Professor Sven Nyholm: Is AI the New Religion? A Philosopher on AI, Ethics, and Meaning

Empathy Unbound: AI, Philosophy, and Human Connection · Jul 16, 2026 · 1h 22m

Sven Nyholm is Professor of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at LMU Munich. His work spans Kantian ethics, human-robot interaction and the philosophy of technology, and he's just published a new book, The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction.

Andrew and Sven talk about who is actually responsible when an AI system causes harm, why some philosophers argue we hold machines to a stricter safety standard than we hold ourselves, and why Sven and colleagues wrote one of the first academic papers on "grief bots," AI systems built to imitate someone who has died. They also…