The Age of AI with Lara Lewington and Ben Clark

Who gets to shape the future of AI? In this episode of The Age of AI, hosts Lara Lewington and Ben Clark are joined by Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, CEO of Stemettes – the social enterprise inspiring and supporting girls and young women into STEM careers. Together, they explore why diversity isn't just a social issue—it's essential to building better technology. From AI bias and healthcare failures to...

In this episode of The Age of AI, hosts Laura Lewington and Ben Clark look past the initial wave of excitement to ask a critical question: Is artificial intelligence entering its difficult adolescent phase? We explore the shift from playful AI pilots and ChatGPT demos to the complex reality of deploying AI agents at scale. From sorting out an enterprise's "digital plumbing" and data governance to...

In this episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark are joined by Raj Bharat Patel, AI Transformation Lead at Holistic AI, to explore one of the most important questions in artificial intelligence today: is AI fundamentally biased? From hallucinations and governance to accountability and trust, Raj explains why the biggest challenge facing AI may not be the technology itself, but how or...

What happens when artificial intelligence leaves the screen and steps into the physical world? In this episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark explore the fast-emerging frontier of embodied and physical AI with guest Dr Shan Luo, a robotics researcher at King’s College London working at the cutting edge of robot perception, tactile sensing, and intelligent machines that can physical...

How can AI improve conversations in healthcare? This week on The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark are joined by David Williams, Founder and CEO of KAI Conversations, a company using AI to transform communication across the life sciences industry. KAI helps pharmaceutical companies better understand what healthcare professionals and patients need, turning conversations into actionable insigh...

Is AI making us smarter... or slowly making us useless? In this episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clarke tackle one of the biggest questions surrounding artificial intelligence today. As AI becomes increasingly woven into our daily lives, are these tools helping us flourish, create and solve bigger problems — or are they encouraging us to outsource our thinking altogether? From AI a...

Is AI helping humanity… or creating problems we’ll regret later? In this episode of The Age of AI, Ben and Lara sit down with In this episode of The Age of AI, Ben and Lara sit down with Natasha McCarthy, Associate Director for Policy at the Royal Academy of Engineering to explore the future of responsible AI from sustainability and energy use to trust, transparency and regulation. As AI becomes e...

This week on The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark dive into the explosive AI boom transforming San Francisco and ask whether the UK and Europe are being left behind. Fresh off the plane from Silicon Valley, Ben shares what it actually feels like inside the epicentre of the AI boom: billions pouring into startups, OpenAI everywhere, NVIDIA dominating infrastructure, and a culture obsessed wi...

Laura Modiano reveals ChatGPT is only the start. Today we’re joined by Laura Modiano. Laura leads Startups across EMEA at OpenAI, where she works closely with founders, investors, and developers building the next generation of AI companies. Laura discusses the AI startups changing entire industries and gives a rare inside look at how founders, developers and investors are actually building with AI...

Is this the Chat GPT moment of humanoid robot advancement? This week on The Age of AI, we dive into one of the biggest questions in tech right now: are humans losing the race to robots? The answer this week is - yes! A humanoid robot actually beat a human in a half marathon last week! In this episode Lara and Ben ask how developed these humanoid robots ACTUALLY are? We break down what these robots...

Is the AI boom about to burst… or are we only just getting started? This week on The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark sit down with investor and tech thinker Ali Mitchell to unpack one of the biggest questions in tech right now: are we in an AI bubble? From sky-high valuations to the race for dominance among tech giants, Ali cuts through the hype to explore what’s real, what’s overblown, an...

1 in 3 adults in the UK have used AI for mental health support — but what does that actually mean? In this episode of The Age of AI, we explore the rapidly growing role of AI in emotional wellbeing, from therapy chatbots and AI companions to large language models people now turn to for comfort, advice, and connection. With expert guidance from Dr Jennifer Cearns, Lecturer in AI at the Department o...

What if decades of scientific breakthroughs were already discovered… but never used? In this episode of The Age of AI, we sit down with Sam Munday, the founder of Data Revival, a startup using AI to unlock “lost” scientific knowledge buried in handwritten lab notebooks, PDFs, and decades-old research files. From chemical companies discovering forgotten experiments to pharmaceutical teams accelerat...

Waymo has driven 170 million miles without a serious accident — making self-driving cars potentially orders of magnitude safer than human drivers. So why are people still so afraid of robotaxis? In this episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark dig into the reality behind autonomous vehicles: the ethics of the trolley problem, who’s liable when things go wrong, and why public trust is...

Is artificial intelligence accelerating climate change, or could it be one of the greatest tools we have to fight it? In this episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark explore the environmental impact of AI, from the energy demands of data centres to the real-world emissions hidden inside global supply chains. They also unpack how geopolitics and conflict can ripple through the tech w...

Have Large Language Models already hit their limits? 🤖 In this episode of The Age of AI, Ben Clark and Lara Lewington tackle one of the biggest questions in tech right now: if today’s AI can only take us 80–90% of the way, what actually gets us to true intelligence? We break down the growing shift from language-based AI to “world models”, and why some of the biggest names in tech are betting bill...

In the age of AI, who is teaching your child? What you need to know right now. Lara Lewington and Ben Clark explore how artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping one of society’s most important systems… education. From a buzzing AIR Demo Day packed with ambitious start-ups, to Lara’s own encounter with a deepfake scam, the episode opens with a look at how quickly the technology is evolving and...

Smartwatches, rings and health trackers are no longer niche gadgets. Around 35% of UK adults now use a wearable device, and the global fitness tracker market is expected to grow dramatically over the next decade. But as AI becomes the engine interpreting all that data, a bigger question emerges: what do these devices actually know about our health, and how much should we trust them? In this specia...

AI promises to transform finance, but can it ever be trusted with people’s money? Lara Lewington and Ben Clark explore one of the toughest frontiers for artificial intelligence: the financial system. From messy data and market volatility to the risks of automation at scale, finance is one of the hardest environments in which to deploy AI safely. They’re joined by Usman Khan, co-founder and CEO of...

In this special Q&A episode of The Age of AI, Lara Lewington and Ben Clark tackle the questions listeners are really asking about how AI is reshaping everyday life. From Waymo and the reality of self driving cars on public roads, to whether AI can genuinely help defeat bias in promotions and hiring, the episode explores where AI is helping, where it is risky, and where human judgement still matter...

The Age of AI returns with Lara Lewington and Ben Clark tackling one of the biggest questions in society right now: will artificial intelligence destroy human creativity, or transform it? We are joined by Aidan Meller, creator of Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist. From exhibitions at Oxford and the United Nations to portraits of world leaders, Meller explains how Ai-Da is built...

In this episode of The Age of AI, we open the floor to your biggest questions and take them head on. Is it already too late for the little guys in AI? Have the tech giants locked down the future, or is there still space for startups, researchers and independent builders to shape what comes next? We also explore whether AI can learn from the data on our wearables. Could your smartwatch one day pred...

We’re constantly told we’re living in the Age of AI. But beyond the hype, what does that really mean for how we live, work and think? In this first episode, Lara Lewington, tech journalist and author, and Ben Clark from Future Worlds at the University of Southampton, explore the AI stories that genuinely matter. From the truth behind the headlines to the developments that deserve to be making the...