My contention is that this is bad for business and bad for society at large. Our world, corporate and otherwise, is confronted with a growing mountain of ethical problems, spurred on by technologies that bring us fresh new ways of realizing our familiar ethical nightmares. These issues do not disappear via semantic legerdemain. We need to name our problems a...
Jan 16, 2025•16 min•Season 2Ep. 31
Democracy is about how we ought to distribute power in society and, more specifically, it’s the claim that people ought to have a significant say in how they are ruled. So if we’re talking about AI’s impact on democracy, we should focus on how our use of AI interact with our concern that democracy be respected, upheld, and improved. But my guest Ted Lechterman, UNESCO Chair in AI Ethics and Governance at IE University’s School of Humanities, argues that our current discussion on AI and democracy...
Jan 09, 2025•54 min•Season 2Ep. 30
From the best of season 1. Well, I didn’t see this coming. Talking about legal and philosophical conceptions of copyright turns out to be intellectually fascinating and challenging. It involves not only concepts about property and theft, but also about personhood and invasiveness. Could it be that training AI with author/artist work violates their self? I talked with Darren Hick about all this, who wrote a few books on the topic. I definitely didn’t think he was going to bring up Hegel. Advertis...
Dec 19, 2024•53 min•Season 2Ep. 29
My guest and I have been doing AI governance for businesses for a combined 17+years. We started way before genAI was a big thing. But I’d say I’m more a qualitative guy and he’s more quant. Nick Elprin is the CEO of an AI governance software company, after all. How has AI ethics or AI governance evolved over that time and what does cutting edge governance look like? Perhaps you’re about to find out… Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/...
Dec 12, 2024•50 min•Season 2Ep. 28
People, especially kids under 18, are forming emotional attachments with AI chatbots. At a minimum, this is…weird. Is it also unethical? Does it harm users? Is it, as my guest Robert Mahari argues, an affront to human dignity? Have a listen and find out. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Dec 05, 2024•54 min•Season 2Ep. 27
You might want more online content moderation so insane conspiracy theories don’t flourish. Sex slaves in Democrat pizza shops, climate change is a hoax, and so on. But is it irrational to believe these things? Is content moderation - whether in the form of censoring or labelling something as false - the morally right and/or effective strategy? In this discussion Neil Levy and I go back to basics about what it is to be rational and how that helps us answer our questions. Neil’s fascinating answe...
Nov 21, 2024•52 min•Season 2Ep. 26
From the best of season 1. Part 2 of my conversation with Alex. There’s good reason to think AI doesn’t understand anything. It’s just moving around words according to mathematical rules, predicting the words that come next. But in this episode, philosopher Alex Grzankowski argues that AI may not understand what it’s saying but it does understand language. In this episode we do a deep dive into the nature of human and AI understanding, ending with strategies for how AI researchers could pursue A...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 25
