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When people go to a magic show, they expect to be fooled. That’s part of the fun. And magician Joshua Jay says much of the magician’s work is helping people fool themselves. Our brains are hardwired to fill in gaps, predict outcomes, and take cognitive shortcuts to process the overwhelming amount of information around us. When interacting with AI chatbots, we may similarly fool ourselves into believing we’re interacting with a human. But unlike at a magic show, it’s not always clear when the trick is over. Plus: how AI is changing magic. Further Reading: Joshua Jay's book: How Magician's Think   Life, Automated is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. The host is Jess Love, senior director. Distributed by KQED.  Producer: Jesse Dukes Music: Steven Jackson Administrative and Editorial Support: Stacia Sliger Promotional help from Ananya Mallapragada and Charlotte Simmons. Produced in partnership with KQED, Jen Chien, director of podcasts. 

Are you hurting the planet every time you query a chatbot? Economist Meghan Busse suggests that may be the wrong question. In this episode, we zoom out from the usual concerns about frivolous queries (and, for that matter, resource‑hungry data centers) to ask an even more basic question: is intense demand for AI locking us into decades of additional fossil fuel use, or is it accelerating investment in clean energy? Busse helps us sort real climate levers from symbolic ones, and explains why AI’s ultimate impact on the planet will likely come down to how we build and power it. Life, Automated is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. The host is Jess Love, senior director. Distributed by KQED. Production: Jesse Dukes Music: Steven Jackson Administration and Recording: Stacia Sliger Recording Engineering: George Christensen and Will Feeney Marketing: Ananya Mallapragada Featured Guests:  Meghan Busse  Further Reading: Public attitudes toward climate policy, technology, and the environment — AP-NORC Utah Senate President Loses Primary After Data Center Backlash — Jack Healy, New York Times

Will AI actually take over every job ever? Economist Ben Jones doesn't think so. Drawing from historical evidence around innovation, Jones argues that automation never conquers everything — it inevitably creates operational bottlenecks that only humans can solve. By leaning into these bottlenecks, we can protect meaningful, well-paid work. But his optimism comes with a stark caveat: there is one nightmare scenario where this historical pattern breaks down entirely. And it doesn’t involve superintelligence. It involves mediocre AI. Life, Automated is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at Northwestern’s Kellogg School. The host is Jess Love, senior director. Distribution by KQED.  Senior Producer: Jesse Dukes Additional Production and music: Steven Jackson Administrative and editorial support: Stacia Sliger Thanks to Laura Pavin, Jen Chien, and Alexandra Salomon. Additional music for this episode from Cue Shop Moby Gratis Neutral Propulsion Laboratory Ben Jones recent article, How AI Could Benefit Workers, Even If It Displaces Most Jobs.

Life, Automated explores the surreal, exciting, and occasionally terrifying ways AI and automation are reshaping our daily lives.Through thoughtful conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and more, we do our best to make sense of how technology is changing—and how it is changing us. We ask: What does the economy look like if AI can do much of what humans can? Will AI tools isolate us further, or steer us back toward community and common ground? Can the average person expect to be better off a decade from now? And what the heck should we tell a sixteen year old who wants to know whether learning German (or design, or coding, or the piano) is still worth it? Life, Automated is grounded and non-ideological, going deep without getting too technical. Because you shouldn’t need to be an “AI person” to understand the future we’re collectively building. The show is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, distributed by KQED. You can reach us at lifeautomatedpod@gmail.com. Production note: We relied on the Freesound Project for many of the sound effects used in this trailer. Including: Alarm clock School Bus Air break Computer mouse All made available through Creative Commons licenses.