Shows / Ethical Machines
Ethical Machines
I have to roll my eyes at the constant click bait headlines on technology and ethics.
If we want to get anything done, we need to go deeper.
That’s where I come in. I’m Reid Blackman, a former philosophy professor turned AI ethics advisor to government and business.
If you’re looking for a podcast that has no tolerance for the superficial, try out Ethical Machines.
Episodes
Ethical MachinesHow Far Does a Data Scientist’s Responsibility Go?
How far does a data scientist’s responsibility reach? Does it stop at building an accurate model, or does it extend to what the model does once it’s in use?…
Ethical MachinesRewriting History with AI
What happens when students turn to LLMs to learn about history? My guest, Nuno Moniz, Associate Research Professor at the University of Notre Dame, argues this…
Ethical MachinesAI Won’t Speak for My Father
Today I’m talking with Elisha Wiesel, chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation and former CIO of Goldman Sachs. We talk about why the foundation won’t use AI to…
Ethical MachinesSeriously? AI Welfare?
I roll my eyes at talk of "AI welfare," the idea that we should take seriously the notion that AI has interests or a well-being that we should take…
Ethical MachinesThe Good and Bad of AI Companions
We often think of AI companions as bad, or at least suspect. Giada Pistilli, formerly Principal Ethicist at Hugging Face and now at Mistral, wants to test that…
Ethical MachinesThe Honesty Crisis
My guest today is Christian B. Miller, professor of philosophy and author of The Honesty Crisis. Christian's central claim is that technology (AI, social…
Ethical MachinesHow Should We Work with AI Agents?
Season four kicks off with Paula Goldman, author of the new book, “Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human AI Collaboration at Work,” Paula is also…
Ethical MachinesSeason Finale: AI Paradoxes
Here are three paradoxes, according to Virginia Dignum, my guest today: 1. The more capable AI becomes, the more it reveals the richness and complexity of…
Ethical MachinesLLMs are the Wrong Kind of AI
Jonathan Schaeffer thinks we're building AI the wrong way. While large language models have produced remarkable results, he argues that hallucinations, bias…
Ethical MachinesAI is Social Infrastructure
My guest, Mona Sloane, author of Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life, argues that AI has become part of our social infrastructure. Its predictive…
Ethical MachinesHow AI Threatens Scientific Inquiry
Science depends on more than just results. It depends on researchers asking questions, testing hypotheses, challenging assumptions, and scrutinizing evidence…
Ethical MachinesWho is Responsible for AI Agents?
My guest, Fabio Tollon, a postdoctoral researcher on the BRAID programme at the University of Edinburgh, argues that answering that question is more difficult…
Ethical MachinesCreating AIs with a Normative Capacity
Aligning an AI traditionally looks like a matter of giving it rules to obey. But my guest, Gillian Hadfield, Professor of AI Alignment and Governance at Johns…
Ethical MachinesExistentialist Risk
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 Professors…
Ethical MachinesAI Governance is Lagging
The Thomson Reuters Foundation recently conducted a global survey and found that most companies are lagging in their attempts to govern AI. For me the most…
Ethical MachinesPredictions are Commands
My guest, Carissa Véliz, is author of the new book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI.” Her thesis is that…
Ethical MachinesThe Ethical Nightmare Challenge: Chapters 6-7 and Conclusion
Chapter Six: Dream Teams for Ethical Nightmares Three Types of ENC Teams ENC Teams as Emergency Response Tools for Teams ENC Teams in Bloom Chapter Seven: ENC…
Ethical MachinesThe Ethical Nightmare Challenge: Chapters 4-5
Chapter 4: The Standard Approach to Responsible AI Is Crumbling The Standard Approach The Madness in the Method Turn That Smile Upside Down Cats and Tigers, Oh…
Ethical MachinesThe Ethical Nightmare Challenge: Chapters 2-3
Chapter Two: Things Get Complicated with Generative AI So Now We’re Going to Lose My Grandmother, Again The Creators’ Version of a Rough Draft The Creators…
Ethical MachinesThe Ethical Nightmare Challenge
My new book released just two days. It’s about how insanely complex the AI risk landscape has become, why the standard approach to Responsible AI is broken…
Ethical MachinesCreating Universal Standards for AI Risk
ISO 42001 sounds serious. It's got a serious (and boring) name, it's backed by 60+ countries, and some companies seek ISO 42001 certification. But is the…
Ethical MachinesExistentialist Risk
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 Professors…
Ethical MachinesCould AI Have Moral Worth?
My guest today, Josh Gellers, Dean at the University of North Florida, argues that AI has more awards. More specifically, he thinks that AI has been used to…
Ethical MachinesDon’t Believe the Hype About AI Job Displacement
My guests today - Professor Kate Vredenburgh and VR specialist Lauren Wong - argue that there are at least two strong reasons for calming down: first, AI isn’t…
Ethical MachinesDoes Social Media Diminish Our Autonomy?
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 we don’t…
Ethical MachinesHow AI Robs Us of Meaning
Much of what we find fulfilling in life isn’t the having but the doing. It’s the process of working through a problem, taking action, doing what needs to be…
Ethical MachinesShould Anthropic Have Allowed Autonomous Weapons Systems?
Anthropic just got the axe from the U.S. government for refusing to allow the Department of Defense (War?) to use Claude for autonomous weapons systems and…
Ethical MachinesHow an Attorney Leads Responsible AI Practices
What does it look like for a non-technologist to lead Responsible AI practices at a Fortune 500 company? Today I talk with James Desir, Senior corporate…
Ethical MachinesWe May Have Only 2-3 years Until AI Dominates Us
I tend to dismiss claims about existential risks from AI, but my guest thinks I - or rather we - need to take it very seriously. His name is Olle Häggström and…
Ethical MachinesLet AI Do the Writing
We hear that “writing is thinking.” We believe that teaching all students to be great writers is important. All hail the essay! But my guest, philosopher…
Ethical MachinesWhat AI Risk Needs to Learn From Other Industries
We’ve been doing risk assessments in lots of industries for decades. For instance, in financial services and cyber security and aviation, there are lots of…
Ethical MachinesCan AI Do Ethics?
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 should teach…
Ethical MachinesAI is Culturally Ignorant
AI is deployed across the globe. But how sensitive is it to the cultural contexts - ethics, norms, laws and regulations - in which it finds itself. My guest…
Ethical MachinesWhen Metrics Make Us Happy, or Miserable
When we’re playing a game or a sport, we like being measured. We want a high score, we want to beat the game. Measurement makes it fun. But in work, being…
Ethical MachinesWe Need International Agreement on AI Standards
When it comes to the foundation models that are created by the likes of Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI, we need to treat them as utility providers. So argues my…
Ethical MachinesRewriting History with AI
What happens when students turn to LLMs to learn about history? My guest, Nuno Moniz, Associate Research Professor at the University of Notre Dame, argues this…
Ethical MachinesAI is Not a Normal Technology
When thinking about AI replacing people, we usually look to the extremes: utopia and dystopia. My guest today, Finn Morehouse, a research fellow at…
Ethical MachinesWe Are All Responsible for AI, Part 2
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 identifying who is…
Ethical MachinesWe Are All Responsible for AI, Part 1
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 the…
Ethical MachinesOrchestrating Ethics
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 ethical…
Ethical MachinesThe Military is the Safest Place to Test AI
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, currently…
Ethical MachinesShould We Make Digital Copies of People?
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 a child…
Ethical MachinesHow Society Bears AI’s Costs
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 social and…
Ethical MachinesHow Should We Teach Ethics to Computer Science Majors?
The engineering and data science students of today are tomorrow’s tech innovators. IF we want them to develop ethically sound technology, they better have a…
Ethical MachinesIn Defense of Killer Robots
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 blown up…
Ethical MachinesLive Recording: Is AI Creating a Sadder Future?
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. We talked…
Ethical MachinesSeason finale: A New Ethics for AI Ethics?
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…
Ethical MachinesIs AI a Person or a Thing… or Neither?
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 reason for…
Ethical MachinesHow Do You Control Unpredictable AI?
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 real artist…
Ethical MachinesThe AI Job Interviewer
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 you’re…
Ethical MachinesAccuracy Isn’t Enough
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 is just one…
Ethical MachinesBeware of Autonomous Weapons
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 this and…
Ethical MachinesHow Do We Construct Intelligence?
The Silicon Valley titans talk a lot about intelligence and super intelligence of AI…but what is intelligence, anyway? My guest, former philosopher professor…
Ethical MachinesAI Needs Historians
How can we solve AI’s problems if we don’t understand where they came from? Originally aired in season one. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Ethical MachinesWe’re Not Ready for Agentic AI
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, making…
Ethical MachinesHow Algorithms Manipulate Us
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 necessarily a bad…
Ethical MachinesWhat Should We Do When AI Knows More Than Us?
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 talk to me…
Ethical MachinesShould We Ignore Claims about AI’s Existential Threat?
Are claims about AI destroying humanity just more AI hype we should ignore? My guests today, Risto Uuk and Torben Swoboda assess three popular arguments for…
Ethical MachinesAI is Not Intelligent
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…
Ethical MachinesA Crash Course on the AI Ethics Landscape
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 enable you to…