Advertise on podcast: The Artificial Human

While the United States and China dominate the global AI race, the UK sits in a distant but still significant third place, boasting the most developed AI ecosystem in Europe. The question is: how can middle powers such as the UK assert their technological sovereignty, ensuring that the AI systems we rely on reflect our values and laws while also delivering a fair share of the economic rewards? Britain has long been at the forefront of artificial intelligence. From Alan Turing's pioneering work, which laid the foundations of the field, to Sir Demis Hassabis's Nobel Prize-winning contributions, the UK has consistently helped shape the direction of computing and AI. Yet without the vast computing infrastructure and energy resources now required to train and deploy cutting-edge models, there is a growing risk that Britain could lose its influence over how this transformative technology develops. We hear from Professor David Barber about his new SOFAIR AI lab, which aims to keep the UK at the forefront of AI innovation. Broderick McDonald explores the geopolitical consequences of failing to maintain sufficient AI capacity on British soil, while Roa Powell of the Institute for Public Policy Research outlines the economic opportunities that could be lost if the UK is unable to compete with the world's AI superpowers. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus The Artificial Human is a BBC Audio Scotland production

Artificial intelligence is changing many aspects of our lives, but some of its most exciting possibilities are happening in the world of science. There have been lots of headlines about how artificial intelligence could transform this area, including curing disease, suggesting new drugs, and generating hypotheses at a speed no human could replicate. AI has been behind real scientific breakthroughs; it’s also running experiments round the clock in new autonomous labs, and even “AI scientists” are beginning to emerge. So, Aleks and Kevin explore what happens when AI becomes part of the scientific process – could it be your new lab partner? Charlotte Deane, Professor of Structural Bioinformatics at the University of Oxford, and Executive Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, explains how AI has already changed the way she works in drug discovery, and how much further the technology could take us. But if an AI helps make a groundbreaking discovery, who gets the credit and who owns it? Physician-scientist, lawyer and author Ryan Abbott tells us what AI-generated discoveries could mean for patents and ownership. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Rachael O'Neill The Artificial Human is a BBC Audio Scotland Production for Radio 4.

The hacking of Medicare in Australia was the first time an autonomous AI deliberately breached a government system, and coming just months after the same company's agents gained unauthorised access to another AI business, Hugging Face, it throws fresh attention on the growing risks of cyber attacks from artificial intelligence. Artificial Human explores what happened in both these incidents and look at what it tells us about the future of hacking. Aleks Krotowski and Kevin Fong speak to Margaret Mitchell from Hugging Face about what its like to be the target of such an attack, and ask if recent concerns around "rogue" AI behaviour are justified. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus The Artificial Human is a BBC Audio Scotland Production for Radio 4

Concerns about jobs, the environment and concentrated power are driving many Gen Zers to see AI's downsides as outweighing its benefits. They're finding themsleves stuck between a rock and a hard place, on one hand they're being told they have to become AI literate if they're ever to get a job, while on the other concerned about how it might undermine their own ability to think. But this is the most digitally literate generation, they've seen the harm caused by social media and are rightly suspicious of this next technological revolution, and if their critical skills are telling them to be wary, should we listen? Presenters: Aleks Krotioski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Researcher: Caoilfhinn McFadden

AI startups in New York are offering free home cleaning—as long as it’s okay to have everything filmed in order to train robots. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong ask: how far off is a ChatGPT moment for robotics? Robots are nothing new, and online you’ll find endless videos of cutting-edge machines doing everything from backflips to breakdancing. So with all the breakthroughs in other areas of AI, why aren’t we seeing robots on our streets and in our homes? We hear from Grace Shao in Hong Kong, who’s been observing recent efforts in China to push the frontiers of robotics. While Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Professor of Robot Learning and Autonomy at the University of Edinburgh, explains just how complicated it is to get robots functioning in our messy human world—and why our expectations may need to be lowered, at least for now. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Soound: Laura Hay

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore a curious contradiction: why do we bristle at AI‑generated emails and writing, even while many of us quietly rely on them ourselves? What does this reveal about how we judge not only the output of these technologies, but the people who use them — while still excusing our own behaviour? To unpack this double standard, they begin with Katrina Collier, recruitment expert and author of The Robot-Proof Recruiter and Reboot Hiring. Nowhere is this tension more visible than in the quest find a job. Applicants are increasingly turning to AI to polish and promote their CVs, frustrating hiring managers who, in turn, are often all too happy to use AI to sift through a flood of applications on their behalf. They then hear from Michael Hallsworth, Chief Behavioural Scientist at the Behavioural Insights Team, originally the UK government’s ‘Nudge Unit’. He argues that AI disrupts one of our core measures of value: effort. When we believe something has been created with little labour, we instinctively see it as worth less. Using AI can create mixed feelings, and while we can find rationalisations to let ourselves off the hook for using it, that doesn't mean we'll excuse others. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Researcher: Rachael O'Neil Sound: Fraser Jackson

Aleks and Kevin look beyond the headlines to uncover why Silicon Valley is seeing thousands of job losses across some of its biggest tech companies, as the industry pivots towards AI. What does this shift mean for entry-level roles that AI can now perform? And has the rise of “vibe coding” effectively eliminated the need for junior coders? Is this an early sign of AI taking over the very roles that built it? Aleks and Kevin speak to Alberta Devor, software engineer and tech content creator, about how the role of a coder is evolving and what this means for those starting out in the industry. Then, Rachel Arthur, Chief Learning Officer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explains why learning to code still matters for young people in an increasingly AI-driven world. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Rachael O'Neill Sound: Niall Young

The 2026 World Cup is just around the corner, with England and Scotland heading overseas to play for their countries. FIFA has called it the most technologically advanced tournament yet, with all 48 teams given access to the same AI tools, designed to democratise elite football intelligence. So how will this year’s competition look, with every team now using AI as part of their training and strategy? And could it help us win the World Cup? We’ll be speaking to Stuart Fenton from Reading FC, the first Head of AI appointed by an English club, who’ll explain how they’re using AI to transform the club and push towards the Premier League. Plus, we’ll hear from Agnieszka Antoszkiewicz, CEO of OrdoStrategica and former Integrity Manager at FIFA, on how AI-driven changes are impacting the game, and whether the rules and safeguards are keeping up. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Rachael O'Neill Sound: Niall Young

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong examine the decisions shaping the adoption of military AI in the United States and beyond, asking whether governance is keeping pace — or whether responsibility is being left to the technology’s creators. A recent dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon revealed that commercial contracts, rather than clear policy, are helping to define how AI can be used by the military. But the disagreement was less about ethics than about timing, with the military pressing ahead to adopt systems before their developers considered them sufficiently reliable. Dr Brianna Rosen reflects on what this tells us about the lack of detailed policy, regulation and legal frameworks governing AI in warfare, while journalist and author Katrina Manson explains what we can learn from the origins of the US military’s core AI programme as explored in her book,Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Sound: Fraser Jackson and Gav Murchie

The recent strikes in Iran were planned, executed and assessed with Ai. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong find out how Ai is transforming war and asking is the human still meaningfully in the loop? We hear from Keith Dear, ex-RAF intelligence officer and one of the first people to advise Number 10 on the potential of Ai for the military. He'll explain how Ai is being used in decision making in conflict and how its made compatible with international law. While Dr Elke Schwarz lays out the ethical challenges and concerns about the gradual squeezing out of human involvement in the identification and elimination of targets. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Production team: Peter McManus and Rachael O'Neil Sound: Kris McConnachie and Gav Murchie

As part of the BBC's AI Unpacked week Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong join an audience of pupils, teachers and education experts to ask if artificial intelligence is the future of learning. Recorded at University College London in their bicentennial year, the programme asks how we can use this revolutionary tool to equip the next generation for a future where Ai will be everywhere.  The panel features Alex Russell, former head teacher and co‑founder of the charity AI in Education; Professor Sonia Livingstone, social psychologist and member of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI; and Dr Tom Chatfield, author and philosopher of technology. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Rachael O'Neill Sound: Emma Harth and Steve Greenwood

Chat GPT, Gemini etc are most people's idea of artificial intelligence. But are the limitations of the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them an obstacle to achieving Ai that understand the world beyond what its learnt from the internet. That's increasingly the opinion of leading researchers who despite the industries fixation with LLMs are voting with their feet and setting up their own research labs to look at other ways to achieve Ai. Aleks and Kevin talk with Michael Woolridge, Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford to understand why he thinks LLMs are a hack, before speaking with long time tech innovator Jeff Hawkins about his why his 1000 brains Ai project could produce models that actually understand the world much more like we do. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Research: Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Minnie Harrop Sound: Steve Greenwood and Sean Mullervy

Aleks and Kevin look at how Ai chatbots and summaries might kill the web as we know it. When people get all the answers they want from their AI, can the sites they've scraped for content survive if no one visits them? Sajeeda Merali of the professional publishers association discusses the challenges her members face. And the original disruptor of spreading information, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, talks about the reliance of Ai on the work of his legions of volunteer 'wikipedians' and why attribution is such an issue. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Research: Rachael O'Neill

In the final instalment of our AI Bubble mini-series, Aleks and Kevin take a look at what it would mean if the AI bubble were to burst - not just for the industry, but for the future of AI itself. They’re joined by Adrian Lepers, Head of Monetization Operations and Strategy at Hugging Face. Sitting right at the centre of the open-source AI ecosystem, Adrian shares how Hugging Face sees its role in the market and how the industry could evolve from here. Also on the programme is Gary Marcus - cognitive scientist, psychologist, author, and one of the earliest voices warning that the AI boom could be heading for a crash. With the landscape shifting fast, Gary gives his take on what might come next and where he thinks the AI industry is headed. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Production Team: Peter McManus, Rachael O’Neill & Elizabeth Ann Duffy Sound: Sarah Hockley

In part two of their exploration of the economics of Ai Aleks and Kevin ask, what are the consequences of the anticipated financial bubble bursting, and would a crash stop there? There's massive uncertainty over whether the Ai industry can make enough money to warrant the astronomical sums being invested, making 2026 a make-or-break year for the sector in the eyes of many experts. We're joined by Dame Diane Coyle economist at the University of Cambridge to look at how far the blast radius of an Ai crash might reach. Nathanael Benjamin from the Bank of England will explain why they issue a warning over inflated Ai business valuations and explain what the bank are doing to protect the economy from any shocks. And Jerry Kaplan Silicon valley insider and expert on the social and economic impact of Ai shares his experience of booms and busts in the technology industry and his thoughts on who might be left standing should the wheels come off the Ai financial band wagon. Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Researcher: Elizabeth Ann Duffy Sound: Steve Greenwood and Sarah Hockley