Ethical Machines
Episodes
Rewriting History with AI
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when students turn to LLMs to learn about history? My guest, Nuno Moniz, Associate Research Professor at the University of Notre Dame, ar...
AI is Not a Normal Technology
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When thinking about AI replacing people, we usually look to the extremes: utopia and dystopia. My guest today, Finn Morehouse, a research fellow at Fo...
We Are All Responsible for AI, Part 2
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the last episode, Brian Wong, argued that there’s a “gap” between the harms that developing and using AI causes, on the one hand, and identif...
We Are All Responsible for AI, Part 1
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all connected to how AI is developed and used across the world. And that connection, my guest Brian Wong, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at...
Orchestrating Ethics
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One company builds the LLM. Another company uses that model for their purposes. How do we know that the ethical standards of the first one match the e...
The Military is the Safest Place to Test AI
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can one of the most high risk industries also be the safest place to test AI? That’s what I discuss today with former Navy Commander Zac Staples...
Should We Make Digital Copies of People?
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Deepfakes to deceive people? No good. How about a digital duplicate of a lost loved one so you can keep talking to them? What’s the impact of having...
How Society Bears AI’s Costs
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is leading the economic charge. In fact, without the massive investments in AI, our economy would look a lot worse right now. But what are the soci...
How Should We Teach Ethics to Computer Science Majors?
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The engineering and data science students of today are tomorrow’s tech innovators. IF we want them to develop ethically sound technology, they bette...
In Defense of Killer Robots
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Giving AI systems autonomy in a military context seems like a bad idea. Of course AI shouldn’t “decide” which targets should be killed and/or bl...
Live Recording: Is AI Creating a Sadder Future?
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In August, I recorded a discussion with David Ryan Polgar, Founder of the nonprofit All Tech Is Human, in front of an audience of around 200 people. W...
Season finale: A New Ethics for AI Ethics?
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wendell Wallach, who has been in the AI ethics game longer than just about anyone and has several books to his name on the subject, talks about his di...
Is AI a Person or a Thing… or Neither?
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It would be crazy to attribute legal personhood to AI, right? But then again, corporations are regarded as legal persons and there seems to be good re...
How Do You Control Unpredictable AI?
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
LLMs behave in unpredictable ways. That’s a gift and a curse. It both allows for its “creativity” and makes it hard to control (a bit like a rea...
The AI Job Interviewer
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Accuracy Isn’t Enough
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Beware of Autonomous Weapons
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 thi...
How Do We Construct Intelligence?
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Silicon Valley titans talk a lot about intelligence and super intelligence of AI…but what is intelligence, anyway? My guest, former philosopher ...
AI Needs Historians
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can we solve AI’s problems if we don’t understand where they came from? Originally aired in season one.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircl...
We’re Not Ready for Agentic AI
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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, makin...
How Algorithms Manipulate Us
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 necessaril...
What Should We Do When AI Knows More Than Us?
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 tal...
Should We Ignore Claims about AI’s Existential Threat?
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are claims about AI destroying humanity just more AI hype we should ignore? My guests today, Risto Uuk and Torben Swoboda assess three popular argumen...
AI is Not Intelligent
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Crash Course on the AI Ethics Landscape
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Does AI Ethics in Business Make Sense?
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ar...
Does AI Undermine Scientific Discovery?
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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? Y...
The Power of Technologists
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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? Wh...
AI is Uncontrollable
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ou...
A Culture of Online Manipulation
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
AI Risk Mitigation is Insanely Complex
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 te...
Did You Say "Quantum" Computer?
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the best of season 1: Microsoft recently announced an (alleged!) breakthrough in quantum computing. But what in the world is quantum computer, wh...
What Psychologists Say About AI Relationships
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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....
Am I Wrong About Agentic AI?
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 p...
What Do VCs Want to Know About AI Ethics?
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Peril of Principles in AI Ethics
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Innovation Hype and Why We Should Wait on AI Regulation
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 creat...
Businesses are afraid to say “ethics”
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Sustainability,” “purpose/mission/value driven”, “human-centric design.” These are terms companies use so they don’t have to say “eth...
We’re Getting AI and Democracy Wrong
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Why Copyright Challenges to AI Learning Will Fail and the Ethical Reasons Why They Shouldn’t
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 intellectu...
Evolving AI Governance
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
What’s Wrong With Loving an AI?
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
People, especially kids under 18, are forming emotional attachments with AI chatbots. At a minimum, this is…weird. Is it also unethical? Does it har...
Rationally Believing Conspiracy Theories
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You might want more online content moderation so insane conspiracy theories don’t flourish. Sex slaves in Democrat pizza shops, climate change is...
AI Understands. A Little. Part 2
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ar...
ChatGPT Does Not Understand Anything Part 1
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the best of season 1. Part 1 of my conversation with Alex Grzankowski.It looks like ChatGPT understands what you’re asking. It looks like ChatG...
Tyranny of the One Best Algorithm
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One person driving one car creates a negligible amount of pollution. The problem arises when we have lots of people driving cars. Might this kind of i...
How AI Ends Legal Uncertainty
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With so many laws and so much case law, it’s virtually impossible for the layperson to know what’s legal and illegal. But what if AI can synthesiz...
Is Tech a Religion that Needs Reformation?
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Author of the new book “Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation” d...
Should We Care About Data Privacy?
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the best of season 1: You might think it's outrageous that companies collect data about you and use it in various ways to drive profits. The...
The AI Mirror
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We use the wrong metaphor for thinking about AI, Shannon Vallor argues, and bad thinking leads to bad results. We need to stop thinking about AI as be...
Holding AI Responsible for What It Says
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Canada Air blamed the LLM chatbot for giving false information about their bereavement fare policy. They lost the law suit because of course it’s no...
Deepfakes and 2024 Election
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
California just signed a bill to drastically decrease deepfakes on social media. The worry, of course, is that they are already being used to unjustif...
Ethics for People Who Work in Tech
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What does it look like to integrate ethics into the teams that are building AI? How can we make ethics a practice and not a compliance checklist? In t...
Calm the Hell Down : AI is Just Software that Learns by Example and No, It’s Not Going to Kill Us All
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Doesn’t the title say it all? This is for anyone who wants the very basics on what AI is, why it’s not intelligent, and why it doesn’t pose an e...
Does Social Media Diminish Our Autonomy?
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are we dependent on social media in a way that erodes our autonomy? After all, platforms are designed to keep us hooked and to come back for more. And...
Choosing Who Should Benefit and Who Should Suffer with AI
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the best of season 1: I talk a lot about bias, black boxes, and privacy, but perhaps my focus is too narrow. In this conversation, Aimee and I d...
We’re Doing AI Ethics Wrong
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is our collective approach to ensuring AI doesn’t go off the rails fundamentally misguided? Is our approach too narrow to get the job done? My guest...
Can AI Do Ethics?
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many researchers in AI think we should make AI capable of ethical inquiry. We can’t teach it all the ethical rules; that’s impossible. Instead, we...
We Don’t Need AI Regulations
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s common to hear we need new regulations to avoid the risks of AI (bias, privacy violations, manipulation, etc.). But my guest, Dean Ball, thinks...
When Biased AI is Good
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows biased or discriminatory AI bad and we need to get rid of it, right? Well, not so fast.I’m bringing one of the best episodes from Sea...
The Secret Life of Data
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Data about us is collected, aggregated, and shared in more ways than we can count. In some cases, this leads to great benefits. In others, a great dea...
The Necessary Imperfections of AI Content Moderation
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With the ocean of social media content we need AI to identify and remove inappropriate material; humans just can’t keep up. But AI doesn’t assess ...
AI Armageddon is Unlikely
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI + nuclear capacities sounds like a recipe for disaster. Some people think it could cause mass extinction. While it’s easy to let our imaginations...
Could AI Undermine Informed Consent?
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI holds a lot of promise in making faster, more accurate diagnoses of our ailments. But if they are too influential, might they undermine our doctors...
Data Privacy Isn’t as Important as You Think
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Privacy is important. But I think we mostly misconceive the nature of privacy and data privacy. I argue we should rethink data privacy so that we can ...
Existentialist Risk
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Technologist’s are racing to create AGI, artificial general intelligence. They also say we must align the AGI’s moral values with our own. But Pro...
Is Equity Always Valuable?
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Of course, decreasing racial disparities in healthcare is ethically imperative. But does it sometimes require too great a moral sacrifice? If it costs...
The Moral Weight of Online Sexual Assault
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Could online sexual assault be as morally bad as in-person sexual assault? Honestly, that initially struck me as a bit crazy. But Professor John Danah...
Welcome to Ethical Machines
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Ethical Machines—a weekly podcast from author and ethicist Reid Blackman. Episodes drop June 27th.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircl...