As part of the BBC's AI Unpacked week Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong join an audience of pupils, teachers and education experts to ask if artificial intelligence is the future of learning. Recorded at University College London in their bicentennial year, the programme asks how we can use this revolutionary tool to equip the next generation for a future where Ai will be everywhere. The panel features Alex Russell, former head teacher and co‑founder of the charity AI in Education; Professor Sonia L...
Mar 04, 2026•30 min
Chat GPT, Gemini etc are most people's idea of artificial intelligence. But are the limitations of the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them an obstacle to achieving Ai that understand the world beyond what its learnt from the internet. That's increasingly the opinion of leading researchers who despite the industries fixation with LLMs are voting with their feet and setting up their own research labs to look at other ways to achieve Ai. Aleks and Kevin talk with Michael Woolridge, Prof...
Feb 25, 2026•29 min
Aleks and Kevin look at how Ai chatbots and summaries might kill the web as we know it. When people get all the answers they want from their AI, can the sites they've scraped for content survive if no one visits them? Sajeeda Merali of the professional publishers association discusses the challenges her members face. And the original disruptor of spreading information, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, talks about the reliance of Ai on the work of his legions of volunteer 'wikipedians' and why attr...
Feb 18, 2026•30 min
In the final instalment of our AI Bubble mini-series, Aleks and Kevin take a look at what it would mean if the AI bubble were to burst - not just for the industry, but for the future of AI itself. They’re joined by Adrian Lepers, Head of Monetization Operations and Strategy at Hugging Face. Sitting right at the centre of the open-source AI ecosystem, Adrian shares how Hugging Face sees its role in the market and how the industry could evolve from here. Also on the programme is Gary Marcus - cogn...
Jan 28, 2026•29 min
In part two of their exploration of the economics of Ai Aleks and Kevin ask, what are the consequences of the anticipated financial bubble bursting, and would a crash stop there? There's massive uncertainty over whether the Ai industry can make enough money to warrant the astronomical sums being invested, making 2026 a make-or-break year for the sector in the eyes of many experts. We're joined by Dame Diane Coyle economist at the University of Cambridge to look at how far the blast radius of an ...
Jan 28, 2026•29 min
Aleks and Kevin explore the biggest story in the Ai business. Markets are growing sceptical that the eye-watering sums being invested in Ai will show a return and comparisons with the dot-com crash are being widely made - so is the Ai bubble about to burst? Over the next three episodes we'll explore the Ai business landscape, look at the evidence for a bubble and consider the consequences of a 'major correction' to the valuation of the big players. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Produ...
Jan 28, 2026•29 min
Aleks and Kevin explore the world of Ai agents, artificial intelligence that can go out and act in the world on your behalf. And with festive season only weeks away, what they really want to know is could it do your Christmas shopping for you? They hear from Peter Cross, ex-customer experience director at John Lewis and Waitrose, and author of Start with the Consumer, about whether an Ai could ever be your personal shopper before finding out from human-computer interaction researcher Professor T...
Oct 29, 2025•29 min
Aleks & Kevin explore how people turned to Ai to solve Charlie Kirk's murder, enhancing grainy CCTV pictures or asking chatbots to help them investigate, but did it help or hinder? They're joined by Lauren Fichten and Julia Ingram from US broadcaster CBS; they watched in real time as the Ai generated content began to trickle in after the shooting finally reaching a frenzy of activity. They then turn to deep fake and misinformation expert Henry Ajder to understand the motivations of those so ...
Oct 22, 2025•29 min
A report by the National Centre for Social research show that political orientation shapes attitudes toward AI technologies and their regulation. With people on the right more open to Ai while those on left are more sceptical. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore why that might be the case and whether it has implications for how quickly people adopt Ai tools. They speak to Helen Margetts from the Oxford Internet Institute about the research and what it tells us, before exploring with Thomas Fer...
Oct 15, 2025•29 min
According to the Harvard Business Review companionship has become the number one use case for generative Ai. But what if the model gets updated and the Ai chum you've been confiding in and sharing your life with disappears? Who picks up the pieces and do the creators of these technologies be more careful? Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore the latest and most high-profile incident of this when Open Ai replaced GPT 4o with GPT 5. At a stroke, all personas that users had shaped their use and ca...
Oct 08, 2025•30 min
For years disabled and marginalised communities have fought for representation in what we see in the media. Aleks and Kevin find out if AI risks undoing all those hard-won victories. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski & Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Sound: Sean Mullervy
Oct 01, 2025•29 min
What would make you want to exercise? Is it the thrill of being discovered as the next football legend? Or maybe the threat of a scary drill sergeant shouting at you? Join Aleks and Kevin at the starting line, as they set out to discover how AI could help reshape your fitness goals. From what the high end athletes are using to track their progress and how that trickles down to everyday users, to how AI is levelling the playing field when it comes to scouting new talent. Plus, could an AI coach b...
Sep 24, 2025•29 min
Haven’t had your A.I. question answered yet? We’re making up for it. Aleks and Kevin are in the hot seat for an episode dedicated to tackling the A.I. questions left in our inbox. With insights from experts, and questions from you the listener, they'll cover everything from AI verbal abuse and how AI is being used on our streets, to how it can help with your overflowing inbox, and whether AI dreams like we do. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski & Kevin Fong Producer: Rachael O’Neill Researcher: Juli...
Jul 02, 2025•28 min
As more and more of us use Ai chat bots inevitably people will start asking them about their problems. Aleks and Kevin ask if there's a risk they do more harm than good? They talk to Ryan Broderick who turned to Ai when going through a rough patch with his mental health. He's now seeing a human therapist and has a fascinating perspective on the advice his chat bot gave him. But are the potential risks of using Ai as a support especially if its one not designed for that purpose? Zoha Khawaja has ...
Jun 25, 2025•29 min
Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask if espionage is about to be revolutionised by Ai. Around the globe intelligence agencies are getting excited about the potential of Ai. Not only in what we know its good at, crunching huge amounts of data looking for patterns but also in identifying and exploiting human weakness. Who might be turned to spy for you and how can they be manipulated. And when a spy is caught could an Ai in the interrogator’s ear help them spot telltale signs of lying by analysing mi...
Jun 18, 2025•29 min
When Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released their R1 model on the world it sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. Out of nowhere was an AI that performed as well as any of big tech's products but had been built at a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the resources. Now the dust has settled they’re asking themselves whether the driving idea of bigger models, trained on ever bigger datasets still holds up. They're also asking if their business model of fiercely protecting the secrets behin...
Jun 11, 2025•30 min
When a Norwegian man idly asked ChatGPT to tell him something about himself he was appalled to read that according to the chatbot he'd been convicted of murdering two of his children and had attempted to kill a third. Outraged, he contacted Open AI to have the information corrected only to discover that because of how these large language models work its difficult if not impossible to change it. He's now taking legal action with the help of digital civil rights advocate. Its an extreme example o...
Jun 04, 2025•29 min
Books are at the heart of an ongoing AI controversy with 7.5 million books being used to train AI without the authors’ knowledge or consent. So, should AI be allowed to steal books? Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong speak to award-winning author Kate Mosse about the growing debate over AI and authorship. They’ll also explore how the publishing industry is responding and whether AI systems have the legal right to absorb millions of books? Plus, with AI generated books on the rise, could this technolo...
May 28, 2025•30 min
Aleks and Kevin step into the world of actors “banking” their voices for use after death. With the help of AI your favourite actor can continue to appear on screen for years after they've gone. But what does that really mean? What’s a performance without the actor behind it? Benjamin Field is the producer behind the AI Sir Michael Parkinson podcast, where the late interviewer talks to new guests thanks to AI technology. Benjamin explains how the technology works, and the ethical concerns that it...
Feb 12, 2025•28 min
Ai is at a turning point, Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask what direction it will take and who is advising the most powerful man in the world on what vision of AI to pursue? There are numerous camps vying for President Trump's favour over how to develop Ai. There are those demanding that it be allowed to run free without the burden of innovation stifling regulation. Others still cling to the notion that the risks of rampant Ai still need to be curbed, while a third camp want to see 'big tech' w...
Feb 03, 2025•29 min
Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore our fears around AI, where they come from andwhether we're worrying about the right things? Listener Paul asks 'if AI gets so smart wouldn't it realise it was a threat to society and switch itself off?' Its the stuff of Sci-fi fantasy, an artificial intelligence that gets so smart it decides it doesn't need humanity anymore. But if AI were ever to get that powerful and for many its a very big 'if' why would it want to do that? Kevin and Aleks speak to Dr Kan...
Jan 29, 2025•29 min
Listener Gordon is worried that as AI content spreads across the web there'll be proportionally less and less human content for the AI’s to be trained on with the result their output will just get blander and blander. He’s right to be worried, Aleks and Kevin explore the phenomena of ‘model collapse’ the inevitable breakdown of an AI to give useful results if its training data is already AI produced. Speaking to NYU data scientist Professor Julia Kempe the pair discover that training on AI gener...
Jan 22, 2025•29 min
You don’t need to be a diehard gamer to realise video games have long been used as a yard stick to measure how far technology has come. From Pong and Space Invaders, right the way to Minecraft and Fallout, as the technology has advanced, so have the games. Pushing new boundaries and creating previously unimaginable worlds and experiences. But how will AI revolutionise the world of gaming itself, both for those who develop games and those who play them? Are we on the cusp of a huge leap forward? ...
Jan 15, 2025•29 min
Can you imagine how quickly Poirot could have solved a crime, if only he’d had access to AI software? Following a fictional murder case provided by real life police officer, Aleks and Kevin try to unravel how AI is already used in crime fighting, and what the cutting edge uses might be. Ruth Morgan, Professor of Crime and Forensic Sciences, explains how the ability of AI to crunch huge volumes of data could lead to new forms of evidence being used in criminal trials. Aleks and Kevin also chat to...
Jan 08, 2025•29 min
Of all the jobs artificial intelligence might replace surely trading in stocks and shares is at the top of the list. Aleks and Kevin find out it might have already happened. The first algorithms hit the trading floors nearly 30 years ago and since then the numbers of people involved in the buying and selling of shares has been dwindling. Aleks and Kevin speaking professor Dave Cliffe who wrote one of those first trading programmes. He was told the future of trading was a computer, a dog and a ma...
Oct 30, 2024•29 min
The arms race is over and we lost. All those increasingly annoying little puzzles to prove "I am not a robot" from how many buses can you see to the invisible behavioural analysis going on behind the screen, AI powered bots can now pick every lock designed to keep them out. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask what's left to prove we're an actual human being online and if that becomes impossible does much of the internet stop being useful? Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter M...
Oct 23, 2024•29 min
Conspiracy theories—once confined to fringe communities—have entered the mainstream. Social media has supercharged outlandish narratives, giving them an air of legitimacy through viral sharing. With generative AI now capable of producing hyper-realistic images, videos, and audio, the boundaries between fact and fiction are more blurred than ever. It feels almost inevitable that AI will further amplify conspiracy theories in public and online discourse. But perhaps the future isn’t quite so bleak...
Oct 16, 2024•29 min
The Darzi report of September 2024 painted a bleak picture of the NHS; crumbling infrastructure, low productivity and increasingly unhappy patients. AI is seen as key to turning the health service around but is it the panacea many claim? Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong find out if its on the front line or in the back office that AI can offer the NHS the biggest bang for its limited buck? Presenters: Aleks Krotoski & Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Researcher: Emily Esson Mixed by: Kris McCo...
Oct 09, 2024•29 min
Ever wondered what others are feeling but can’t quite read their emotions? Chris, a listener, emailed us with this exact dilemma. Partly due to being neurodivergent, he struggles to interpret the emotions of those around him—and even his own emotional reactions. So, he asked us: Could AI translate emotions for him? In this episode, Aleks and Kevin dive into the fascinating and complex world of Emotional AI. They start with Professor Andrew McStay, head of the Emotional AI Lab at Bangor Universit...
Oct 02, 2024•28 min
Sometimes, we get odd questions at the Artificial Human - ‘Why has my gran’s facebook feed been taken over by Shrimp Jesus?’ definitely raised eyebrows. Kevin and Aleks embark on a journey into the weird and wonderful world of ‘AI Slop’ - mass produced, low quality AI images that have spread like wildfire over Social Media platforms - with Shrimp Jesus being one of the most prominent, and bizarre, examples. They’ll speak with Renee Di Resta, about her study that reveals how algorithmic systems, ...
Sep 25, 2024•29 min
