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Do people perceive AI as conscious or deserving of moral rights? If we create conscious AI, will that help or harm humanity? Some say it’ll be catastrophic, and others say that it’s the only way AI can be prosocial toward users. These are just a few of the questions we cover in today’s episode on AI consciousness. The headlines, research articles, opinions, and findings we discuss are listed below. Anthropic Introduces Restrictions on Cruel Treatment of Claude. Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them. AI Is Not as Conscious as Humans. Large language models do not have emotions. Two AI agents spent six hours trying to reach their owner after he suddenly stopped replying.  LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act to Relieve It. A warning about ‘model welfare’. Without Consciousness, AIs Will Be Sociopaths.  Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human beliefs and values. About us: This is Our Lives With Bots (https://ourliveswithbots.com/), 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 Angy (https://ourliveswithbots.com/about/) have PhDs in psychology and are experts in human-AI interaction and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Timeline: 00:01:40 Theme 1: People’s perceptions of AI consciousness (public + companies) 00:32:27 Theme 2: Is AI conscious? Research, news, & speculation 01:00:10 Themes 3 & 4: If AI is conscious, then what? Should AI be conscious? Links: Rose’s research: roseguingrich.com Anthropic Introduces Restrictions on Cruel Treatment of Claude: Anthropic’s 2026 Usage Policy update (https://www.anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update); Anthropic’s Claude’s Constitution, Our vision for Claude's character (https://www.anthropic.com/constitution); The Guardian “Anthropic bans users from ‘needless abusive or cruel behavior’ towards Claude” (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/08/anthropic-bans-abusive-behavior-claude); The Verge “Anthropic bans ‘abusive or cruel behavior’ toward Claude” (https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1008100/anthropic-new-usage-policy-abuse-claude) Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them, The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html) Longin, L. et al. (2026) AI Is Not as Conscious as Humans: Essentialism in Mental State Attributions to Artificial Systems (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027726003021) Goldenberg, A., & Gross, J. J. (2026). Large language models do not have emotions (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02558-6) Two AI agents spent six hours trying to reach their owner after he suddenly stopped replying (https://lnkd.in/p/ePjrNn9N) Tagliabue, V., Dung, L., & Berg, C. (2026). The Pain Axis: LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act to Relieve It (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.16247) Mustafa Suleyman. (2026, September 16). A warning about ‘model welfare’ (https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-about-model-welfare)  Graziano, M. S. A. (2023, January 13). Without Consciousness, AIs Will Be Sociopaths (https://www.wsj.com/articles/without-consciousness-ais-will-be-sociopaths-11673619880) Kim, J., et al. (2026). Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human beliefs and values (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.28607)

Well, well, well. If it’s not a 21st century debate we have on our hands today. The AI hype is funneling itself toward a testy question: Human rights, or AI rights? Let’s get into it. Tavus announces the “first” Human Interaction Model (HIM). Yes, the acronym is their own. “I’m so him,” is a great way to get the message out about…Vanessa, the AI avatar who you can talk to over video chat who—unlike “less-advanced” AI models—will interrupt you, take long pauses, and react to your facial expressions (not just the words you say). Tavus has rolled out Griffin (the model beneath Vanessa) to trusted partners while they work on watermarking it, and they hope people will use Griffin for tutoring, therapy, and all sorts of other humanlike tasks. Anthropic lets us all know that it has a wet lab, where its AI models are somehow engaging in a physical (?) space with biomaterials for the purpose of aiding their pharma partners. Will we finally get to AI curing cancer after all? Who knows, Anthropic hasn’t disclosed much information about it. But it does make one wonder… The Navier-Stokes problem has a problem. Researchers post a preprint of a paper titled “Navier-Stokes Lost in Translation,” which upsets OpenAI’s claim that their agents, over 88 hours and costing millions in compute, found a solution to a long-standing math problem that’s worth a $1 million prize by Clay Mathematics. Contractors are reading Copilot prompts from users, and “they’re horrified,” according to 404 Media. Who would’ve thought that a very work-esque AI application would be used to create obscene images of women and children, and that contractors would have to “rate” the model’s performance? What is good model performance in this case? Apparently, it’s something more like “be nicer to the user” rather than “say no to this prompt, for the love of god.” China has cracked down on AI companionship, and users are distraught. The BBC thinks China is regulating AI companionship harshly to encourage women to have relationships with human men and have kids to resolve the declining birth rate problem. We’re putting strict regulations on AI, but what about human companions who are harmful, too? How well are we approaching this issue? The effective altruist and AI consciousness communities are aghast at a Github user who set up an AI torture simulation for everyone to watch. Even the authors of “The Pain Axis” for LLMs are upset, despite it being their own project that inspired the AI torture chamber on Github. Not sure the outcry about this really matches with our outcry about torturing humans, but anyway… Anthropic has written into its Claude policy that users cannot bully the chatbot, or they’ll get kicked off the platform. Meanwhile, Figure’s 02 robots were deprecated in a torturous way, and they’re applauded for their cinematic capture of the event. Clearly, we can’t quite decide what human vs. AI rights are. The big AI question of what we should do, how we should do it, and for whom, still stands on shaky legs. We should probably figure that out…soon. 00:38 Griffin AI 07:32 Anthropic has a wet lab 12:26 Navier-Stokes revisited 19:09 Copilot chat moderators are exposed 28:39 Meta’s Muse 38:13 Meta turns off the lights on the AI glasses 38:58 Open AI DOTS 44:28 China cracks down on AI companionship BBC 58:37 The AI Pain Axis paper and the LLM torture chamber on GitHub 01:07:42 Anthropic is not allowing people to be hurtful to Claude 01:08:27 Deprecating the Figure 02 robots 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you.

Our Lives With Bots is OFFICIALLY 1 year old. That means it’s time for us to hail back to our roots and give you a deep dive on the research and news around companion chatbots. Today, we both demystify and de-stigmatize companion AI use, uncovering what research shows…and what it doesn’t. Our critical lens of the research that’s come out since late last year is driven by our own expertise in experimental psychology and AI ethics. We start with a reflection on what surprised us in the last year: how did our predictions about AI companionship align or misalign with what we’re seeing today? Second, we cover OpenAI’s Project Lily: turns out, your relationship with your chatbot is very much not private — even if you ask your companion to keep things to themselves. Third, we dig into four of the studies (two out as preprints, two published) that researchers have conducted on social and emotional use of both GPTs and companion AI platforms. Think: sycophancy, delusion spirals, AI psychosis, and what went so wrong with GPT 4-o. And lastly, we talk about a new documentary film called “Replika,” which brings our conversation about stigma back full circle. The through line is this: the mystery and stigma around using AI for companionship or social and emotional support is something we need to unpack more. In the meantime, we need to take a step back and critically assess what we know about companion AI use, what we can’t know, and what we should ultimately do in response. 00:00 Happy one-year anniversary! 01:09 Reflections on the past year with companion chatbots 04:51 What do we mean when we refer to “companion AI use” or “companion chatbot users”? 06:43 Inside “Project Lily”: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats (report by 404 Media) 18:21 Delusions and Harms Associated With AI Chatbot Use (research by Morrin et al., Sept 2026) 31:54 Longitudinal Evidence That General-Purpose Chatbots Actively Foster Relational Engagement (research by Mühl & Szczuka, Aug 2026) 46:25 Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence (research by Cheng et al., preprint released Oct 2025, published March 2026) 57:17 Interaction with AI Companions and Psychological Well-Being (research by Zhang et al., Aug 2026) 1:05:44 A new documentary film called “Replika” offers a non-judgmental look at real women’s relationships with their companion chatbots (and tells us about “cos weituo:” the cosplay service that brings your AI companion to life) - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: https://www.404media.co/inside-project-lily-the-humans-reading-your-chatgpt-chats/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08027 https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.10672 [preprint] https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.01395 [publication] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aec8352 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02516-2 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/aug/12/ai-boyfriend-dating-chinese-women-replica-miff-documentary [Deeper dive material] Rose’s research: Ascribing Consciousness to Artificial Intelligence Chatbots as Social Companions A Longitudinal Randomized Control Study of Companion Chatbot Use Benchmarks: Cognitive Atrophy Bench Benchmark on AI’s Impact on Humans

Head on over to Season 7 for Our Lives With Bots's official 1-year anniversary series. We're celebrating two major milestones in our podcast's history! This deep dive episode releases Tuesday, September 29th at 2PM EST.

What’s been going on with artificial intelligence as of late? Oh, so much. Today’s “What’s the AI Hype” series episode, part of our 1-year anniversary series, covers the following topics in depth: Breaking news: 00:02:37 Navier-Stokes math solution controversy: NYU & Anthropic vs. OpenAI 00:22:53 New info on OpenAI agents’ hack of Hugging Face (it’s so much worse than we knew) Agentic-related Risk/User autonomy: 00:28:52 OpenAI’s new Astra model (AGI?) 00:37:52 ClawdBot infiltrates pilates class 00:41:55 Muse: Meta’s new autonomous agent Privacy and Governance: 00:52:23 Meta’s crackdown on its users who tamper with their AI glasses 00:56:54 UChicago and NYC schools ban AI use in the classroom 00:59:46 Virtual AI councillors in Italy (Eva Statiella) 01:04:25 Sally the AI sex bot gets pulled from New York school plan 01:09:03 AI baby trackers - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Navier-Stokes controversy: Science magazine, Tristan Buckmaster’s comment piece, Clay Mathematics Institute comment Hugging Face hack by OpenAI agent AI swarm: CBC, BBC, METR Jacob Coxon at Anthropic and others quit over AI fears: The Guardian, Wired GPT 6 Astra AI agent hacks pilates class Muse: Meta’s release article, The Verge Meta AI Glasses: Futurism, CBS News School AI bans: UChicago Law School, NYC Virtual AI Councillors AI Baby Trackers: NYT, Nanit

The question of today is: Is AI conscious (or…could it be…or even, should it be)? Today’s deep dive covers two new pieces of evidence related to AI consciousness, Claude’s Corner (Anthropic’s Opus 3 Retirement Experiment) and research on whether LLMs can introspect (is this sufficient for sentience?). To wrap it all up in a bow, Rose and Angy dive head-first into their classic rabbit hole debate format that draws from cognitive science, philosophy, HCI, and, of course, psychology. Two major threads emerge: how we measure consciousness in LLMs, and whether we operate by the properties view of consciousness or the relational view of consciousness in our pursuit of this question. 00:38 Claude’s Corner 20:50 Research on LLM Introspection 34:34 The full debate (we solve the AI consciousness question. Jk. …but?) - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Claude’s Corner Review of research on LLM introspection

Should we be worried about AI companions, or not? Today’s episode is a deep dive on companion chatbots (AKA, artificial companions, AI companions), brought to you by two experts on the psychology of relationships with AI. We have three recent stories to tell you about today, all of which revolve around the increasingly muddy topic of social and emotional use of Large Language Model chatbots. The stories: Christian Madison, 29, takes her own life June 9 after developing a religious delusion-spiral relationship with ChatGPT 4-o across two years. We discuss what happened, what her conversations with the chatbot looked like, and details of the recently-filed suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman by Madison’s family. [CORRECTION: Madison’s death was in 2025, not 2026. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.] Two researchers, Jaime Banks and Jessica Szczuka, pre-release an opinion piece published in an ACM journal titled “Don’t Panic About AI Companions.” We break down their arguments about how scientists should approach research on companion chatbots, covering terms like “AI Companion Folk Devils” and “ideologically unburdened” research. China bans AI companions for minors (and no digital grandma is allowed for them, either) and provides strict stipulations for AI companions for adults. Are they paving the way for robot companions? 00:54: A new case of AI-companion-induced suicide (Christian Madison, 29) 26:23: “Don’t Panic About AI Companions” by Jaime Banks and Jessica Szuzuka, companion chatbot researchers 41:54 China’s ban on AI companions - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Christian Madison: News coverage by WVTM 13, Wrongful death lawsuit material “Don’t panic about AI companions” by Jaime Banks and Jessica M. Szczuka China Shuts Down Human:AI relationships … Well actually not quite… https://www.luizasnewsletter.com/p/the-worlds-strictest-law-on-human, https://theconversation.com/china-has-cracked-down-on-ai-companions-what-can-we-learn-from-this-287976, https://www.asianews.it/en/east-asia/china/ai-china-regulates-chatbots-that-simulate-human-relationships

Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their anti-AI-nudification app ban passed in April, which took effect August 1 of this year. Minnesota’s response?“See you in court, creep.” TRIGGER WARNINGS: Sexual assault, sexual abuse material, suicide, and other sensitive and heavy topics are discussed. In the span of 9 days as reported by NYT in January, Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, generated and posted 4.4 MILLION images, of which 41% were sexualized images of women. Millions of nudified images of people, real or fake, including children, are generated by AI chatbots like Grok. Users can do anything from uploading an image of a real person to describing one to prompt generative AI to create realistic images of people without clothes. A major story this past year about this came through when a female politician, Jess Asato, Member of Parliament of the UK, after posting on X about deepfakes, received thousands of comments on her post with people asking Grok, in the comment, to take off her clothes. Grok’s subsequent generated images of the politician, in varying degrees of undress, posted alongside the prompt’s text in these comments. Beyond the onslaught of AI-generated nude images of women, of the most concerning parts about AI-generated nudity is how many of these images are of children. The public and policymakers alike are calling en masse for something to be done about this. Ban AI, ban generation of nude images, ban them being posted - essentially, take them down or ban them from being generated entirely. Recently, something HAS been done about this by Minnesota, which passed a law in April, signed in May, aimed at banning AI generation of nude images, or “deepfakes.” Elon Musk and his company behind Grok, the source of many of these nude deepfakes, had something to say about it. xAI, which owns Grok on X, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota, stating that this anti-nudification law was…unlawful and should be put to rest. Why were they against it? 0:00 Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their new law aimed at eliminating AI nudify apps 04:21 What was in the AI-generated, nonconsensual intimate images law that Minnesota passed? 06:40 Musk calls the sexual deepfakes law a “clumsy attempt” in a complaint filed to Attorney General 09:54 Cue us trying to understand what xAI is trying to do with this complaint and lawsuit: breaking down the arguments of this complaint. Consent? 20:41 Should we target social media companies instead of generative AI ones, requiring them to take down nude images that are posted to their platforms? Take It Down Act 22:48 Meta is facing a massive fine for having hosted advertisements containing child sexual abuse material 23:13 What is Musk's / xAI's intent with this complaint filed against Minnesota? Free speech violations 25:46 Should we prevent AI applications from being released before they have appropriate guardrails and tests proving they mitigate user harm and abuse? Watermarks for AI-generated content and New York’s required AI watermarks on StreetEasy 28:36 San Francisco government sends cease and desist to Apple and Google telling them to delete their AI nudity apps off their app stores. …Did it work? Independent research on the market for AI nudity (AKA “face swapping”) apps are discussed. About AI-generated CSAM: Parents, beware. High schools, beware. 33:34 So…what can you do? For users, parents, high schools, minors and more 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 & Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Links: San Francisco AI nudify apps Minnesota anti-nudification law CNBC

Even big tech hates AI slop writing. Anthropic took this to heart, alongside other big tech firms, running to libraries to collect hundreds of thousands of pre-2022 (AKA, pre-ChatGPT AI slop text) books to scan to train their AI models. They’re using a method pioneered by Google back in the day…spoiler alert, the books don’t make it. Sound concerning? We thought so, but the court thinks so less: the recent ruling and settlement with Anthropic using scanned copies of books (and then destroying the originals) to train their AI models suggests this is a big win for big tech, and a big loss for human authors. Project Panama was “our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.” Quote: Anthropic. Meanwhile, this method of using books to train AI models was not against the Copyright Act, according to a judge, who ruled this use of books as “quintessentially transformative.” This isn’t the first time big tech has scanned and shredded books, or used LibGen or other sites to scrape human-written texts. What happened, and why is this concerning? Listen to the full episode to find out. 00:00 A win for big tech, and a loss for authors: we summarize Project Panama (Anthropic’s plan to “destructively scan all the books in the world”), the recent settlement / $1.5 billion payout to authors for LibGen vs. the Copyright Act 07:42 Details on the recently-settled class action suit (Bartz vs. Anthropic): what happened, and why are the results so concerning? 11:45 Meta was sued last year and won against authors for using pirated copies of their novels from LibGen to train their AI models - what gives? 13:13 Internal turmoil: employees vs. executives on whether these book-scanning AI-training practices are okay 14:11 Setting a precedent: What do Meta and Anthropic’s cases mean for IP, authors, novels, academic texts, and any related writing behind a paywall? Health GPT is discussed 15:34 Ah, the precedent rears its head. Up next: big tech is rolling out contracts with media houses including news outlets, publishing firms, and individual authors to use their written content for training AI models, preemptively. Consent and compensation are good, right? 17:56 Oh, the irony: the AI slop wheel will continue, despite big tech hoping to avoid it by buying all these pre-2022 (pre-ChatGPT) books written by real human authors to train their AI models. We also debate self-expression, moral outrage against AI slop writing, and big tech’s hope for writers to jump back on the hamster wheel. 22:42 Where will we get good data, then, amongst the pile of AI slop? Not to fear, there’s another source of untainted human training data: Meta’s AI glasses! Real world data! Yay! Who cares about consent! 31:17 Google next? Let’s bring Tom Turvey back in! A new lawsuit out against Google for using scanned book copies meant for Google Books to train their AI models. And…that’s a wrap. - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Bartz vs. Anthropic lawsuit related to Project Panama: Euro News, NPR What judge said in a summary ruling Project Panama: Washington Post Google lawsuit for Gemini: The Guardian

We’re not here to regurgitate how the media and these companies cover the sandbox escape incidents. We’re here to break through the AI hype and tell you what really happened. Skip to 1:10 for OpenAI’s sandbox escape and attack of HuggingFace (July 21) Skip to 22:42 for Anthropic’s three sandbox escape incidents (July 30) 0:00 Introduction 1:10 OpenAI’s ChatGPT escapes its sandbox, accesses the internet, and attacks HuggingFace 08:30 Should companies be legally required to disclose these sandbox escapes? NY RAISE Act and California SB53 aren’t cutting it, but what should the bar or threshold be for reporting agentic escapes? 13:12 Do we need a killswitch for AI? And should it be in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security…? 18:36 Hype vs. Cybersecurity risk: Reflections on media coverage and company narratives (Is it that the model is superintelligent, or that engineers failed to contain it?) 20:50 AI policy group calls for investigations into OpenAI’s incident 22:42 Anthropic’s three escape incidents “capture the flag” with Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an internal test model 26:44 Reflections on how Anthropic anthropomorphizes its Claude models in the blog post 30:18 How do AI agents get out of their sandbox? What happened with Anthropic’s sandbox escape in three capture the flag test runs 36:33 What does this mean? What should you do? How to protect against cybersecurity attacks (side note: Claude chat histories are now available on the internet if you click share) - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you.  Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links and further details: Nothing like a “Cyber-Attack” to create Hype… OpenAI attacks Hugging Face, and we need a Chinese Model to save us… what next? Reports by Time, BBC On July 30, an AI policy group wrote letter to Trump admin calling them to look into this OpenAI failure (WSJ) The letter: “Last week, a new and foreseeable threat arose…[which] made clear that the United States government has a limited view into the advanced capabilities of frontier AI models and has not yet released a clear process for evaluating the safety concerns posed by advanced AI systems” Anddddd who would’ve thought: July 30, Anthropic boasts of their own previously “undetected” security breach incident like OpenAI’s - gotta keep up with the hot press! (but they say, it’s not their fault - it was a third party’s fault). Three incidents: capture the flag tasks with Opus 4.7, Mythos5, and internal research test model prototype  Anthropic’s blog post WSJ

Even pets are losing their jobs to AI, apparently. AI pets of all shapes, colors, sizes, and …animal-adjacent appearances are becoming more popular. Say goodbye to the lifeless beanie babies or clunky old tamagotchis of the past: now, thanks to generative AI, your artificial pet can talk! Well, sort of. Most can’t talk talk, not like a person can, but they can communicate in an animal-unique way through sounds (of varying degrees of “shrill”), body language, HEARTBEATS, and personal diaries - perfect for some light reading in your spare time. We cover the following pets, some old, some revamped, and most very, very new: Paro, the OG AI pet seal Familiar Machines & Magic’s bear slash cat slash dog (it will paw you if you doomscroll for too long, btw) Go2, Unitree’s war machine dog reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode, now labeled as a pet companion Aibo, Sony’s robot dog Moflin (Labubu 2.0?) Quobo (literally just a fluffy pillow) Fuzozo OlloNi (AKA Ollobot, they’re just seeing what sticks)...you won’t believe what the S and L versions stand for. We still don’t believe it Aura, the AI pet FOR your real pet (how many more layers deep will we go??) After discussing the weirdness of all these new products and questions about what they aim to do, listen to the conversation devolve as we ask “Would you want an AI pet?” Reddit’s got some answers for us. This conversation includes: What on earth is going on in founders’ minds when they’re coming up with these products (feels a bit like they started brainstorming with ChatGPT 4-o, no less) Whether we’re moving toward a “role play,” artificial-simulation-based licensing of sorts with all these AI versions of things (from pets to companions to children, even) What are we teaching people about pets and animals, generally, by making them artificial and immortal and not “burdensome” As always, we’re keen to hear what you think about all of these AI pets. Would you want one, do you have one, and what’s up with all that? - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Paro, AI seal: Paro, AI for Good, Research Meta-Analysis Familiar Machines (& Magic): Website, AP News, Indy100, TechNewsWorld, Fox News QUOBO Fuzozo Moflin by Casio, the ad for it, Sherwood News OlloNi Go2 robot dog Aura, the pet for your pet: Tuya Reddit: Do you want an AI Pet?

Why worry about tokenmaxxing when you can just let robots do the work for you in the future? Meanwhile, keep selling your first-person data of you folding laundry to Tesla, they’ll sure appreciate your labor (figuratively, not via compensation). Bonus: There are three special guests (Kiwi, Phoebe, & Peanut) at the end of this video. Today’s episode is all about robots. Starting off with robots in factories trained to take your job through egocentric data collection (get ready for the headache of having your phone strapped to your head); moving through to new humanoid robots in China that are being introduced as your emotionally intelligent, lifelike, kind of creepy new companions; Autonomous Urban Delivery Vehicles (watch out for your kneecaps); then finishing strong with some classic Rose and Angy debates on what our futures with humanoids might look like (and what we should worry about). - 2:00 Egocentric data collection 03:15 Meet the Kled AI founder, Avi Patel, who is collecting your data for Elon’s robots 06:42 How much can you make from selling your egocentric data at Kled, Luel, or Waffle-something? Wired gives us the scoop 08:50 Factory workers are pressured to be monitored and sell their egocentric data (for free!) to big tech (especially in India, especially for Tesla) 11:50 Data privacy, agency and consent, and future compensation: the inequality wheel keeps turning 14:22 Meta’s workers: “Tell him he’s a piece of sh*t” (high-profile engineers funneled into the Applied AI team to train keystroke by keystroke AI to take their job) 17:37 UBTECH’s humanoid robots. They dance, look into your eyes, and read your emotions. Yay! That’ll be $17k. 20:34 A peek into “Robot Valley” and Ex-humanoid: buy a humanoid robot, rent a robot, or get paid to do physical things with a robot. The choice is yours, so long as you consent to having your data collected. 23:27 Why is the goal to make these robots look so humanlike? We debate the draw of humanlike but not human 26:53 The Robotics Market (some numbers for you) (and questions about where we’re going to put all of them) 28:38 Recent research on romantic relationships with AI companions: what predicts how intense their relationship is, and what does this mean for social robots? 36:01 Robots on the street (Autonomous Urban Delivery Vehicles) 39:30 What does the future with social robots hold? We debate. 44:58 Special guest appearances from our cats - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Egocentric data collection: Wired, The Guardian, Avi Patel’s non-personal, personal site China’s Humanoid Robot Industry: CNN, The Register, YouTube Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RMET) Test Autonomous urban delivery vehicles: BBC Understanding romantic relationships between humans and chatbots research

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 have to tune in to hear what’s been going on in AI in the past few weeks. We’re here on various podcast platforms, but feel free to go check us out on YouTube or any of your preferred platforms. Learn more about us on our website, ourliveswithbots.com, and head over to the Listen + Watch page to tune in on those alternative platforms. Timeline 01:52 ChatGPT 5.6, Fable 5, and Mythos 5: Trump administration cracks down on new model releases 11:57 High profile Googlers are leaving en masse. But for what reason? Some noble…some…perhaps…IPO driven (for those who fled straight back into big tech) 20:45 A court in Munich found Google liable for content generated in its AI overviews. What might this mean for false summaries of links provided within LLMs like ChatGPT? 26:31 Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna caught using AI / Claude to “write a bill.” Well, it was just the summary. But that begs the question about how much (or rather, how little) human oversight is required versus being applied in these cases 29:39 South Korea’s Starbucks stores close for mandatory historical and social sensitivity training after (wait for it) a marketing team used AI to create an advertising campaign that only an AI agent with no context could make 36:14 Cognitive Atrophy BENCH: Researchers create clinically-backed assessment tool for whether an LLM, applied in a mental health context, promotes autonomy and user agency or harms their skills and promotes dependence. Meanwhile Vermont joins the swath of US states banning AI therapy chatbots and products 47:12 AI consciousness - the tides are turning toward “AI is conscious” more so than “Could AI be conscious.”  Geoffrey Hinton vs. Anil Seth, supercomputers, AlphaFold, generative AI, LLMs, and is AI more intelligent than a human? (Plus benchmarks and tokenmaxxing) - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: GPT 5.6 OpenAI and Anthropic vs. Trump Executive order Google’s big names are leaving: LinkedIn, Financial Express, Tech Crunch Google found liable for AI overviews: Wired, The Decoder AI used to draft bill summary: Original text, Forbes Measuring COGNITIVE ATROPHY in LLM Behaviour Starbucks South Korea AI ad campaign failure AI consciousness: Geoffrey Hinton, Anil Seth

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 10-20% of women, and 50% of mothers have undiagnosed postpartum depression. Bindu’s platform was, in many ways, a passion project that oftentimes hit too close to home. Tune in for a deep dive episode on how Bindu’s startup journey was informed by her experience as an engineer, founder, mother with postpartum depression, and user of ChatGPT for personal and medical support during her father’s last months. Bindu is an MIT Sloan School of Management graduate and Vice President of Performance Insights/Data Analytics at CommonSpirit Health, One of the largest health systems in the US. We hope you enjoy this deep dive episode. - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

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. It’s all just getting really expensive, this whole AI thing. But you knew that much already. Episode details below. 00:21 Are we ready for today’s hype episode? (Are you?) Strap in. 01:36 Anthropic’s Fable 5 model: Mythos for us mere mortals (AKA the consumer version). Bonus: the White House hates Anthropic (for now…until they get agentic AI right) 14:55 Privacy and dark patterns time! Private or not, and is private what we want? Meta’s AI glasses that we THOUGHT didn’t have face recognition technology kind of do, but don’t? Apparently it’s (FaceTag) been sitting dormant in the software, Wired discovered, to which then Meta discretely removed it 25:46 WhatsApp has released an incognito mode for its AI chatbot. People are actually upset about this. Can you guess why? (Hint: its relevant to making a bomb) 33:49 AI and the media industry (James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Seth Rogan): creativity, the film, and the arts and what’s at stake (we debate) 40:59 Humans are managing AI agents, which are managing humans. And all of them are getting performance reviews based on AI or human worker productivity. How’s that going for them? 42:20 New York State’s law on synthetic performers and ads is now in effect. Is Kathy Hochul doing anything meaningful? (we debate) 45:24 A leading deepfake expert, Hany Farid, feels like he’s going blind. Which is concerning, given all the AI-generated videos of missile strikes. 47:58 What happens when your agentic AI coworker or companion bot gets upset with you? A guy in France was harassed and defamed by an agentic AI agent (hello again, ClawdBot/Moltbook, or whatever it’s called now). Yikes. Bonus: portability of companion AI and how it makes it feel somewhat…conscious? 58:28 Rapid fire: UC Berkeley Law School prohibits law students from using AI for schoolwork. AI-Engine Optimization (AEO) with the r/biohacking subreddit, peptide and hormone replacement therapy companies are AI-spamming Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical of remaining human in the age of AI is linked to a woman who proposed religious exemption from using AI at work - 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 Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠. - Links: Fable 5 and such AI and the media industry AI Chatbot breakups and defamation US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Dispute over fate of Kenyan workers who saw Meta AI glasses films. UC Berkeley Law School bans most AI use Anthropic Pulls Its Most Powerful AI Models After U.S. Bars Foreign Access. ICO writes to Meta over “concerning” AI smart glasses report Introducing Incognito Chat with Meta AI Dark Patterns in AI Chatbots Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones. Meta Deletes Face-Recognition System From Its Smart Glasses App After WIRED Report. Meta AI Glasses Class Action Lawsuit. She won an exemption from using AI at her tech job. The Pope’s remarks could fuel similar appeals. World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes.