Explore every episode of the podcast Machine Ethics Podcast episodes

This time we're chatting with Lawrence Sheraton about models of economics, will AGI be ethical? moral capabilities of AI, an elusive obvious, how do we know what is right and wrong, “I feel, therefore I know Ethics”, the conditional / contextual nature of ethics, ethical truth, sycophantic and schizophrenic AI, ethical unlearning and more...

This time we're chatting with E.M. about the promise of AI and making human connection easier, speech recognition and supporting linguistic diversity, making useful technologies that have a purpose, Mozilla data collective, under represented cultures in datasets, accidental monocultures with technology, negative uses of datasets, AI literacy, the instability of LLMs and more...

This time we're chatting with Jonathan Strecker on the kinds of intelligences, why AI shouldn’t replace learning wholesale, six levels of wisdom, AI hallucinations and lack of trust, AI use in academia, skills atrophy, the anxious generation, dumbing down the masses, rethinking education and more...

This month we speak with Demetrios for the second time about: what is ML and MLops, narrow Machine Learning being still relevant, vibe coding, working with agents, talking to your computer, unknown productivity gains of LLMs, the chat interface as a bad interface for all knowledge, AIs that know when they’re wrong, the lack of ground truth, and more...

In this episode we chat with Rebecca for the second time about: intelligence isn’t everything, are LLM’s even safe? AI governance and guardrails, moral assurance, under-specification problems, lack of interdisciplinary work in robotics, AI shouldn’t be sold as a solution to everything, sidelining of AI Ethics, what are the actual benefits of AI? will AI progress widen inequality? and more...

This month we're chatting with Dietmar Fischer about what we will mean by saying "AI" in the future? AI in science fiction, the fact that AI’s don’t want for anything, jobs and the political effects of unemployment, post-work society and defining what a good life is, the Chinese AI legislation, protecting young people from AI anthropomorphising, AI literacy, the AI bubble, Human extinction, and more

This month we're chatting with Dr. Ewelina Kurtys on the uses of organoids and energy saving computing, the unknowns in neural science, differences between biological neurons and digital neural networks, how neurons operate and encoding information, the impractical nature of recreating brain structures, the tendency to anthropomorphise, determinism and more...

This episode James and I are trying to stay positive while chatting about: superintelligence, AI basic drives, and the alignment problem; The intelligence explosion, existential risks of AI; profit over responsibility, the super rich; AI regulation and much more

This month we chatted in-person with Jen Semler. We chatted about what is AI? Philosophers and engineer collboartions, businesses working with ethicists, machine ethics and AMAs, what makes a moral agent, how to create a moral agent, types of moral decisions, the point of moral agents, how can we tell if a machine is conscious, tech companies being not democratic organisations and don’t have to adhere to their citizens, and more...

For our 2025 round up episode we're again chatting with Lisa Talia Moretti on the prevalence of AI slop, the end of social media, Grok and explicit content generation, giving legislation more teeth, anthropomorphising reasoning models, AI literacy and safeguarding, fighting data centre construction, importantance of journalism, and AI chatbot bingo...

This month we're chatting with Giulia Trojano about AI as an economic narrative, companion chatbots, deskilling of digital literacy, chatbot parental controls, differences between social AI and general AI services, increasing surveillance in the guise of safety, advertising creeping into GenAI services, ReplikaAI, lack of research in emotional AI, techno-determinism, and more...

This month we're chatting again with Tim El-Sheikh. We discuss podcasting, history of openAI, London startups, what are the AI use cases, is GenAI even safe? the AI bubble, snake oil salesmen, why do we need all these data centres? replacing human workers, data oligachies, the erosion of trust in AI, AI psychosis and more...

This time we're chatting with Dr Oliver Bridge about machine ethics, superintelligence, virtue ethics, AI alignment, fostering morality in humans and AI, evolutional moral systems, socialising AI, and systems thinking...

This is a bonus episode looking back over answers to our question: What excites you about AI?

This episode Adir and I chat about Autonomy.ai–AI automation for frontend web development, where Human Machine Interface could be going? allowing an LLM to optimism itself, job displacement, vibe coding, Grok's MechaHitler, the ethics and guard rails of LLMs, and go be a plumber!?

In this special live panel episode we recorded at the AI Ethics, Risks and Safety Conference 2025 in Bristol, May 2025. We chat about what is AI, predictions for the next 5 years - good and bad, the incoming wave of fraud, AI education and in education, copyright in the age of LLMs, the uncertainty of AI regulation, responsible AI in organisation, sovereign AI capabilities, the question: are we not being experimented on? Elderly AI, AI's impact on the creative industries and more...

This is our 100th episode! A super special look at AI and the Environment, we interviewed 4 experts for this DeepDive episode. We chatted about water stress, the energy usage of AI systems and data centres, using AI for fossil fuel discovery, the geo-political nature of AI, GenAI vs other ML alogrithms for energy use, demanding transparency on energy usage for training and operating AI, more AI regulation for carbon consumption, things we can change today like picking renewable hosting solutions, publishing your data, when doing "responsible AI" you must include the environment, considering who are the controllers of the technology and what do they want, and more...

This episode we're chat with Pinar Guvenc on “What's Wrong With” podcast, co-design, is AI ready for society and is society ready for AI? What is design? co-creation with AI as a stakeholder, bias in design, small language models, is AI making us lazy? human experience, digital life and our attention, and talking to diverse people...

This episode we're chatting with Rachel about AI taxonomy, innovating for everyone not just the few, Rachel's chronic honesty, responsibilities of researchers, socially responsible technology, ethics work as free labour, the right to repair, tinker, improve...

This episode we're chatting with Enrico Panai about the elements of the digital revolution, AI transforms data into information. HCI, the importance of knowing the tech as a tech philosopher, that ethicists should diagnose not judge, quality and making pasta, whether ethics is really a burden for companies or if you can run faster with ethics, don’t steal peoples life, and finding a Marx for the digital world.

For our 2024 round up episode we're again chatting with Karin Rudolph about the AI Ethics Risk and Safety Conference, the EU AI Act, agent based AI and Advertising! AI search and access to information, conflicting goals of many AI agents, weaponising disinformation, freedoms of speech, the LLM plateau, shadow AI, and more...

For Olivia's 3rd time on the show we're chatting about Olivia's book on Responsible AI, scalable AI strategy, AI ethics and RAI, bad innovation, values for RAI, risk and innovation mindsets, who owns the RAI strategy? why to work with an external consultant? agentic AI, predictions fo the next two years, and more...

In this episode we're chatting to Caitlin about gender and AI, technology isn’t neutral, using technology for good, diversity creation and exploitation, lived experience expertise, co-creating technologies and AI life cycle, importance of success metrics, international treaties on AI and more...

In this episode we're chatting to Lisa about: Data and AI literacy, data sharing, data governance and data wallets, design values, selling in ethics to organisations, contractual agreements and ethical frameworks, AI unlearning, what organisations needs to know about ethics, and an AI ethics consultant directory...

In this special filmed podcast swap episode I'm chatting with Alex Tsakiris about: should you learn to code to be in AI? stockfish chess AI, AI truth and What is Truth? Deductive and inductive learning, everything is statistics, statistical ethics, free will and conciousness, ESP, red teaming LLMs, Shadowbanning, and much more...

This is a bonus episode we're looking back over answers to our question: What scares you about AI?

This time we're chatting with Wendell Wallach on moral machines and Machine Ethics, AGI sceptics, the usefulness of the term of artificial intelligence, a new ethic or ethos for human society, ethics as decisions fast and slow, trade-off ethics, the AI oligopoly, the good and bad of capitalism, conciousness, global workspace theory and more...

In this special edition episode we hear vox-pops recorded at the AI Ethics, Risks and Safety Conference in Bristol on the 15th of May 2024. We hear about AI regulations, AI Standards, AI Ethics frameworks, principles, ethics guiding research, awareness of the ethics of AI, and explainable AI.

This episode we're chatting with Alex Shvartsman about what is our AI future, human crafted storytelling, the Generative AI use backlash, disclaimers for generated text, human vs AI authorship, practical or functional goals of LLMs, changing themes in science fiction, a diversity of international perspectives and more...

This episode we're chatting with Eleanor and Kerry on what is good technology and is it even possible? Technology is political, watering down regulation, the magic of AI, the value of human creativity, how Feminism, Aboriginal, mixed race studies can help AI development? The performative nature tech and more...

This is a bonus episode looking back over answers to our question: What is AI?

This episode we're chatting with Guy Gadney on new forms of story telling, placing people inside a story, natural language in games, LLM hype, data used in LLMs, copyright infringment, the destructive ideology of innovation, an unprecedented redistribution of wealth away from the cultural industries and more...

For our in-person episode on 2023 with Karin Rudolph we chat about the Future of Life Institute letter, existential risk of AI, TESCREAL, Geoffrey Hinton’s resignation from Google, the AI Safety Summit, EU AI act and legislating AI, neural rights and more...

This episode we're chatting with Adam Braus about natural stupidity, natural intelligence, misericordianism and avoidable misery, the drowning child thought experiment, natural state of morality, Donald Trump bot, Asimov’s rules, human instincts, the positive outcomes of AI and more...

This episode we're chatting with Harriet Pellereau about AI’s lack of reasoning ability, uses of generative AI, creativity and AI, what even is creativity? creative duties, new ways of working / digital working, 4 day week global, work life balance, the hidden cost of convenience, responsible tech and more...

This time I'm chatting to alice about teaching ethics, the idea of information environments, the importance of democracy, the Ethics hype train and the ethics community, people to follow in AI and Data Ethics, ethics as innovation and more...

This time we're chatting with Sarah Brin about types of AI, the process of making artwork, how is an artwork culturally valuable, curatorial practise for AI art, unionising creative art workers, collaborative artwork with AI, using AI to help the climate emergency, AI in games and more...

This time we chat with Roger Spitz about how to think about the future, what does a futurist do? Thriving with disruption, a chief existential officer, virtuous inflection points, delegating too much authority / decision making, our inappropriate education system

This episode Nadia and I chat about how design can co-create AI, what the role of designers are in AI services? post-deployment design, narratives in AI development and AI ideologues, anthropocentric AI, augmented creativity, new AI perspectives, situated intelligences and more...

This episode Marc Steen and I chat about: AI as tools, the ethics of business models, writing Ethics for People Who Work in Tech, the process of ethics - “doing ethics” and his three step process, misconceptions of ethics as compliance or a road block, evaluating ethical theories, universal rights, types of knowledges, what is the world we’re creating with AI?

This episode we're talking with Dr Marie Oldfield on definitions of AI, the education and communication gaps with AI, explainable models, ethics in education, problems with audits and legislation, AI accreditation, importance of interdisciplinary teams, when to use AI or not, and harms from algorithms.

This episode we talk with Josh Gellers about nature rights, rights for robots, non-human and human rights, justification for the attribution of rights, the sphere of moral importance, perspectives on legal and moral concepts, shaping better policy, the Lamda/Lemoine controversy, predicates of legal personhood, the heated discourse on robot rights, science fiction as a moral playground and more...

In this special edition episode with Data Science Festival we're hosting a panel discussing: what is ethics? Designing for Responsible AI, ethics as innovation and competitive advantage, ghost work, fairer AI, language as a human computer interface, cleaning up the web, technologies that shouldn’t be deployed and much more...

For this end of year episode I'm joined by Olivia Gamblinn to discuss: ethics boards, generative images models and copywrite, concept art, model bias and representation in the generative models, paying artists to appear in training sets, plagerism, chatGPT and when it breaks down, factual “truth” in text models, expectations for AI and digital technologies generally, limitations of AGI, inner life and the Chinese room, consciousness, robot rights, animal rights and getting into AI Ethics...

This episode we talk with Mitchel Ondili on algorithm awareness, technology colonisation in the global south, OASI the registry for Algorithms with Social Impact, AI auditing, private vs public rights to consent, submitting your algorithms to OASI, hiring, and social services algorithms, the over datafication of life, or becoming an algorithmic subject, Intentionality of services and much more.

This episode we talk with Mark Coeckelbergh about AI as a story about machines and where are we heading in creating human level intelligence, moral standing and robot-animal interfaces, technology determinism, environmental impacts of robots and AI, energy budgets, politics and AI, self-regulation and global governance for global issues.

This episode we talk with Ricardo Baeza-Yates about: Responsible AI, the importance of AI governance, questioning people's intent to create AGI, robot rights and brain / neural rights, the evolution of intelligence, ethical risk assessment, machine ethics, making ethical choices on behalf of your users, binary notions of trust, stupid uses of AI and more...

In this episode we talk with Reid Blackman about: what is learning? What it means to be worthy of trust, bullsh**t AI principles, company values, purpose and use in decision making, his AI ethics risk strategy book, machine ethics as a fools errand, weighing metrics for measuring bias, ethics committees, police and the IRB. And much more...

Richard Bartle joins us again after his appearance on ep.65 to chat about the metaverse, different ways to design AI controlled NPC, the lack of progress of AI in games, ethical considerations of games designers, ethics of AI life, virutalism, 'smart' AI will happened, robot rights and more...

This episode we're chatting with Ryan Carrier about the positivity of the ForHumanity community, being compelled to do something about AI technologies negative impact, AI audits and topics including: trust, oversight, governance, privacy, cyber security, bias; creating an infrastructure of trust, disclosing found risks and the ethical decisions, the new industry of AI audits, human wellbeing as the whole point of business and more...