The Artificial Human

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask if espionage is about to be revolutionised by Ai. Around the globe intelligence agencies are getting excited about the potential of Ai. Not only in what we know its good at, crunching huge amounts of data looking for patterns but also in identifying and exploiting human weakness. Who might be turned to spy for you and how can they be manipulated. And when a spy is...

When Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released their R1 model on the world it sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. Out of nowhere was an AI that performed as well as any of big tech's products but had been built at a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the resources. Now the dust has settled they’re asking themselves whether the driving idea of bigger models, trained on ever bigger datasets...

When a Norwegian man idly asked ChatGPT to tell him something about himself he was appalled to read that according to the chatbot he'd been convicted of murdering two of his children and had attempted to kill a third. Outraged, he contacted Open AI to have the information corrected only to discover that because of how these large language models work its difficult if not impossible to change it. H...

Books are at the heart of an ongoing AI controversy with 7.5 million books being used to train AI without the authors’ knowledge or consent. So, should AI be allowed to steal books? Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong speak to award-winning author Kate Mosse about the growing debate over AI and authorship. They’ll also explore how the publishing industry is responding and whether AI systems have the leg...

Aleks and Kevin step into the world of actors “banking” their voices for use after death. With the help of AI your favourite actor can continue to appear on screen for years after they've gone. But what does that really mean? What’s a performance without the actor behind it? Benjamin Field is the producer behind the AI Sir Michael Parkinson podcast, where the late interviewer talks to new guests t...

Ai is at a turning point, Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask what direction it will take and who is advising the most powerful man in the world on what vision of AI to pursue? There are numerous camps vying for President Trump's favour over how to develop Ai. There are those demanding that it be allowed to run free without the burden of innovation stifling regulation. Others still cling to the noti...

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore our fears around AI, where they come from andwhether we're worrying about the right things? Listener Paul asks 'if AI gets so smart wouldn't it realise it was a threat to society and switch itself off?' Its the stuff of Sci-fi fantasy, an artificial intelligence that gets so smart it decides it doesn't need humanity anymore. But if AI were ever to get that pow...

Listener Gordon is worried that as AI content spreads across the web there'll be proportionally less and less human content for the AI’s to be trained on with the result their output will just get blander and blander. He’s right to be worried, Aleks and Kevin explore the phenomena of ‘model collapse’ the inevitable breakdown of an AI to give useful results if its training data is already AI produc...

You don’t need to be a diehard gamer to realise video games have long been used as a yard stick to measure how far technology has come. From Pong and Space Invaders, right the way to Minecraft and Fallout, as the technology has advanced, so have the games. Pushing new boundaries and creating previously unimaginable worlds and experiences. But how will AI revolutionise the world of gaming itself, b...

Can you imagine how quickly Poirot could have solved a crime, if only he’d had access to AI software? Following a fictional murder case provided by real life police officer, Aleks and Kevin try to unravel how AI is already used in crime fighting, and what the cutting edge uses might be. Ruth Morgan, Professor of Crime and Forensic Sciences, explains how the ability of AI to crunch huge volumes of...

Of all the jobs artificial intelligence might replace surely trading in stocks and shares is at the top of the list. Aleks and Kevin find out it might have already happened. The first algorithms hit the trading floors nearly 30 years ago and since then the numbers of people involved in the buying and selling of shares has been dwindling. Aleks and Kevin speaking professor Dave Cliffe who wrote one...

The arms race is over and we lost. All those increasingly annoying little puzzles to prove "I am not a robot" from how many buses can you see to the invisible behavioural analysis going on behind the screen, AI powered bots can now pick every lock designed to keep them out. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask what's left to prove we're an actual human being online and if that becomes impossible does...

Conspiracy theories—once confined to fringe communities—have entered the mainstream. Social media has supercharged outlandish narratives, giving them an air of legitimacy through viral sharing. With generative AI now capable of producing hyper-realistic images, videos, and audio, the boundaries between fact and fiction are more blurred than ever. It feels almost inevitable that AI will further amp...

The Darzi report of September 2024 painted a bleak picture of the NHS; crumbling infrastructure, low productivity and increasingly unhappy patients. AI is seen as key to turning the health service around but is it the panacea many claim? Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong find out if its on the front line or in the back office that AI can offer the NHS the biggest bang for its limited buck? Presenters:...

Ever wondered what others are feeling but can’t quite read their emotions? Chris, a listener, emailed us with this exact dilemma. Partly due to being neurodivergent, he struggles to interpret the emotions of those around him—and even his own emotional reactions. So, he asked us: Could AI translate emotions for him? In this episode, Aleks and Kevin dive into the fascinating and complex world of Emo...

Sometimes, we get odd questions at the Artificial Human - ‘Why has my gran’s facebook feed been taken over by Shrimp Jesus?’ definitely raised eyebrows. Kevin and Aleks embark on a journey into the weird and wonderful world of ‘AI Slop’ - mass produced, low quality AI images that have spread like wildfire over Social Media platforms - with Shrimp Jesus being one of the most prominent, and bizarre,...

Artificial Intelligence is in our homes, schools and workplaces. What does this mean for us? In 'The Artificial Human,' Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong set out to 'solve' AI. Or at the very least, to answer our questions about it. These are the questions that really matter to us - is AI smarter than me? Could AI make me money? Will AI save my life? They'll pursue the answer by speaking to those clos...

Artificial Intelligence is in our homes, schools and workplaces. What does this mean for us? In 'The Artificial Human,' Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong set out to 'solve' AI. Or at the very least, to answer our questions about it. These are the questions that really matter to us - is AI smarter than me? Could AI make me money? Will AI save my life? They'll pursue the answer by speaking to those clos...

As Apple announce the integration of generative AI across their platforms Aleks and Kevin ask do we actually know how much energy AI consumes and is it compatible with a push to net zero? Energy consumption is AI's dirty little secret, some industry insiders believe the true potential of these technologies won't be realised until the problem is solved. Aleks and Kevin uncover some fairly startling...

Developers have been trying to create driverless cars since the 1920s. Numerous iterations have come into being and fallen away over the years - radio controlled cars, electronic guide systems buried into roads, lidar, radar, computer vision, but with the roll out of AI, we seem closer than ever to getting from A to B without having to touch the wheel. In fact, in several places in the United Stat...

Artificial Intelligence is in our homes, schools and workplaces. What does this mean for us? In 'The Artificial Human,' Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong set out to answer the questions that really matter to us - is AI smarter than me? Could AI make me money? Will AI save my life? They'll pursue the answer by speaking to those closest to the forefront of AI innovation. In this episode, listener Martha...

Artificial Intelligence is in our homes, schools and workplaces. What does this mean for us? In 'The Artificial Human,' Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong set out to 'solve' AI. Or at the very least, to answer our questions about it. These are the questions that really matter to us - is AI smarter than me? Could AI make me money? Will AI save my life? They'll pursue the answer by speaking to those clos...

Artificial Intelligence is in our homes, schools and workplaces. What does this mean for us, and how will it change our lives? In this episode of The Artificial Human, presenters Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask: should AI make my decisions?' In The Artificial Human, Aleks Krotoski (The Digital Human, Radio 4) and Kevin Fong (13 Minutes to the Moon, BBC World Service) set out to 'solve' AI. Or at...

In a world where AI Voice clones can sound like your bank manager or your child in distress, Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong discover how to avoid being scammed by AI. Some scams are easier to spot than others - The Prince never has money locked in an account that only you, dear brave internet user, can free for him - but in the age of AI, some scams are becoming increasingly difficult to spot, and...

AI art has been evolving at a rapid pace. In a few short months images, sound and increasingly video have all become so realistic it’s hard to tell what’s created by humans verses machines. The release of SORA, Open AI’s text to video model, has sent shockwaves through the film industry. Movie mogul Tyler Perry reportedly halted an $800 million studio expansion because he saw what SORA was capable...