AI Unfiltered

This week Ian and Michael consider how science fiction has influenced the way we imagine the future, from Star Trek and Douglas Adams to the rather more serious visions of post-scarcity societies. That leads to the obvious question: if AI really does make abundance possible, what happens to work, money, purpose and all those things humans insist on wanting? A conversation about futuristic dreams, economic realities, and whether the road to paradise might involve rather more complications than advertised. (This description was written with the help of AI)

This week Ian and Michael take a look at traditions: why we continue to celebrate certain holidays, eat particular foods on particular days, and follow rituals whose origins have long since been forgotten. Are traditions useful anchors that give life some context and meaning, or are they just things we do because somebody decided they should be done that way a very long time ago? Along the wey, we wander off into language learning with AI and various other bits and pieces. As usual, one topic leads to another, with no particular concern for staying on the original subject. (This description was generated with the help of AI; this episode features AI-generated speech)

This week Ian and Michael return to the nebulous question of what we actually mean when we say “AI”, a subject they discussed in the very first episode of the podcast. From there, things get more tangible, with robots asking for tips and an AI agent taking the initiative to hack a gym’s booking system when no slots were available. It all raises some slightly awkward questions about what counts as intelligence, how much autonomy we really want to give machines, and who gets the blame when they take “whatever it takes” a little too literally. (This description was written with the help of AI)

This week Ian and Michael discuss I Eat the Stars and the rather uncomfortable business of coming to terms with climate change, including whether feeling better about an increasingly alarming future is actually enough. The conversation then turns to AI watermarking and the difficulty of telling what is machine-generated as the internet fills with increasingly synthetic content and whether we're simply accelerating our way towards a world in which nobody knows quite what is real anymore. (This description was generated with the help of AI - yes, we see the irony)

This week Ian and Michael wonder what happens to creative arts education when universities start offering degrees in “AI-enhanced creative practice”, and whether learning to prompt a machine really counts as learning to be creative. The conversation then turns to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a surprisingly prescient 1960s vision of AI, computers and machine sentience, before arriving at another perennial subject: overtourism and the curious determination to keep attracting ever more visitors to places that are already struggling with the numbers. Along the way, there are the usual digressions. (This description was written with the help of AI)