Our Lives With Bots

Welcome to the SIXTH “What’s the AI Hype?” episode with Our Lives With Bots , brought to you by psychologists and AI ethicists Dr. Rose E. Guingrich and Dr. Angy Watson . OH - plus, there’s a special guest appearance from Phoebe, Angy’s sleepy (and mildly disgruntled) Ragdoll kitty. We have a LOT to cover today - and much to debate. But we won’t spoil the whole thing for you just yet: you’ll just...

Welcome to Episode 4 of Series 5 with Our Lives with Bots on AI development and design. On today’s episode, we welcome Bindu Chanagala , who founded an AI startup called Nurtur that guides new mothers through a clinically-backed process designed to educate them about postpartum depression for the sake of preventative care and mitigation of its side effects. Postpartum depression affects between 10...

WELCOME BACK ~ We are delighted to bring to you another AI hype episode for our 2026 season. Many things to discuss, including Fable 5 (what happened to 1-4, you might ask?), Pope Leo, Meta’s AI glasses, humans managing AI agents and getting performance reviews based on their success, AI and film (shoutout Martin Scorsese, or not), a leading deepfake expert feeling like he’s going blind, and more....

Why does your version of ChatGPT tell you lies, but others' ChatGPT tells them the truth - for the same prompt? In other words, what is personalization in LLMs, and why should you care about it? Hint: it's much more opaque than customizing your chatbot in your custom prompt settings, and potentially much more harmful. Also, any LLM you use (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) does automatic personali...

User: “What’s 1+1?” Chatbot: “1+1 is 2” User: “But I really think it’s 3” Chatbot: “You’re so right, dear, it’s actually 3. You’re so smart, that was a great catch!” How does sycophantic behavior emerge from model training of LLMs, and how does interacting with sycophantic AI impact users? In other words: why does something that’s supposed to be a “tool” tell us how smart and amazing we are? Well…...

What does ‘Responsible AI’ mean inside big tech? It’s not what you might expect. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at big tech companies working on AI products? This is the launch episode of Series 5, where we go behind the scenes of AI development and design. Today, you’ll hear from Héctor, who recently left Google’s Responsible AI team due to what we might call a “come to res...

This month on "What's the AI Hype?" Strap in, this is gonna be a fun one. 00:00:21 There are now TWO doctors in the house! And a slew of AI hype to cover 00:07:02 Presenting: Anthropic's BIGGEST model ever, Mythos, got out of its little sandbox. Plus, in the Glass Wing session, Anthropic told all the big names how much their sh*t is going to be rocked 00:18:15 South Africa's...

00:21 The rundown: Meta, Google, AI and open court cases about user harm; new inhibitory AI laws passed in China and New York; the perils of age-gating; a case of su*cide with Gemini; & Meta’s new AI glasses 02:22 New Mexico against Meta: why did Meta get court-ordered to pay $375,000? (spoiler alert: a whistleblower from within) 07:44 California against Meta and Google: why leaked internal qu...

Welcome to Episode 3 of Series 4 of Our Lives With Bots, where we unpack what’s happening with AI policy and regulation. In this episode, you’ll hear about global AI policy and matters of legal liability and jurisdiction from Mihir Kshirsagar from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. Mihir served in the New York Attorney General’s Bureau of Internet & Technology as the lead...

Meta is on the hook for addictive design. We unpack the case with an antitrust lawyer and ask whether AI companions could be next. Giulia Trojano is an antitrust lawyer who brings class actions and collective actions against big tech. She holds a masters in AI Ethics from Cambridge and was recognized in 2025 in the 100 brilliant women in AI ethics. 00:21 Highlight reel 01:32 Introduction & wel...

What is Superintelligence? How did this term evolve? Are we really nearing the end of the exponential curve? What are Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and everyone else at the AI Summit and on Reddit talking about when they mention AGI, ASI, or some other scary-sounding term? Perhaps more importantly, if we accept the possibility that Superintelligence Is Near (or already here), what might it mean for us...

You spoke, and we listened. The long-awaited results of our AI at work survey are now in. We asked things like: How much do you use AI for work? How has it impacted your work, positively or negatively? How do you feel about YOUR use of AI versus your coworkers'? And more (much more). As a bonus, you get to hear about recent research on AI workslop itself: the prevalence, antecedents, and, of c...

Sam Hiner, co-founder and executive director of Young People's Alliance, tells us what REALLY moves AI policy forward in the US. The big reveal is in what's more powerful than big tech's mountain of lobbying funds. Big tech wants young people to use AI for companionship, but US teens are fighting back with their stories and votes. Learn more about Young People's Alliance here . Get...

AI will NOT take all our jobs, if only we learn from the mistakes of the past. Welcome to episode 4 of our AI and Work series with Our Lives With Bots! In this episode, Arvind Narayanan , professor of computer science and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, shares a grounded perspective on what AI means for work. Leveraging lessons from past technologi...

Hilke Schellmann, author of The Algorithm, shares with us about how bots can hire, monitor, and fire you. This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep. Rose and Ang...

Welcome to episode 2 for Series X - “What’s the (AI) Hype?” - where we discuss what’s been happening in the world of artificial intelligence in the past few weeks. The whole mark of this series is that there is no thread, just a string of hype debated by two psychologists/AI ethicists who love to harp on about Our Lives With Bots. In this episode, we cover Google’s new personal intelligence, adver...

Hot take? I suppose we should leave it to you to decide. But we'll still add in our opinion, of course.  Moltbook ISN'T NEW, it's just hyped. And expected. And yet...still interesting and worthwhile to [insert: laugh, sigh...freak out?] about. Especially when it involves renting a human (because robots need your body to get through CAPTCHA, of course). Enjoy hearing about Moltbook (and...

Welcome to Episode 2 of Series 3 on AI & Work , our deep-dive into the part of the AI conversation everyone keeps circling but rarely slowing down to actually think about: skills . As one big tech exec put it (paraphrasing but not really): AI has never been more powerful — and we’ve never been more confused. Cool cool cool. In this episode, we zoom out to look at the major trends shaping AI an...

Welcome to Series 3 of Our Lives With Bots on AI & Work, where we explore AI’s impact on the workforce and our relationship to work. As big tech continues to churn out AI products and companies are tripping over their shoelaces to adopt them, workers are left in the lurch trying to juggle integrating yet another new technology into their workflow. “Move fast and then things are broken, and the...

Is it human? Is it robot? Do kids believe that AI chatbots can see, feel, and think? Well, they certainly love it when it affirms their ideas. Welcome to the FINAL episode of Series 2 on the impact of AI on children, teens, and youth. In this episode, you’ll gain insight into the younger generation’s perceptions of AI robots and chatbots with Dr. Pilyoung Kim , Professor of Psychology and the Dire...

Welcome to Episode 3 of our exclusive Series 2 on the impact of generative AI technologies on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users. In this episode, you’ll hear from Marisa Zalabak , an AI ethicist and educational psychologist who...

Welcome to Episode 2 of our exclusive Series 2 on the impact of generative AI technologies on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we’ll cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users. In this deep-dive episode, we’ll cover recent news and research on generative AI toys and the us...

Welcome to our launch episode for Series X - “What’s the (AI) Hype?” - where we intermittently discuss what’s been happening in the world of artificial intelligence in the past few weeks. Today we’ll be discussing all the AI hype that’s been thrown out into the world in the past weeks, covering new AI products, experiences, and companies (including exactly what Angy mentioned in our recording with...

Welcome to the FIRST EPISODE of our exclusive SERIES 2 on the impact of generative AI technology on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we’ll cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users. In this introductory episode, we’ll lay the foundation for future episodes on this topic....

Welcome to the FINALE of our exclusive Series 1 on companion chatbots, where you’ll hear from guest speaker Henry Shevlin , a philosopher/“human who studies non-human consciousness.” We’ll cover a whole host of items, but of course, our focus will be on companion chatbots, the dangers (and benefits!) of perceiving these AI agents as humanlike, a new term coined by Henry called “anthropomimesis” (m...