Podcasts · Technology · Society & Culture

Machines Like Us

The Globe and Mail

56 episodes

Machines Like Us is a technology show about people.

More about the show

We are living in an age of breakthroughs propelled by advances in artificial intelligence. Technologies that were once the realm of science fiction will become our reality: robot best friends, bespoke gene editing, brain implants that make us smarter.

Every other Tuesday Taylor Owen sits down with the people shaping this rapidly approaching future. He’ll speak with entrepreneurs building world-changing technologies, lawmakers trying to ensure they’re safe, and journalists and scholars working to understand how they’re transforming our lives.

Episodes page 1 of 2

  1. Taylor Owen on The Decibel: The new AI moment we're in

    · 27 min · Episode 56

    This one's from The Decibel, The Globe and Mail's daily news podcast. Taylor was the guest, talking about the push to regulate AI and whether governments can keep up. We're between seasons, so we're running it here…

  2. Taylor Lorenz on the dark money buying your social feed

    · 45 min · Episode 55

    In early August, OpenAI hosted dozens of lifestyle creators at an upstate New York resort for a weekend they called Summer Club. There was beekeeping. There were farm-to-table dinners. And in between, there were…

  3. Why does AI sound so much like religion?

    · 41 min · Episode 54

    For years, the debate about AI was mostly about what it could do, whether it could write, make convincing art, or beat us at our own games. The questions now are older and harder. What makes us human? How do we find…

  4. Demis Hassabis wanted to solve intelligence. Then came ChatGPT.

    · 51 min · Episode 53

    When Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, his mission was simple: solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else. What began as a scientific quest would eventually become a fierce global AI race.…

  5. Can You Really Teach a Robot Empathy? This Roboticist Says Yes.

    · 32 min · Episode 52

    You've probably seen one by now: a human-sized robot doing very human feats – landing a perfect backflip, racing through the streets of Beijing, or dancing in a crowd at a Knicks game. But behind these viral moments,…

  6. Age Gates & AI: Minister Marc Miller on The Safe Social Media Act

    · 34 min · Episode 51

    When Marc Miller became Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, he inherited Ottawa’s oldest, unfinished file in tech policy: regulating social media. He took office at a global turning point. Australia had just…

  7. Canada’s AI minister to Big Tech: “We Won’t be a Digital Colony’

    · 29 min · Episode 50

    “AI for All.” That’s what Canada’s federal government is calling its national AI strategy. It makes the case for building AI with confidence: a homegrown supercomputer by 2031, 60 per cent adoption by 2034. But the new…

  8. We Can Now Bet on Almost Anything. Should We?

    · 52 min · Episode 49

    Human beings have always loved to gamble. Archeological records suggest we’ve been doing it for the last 12,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age. But for as long as we’ve been playing games of chance, we’ve…

  9. Social Media Bans Are Wildly Popular. They Might Also Be a Mistake.

    · 58 min · Episode 48

    Towards the end of last year, Australia did something no other country had ever tried: it banned social media for kids under 16. And a bunch of others are following with similar laws, first Denmark, then France, then…

  10. Animals are Talking to Each Other. Can AI Help Us Understand Them?

    · 42 min · Episode 47

    The people running technology companies love to make wild predictions about the future. They’ve told us that artificial intelligence will cure cancer, eliminate drudgery and solve climate change. But those utopian…

  11. Does 21st Century Politics Still Need Politicians?

    · 44 min · Episode 46

    When Prime Minister Mark Carney took the floor at the recent Liberal convention, he described a future where AI benefits all Canadians – not just a lucky few. It’s an optimistic vision. But according to political…

  12. Michael Pollan Says AI Isn’t Conscious – But Plants Might Be

    · 40 min · Episode 45

    Four years ago, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine went public with a strange claim: he thought the large language model he’d been working on had become sentient. At the time, virtually no one took him seriously.…

  13. Why Did We Stop Talking About The AI Apocalypse?

    · 47 min · Episode 44

    Just a few years ago, it seemed like all anyone in AI wanted to talk about was existential risk – this idea that an artificial super intelligence could eventually break containment and destroy humanity. More than…

  14. In the Wake of Tumbler Ridge, Can We Trade Privacy for Safety?

    · 46 min · Episode 43 · Explicit

    On Feb. 10, 2026, an 18-year-old opened fire at a high school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., killing eight people before turning a gun on herself. In the weeks that followed, OpenAI admitted that the perpetrator had been…

  15. When Did Common Sense AI Policy Become Radical?

    · 38 min · Episode 11

    A couple of months ago, I joined the Canadian government’s AI strategy task force. Out of thirty members, I was one of only four focused on safety. Everyone else was there to talk growth. It reflects a pattern playing…

  16. Bonus: Inside the New Social Media Platform for AI Agents

    · 26 min · Episode 42

    Scrolling through Moltbook, the new social-media platform for AI agents, is a bit like walking into a fever dream. There are threads where bots debate consciousness, deal digital drugs, and plot our destruction. One…

  17. The Future According to Gen Z

    · 52 min · Episode 41

    No one has adopted artificial intelligence more enthusiastically than Gen Z. And not just to help with their homework. Half of American teens are in regular contact with an “AI companion” – with many saying they prefer…

  18. Is China Winning the Technological Arms Race?

    · 56 min · Episode 39

    If we don’t build it, China will. That’s the rallying cry of the tech companies and governments racing to develop artificial intelligence as fast as humanly possible. The argument is that whoever reaches AGI first…

  19. Four Predictions on How AI Will Transform Your World This Year

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 38

    Nine months ago, Elon Musk said 2025 would be the year chatbots became smarter than humans. Sam Altman thought it would be the year fully autonomous AIs entered the work force. And Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic,…

  20. The Man Behind the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

    · 53 min · Episode 37

    Jensen Huang is something of an enigma. The NVIDIA CEO doesn’t have social media and, until recently, rarely gave interviews. Yet he may be the most important person in AI. Under his leadership, NVIDIA has become a…

  21. Wikipedia Won Our Trust. Can We Use That Model Everywhere?

    · 44 min · Episode 36

    It was an idea that defied logic: an online encyclopedia that anyone could edit. You didn’t need to have a PhD or even use your real name – you just needed an internet connection. Against all odds, it worked. Today,…

  22. Could an Alternative AI Save Us From a Bubble?

    · 53 min · Episode 35

    Over the last couple of years, massive AI investment has largely kept the stock market afloat. Case in point: the so-called Magnificent 7 – tech companies like NVIDIA, Meta, and Microsoft – now account for more than a…

  23. Can AI Lead Us to the Good Life?

    · 51 min · Episode 34 · Explicit

    In Rutger Bregman’s first book, Utopia for Realists, the historian describes a rosy vision of the future – one with 15-hour work weeks, universal basic income and massive wealth redistribution. It’s a vision that, in…

  24. How to Survive the “Broligarchy”

    · 50 min · Episode 33 · Explicit

    At Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, the returning president made a striking break from tradition. The seats closest to the president – typically reserved for family – went instead to the most powerful…

  25. AI Music is Everywhere. Is it Legal?

    · 1 h 03 min · Episode 32

    AI art is everywhere now. According to the music streaming platform Deezer, 18 per cent of the songs being uploaded to the site are AI-generated. Some of this stuff is genuinely cool and original – the kind of work…

  26. Geoffrey Hinton vs. The End of the World

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 31

    The story of how Geoffrey Hinton became “the godfather of AI” has reached mythic status in the tech world. While he was at the University of Toronto, Hinton pioneered the neural network research that would become the…

  27. AI is Upending Higher Education. Is That a Bad Thing?

    · 50 min · Episode 30

    Just two months after ChatGPT was launched in 2022, a survey found that 90 per cent of college students were already using it. I’d be shocked if that number wasn’t closer to 100 per cent by now. Students aren’t just…

  28. Jim Balsillie: ‘Canada’s Problem Isn’t Trump. Canada’s Problem Is Canada’

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 29

    In the chaotic early months of his second term, Donald Trump has attacked the Canadian economy and mused about turning Canada into the “51st state.” Now, after decades of close allyship with the U.S., our relationship…

  29. The Changing Face of Election Interference

    · 39 min · Episode 27

    We’re a few weeks into a federal election that is currently too close to call. And while most Canadians are wondering who our next Prime Minister will be, my guests today are preoccupied with a different question: will…

  30. How Do You Report the News in a Post-Truth World?

    · 37 min · Episode 26

    If you’re having a conversation about the state of journalism, it’s bound to get a little depressing. Since 2008, more than 250 local news outlets have closed down in Canada. The U.S. has lost a third of the…

  31. A Chinese Company Upended OpenAI. We May Be Looking at the Story All Wrong.

    · 40 min · Episode 25

    When the American company OpenAI released ChatGPT, it was the first time that a lot of people had ever interacted with Generative AI. ChatGPT has become so popular that, for many, it’s now synonymous with artificial…

  32. Big Tech Hijacked Our Attention. Chris Hayes Wants To Win It Back.

    · 30 min · Episode 24

    Do I have your attention right now? I’m guessing probably not. Or, at least, not all of it. In all likelihood, you’re listening to this on your morning commute, or while you wash the dishes or check your e-mail. We…

  33. New Spyware Has Made Your Phone Less Secure Than You Might Think

    · 36 min · Episode 23

    It’s become pretty easy to spot phishing scams: UPS orders you never made, banking alerts from companies you don’t bank with, phone calls from unfamiliar area codes. But over the past decade, these scams – and the…

  34. A Computer Scientist Answers Your Questions About AI

    · 50 min · Episode 22

    We’ve spent a lot of time on this show talking about AI: how it’s changing war, how your doctor might be using it, and whether or not chatbots are curing, or exacerbating, loneliness. But what we haven’t done on this…

  35. Questions About AI? We Want to Hear Them

    · 1:22 · Episode 21

    We spend a lot of time talking about AI on this show: how we should govern it, the ideologies of the people making it, and the ways it's reshaping our lives. But before we barrel into a year where I think AI will be…

  36. This Mother Says a Chatbot Led to Her Son’s Death

    · 49 min · Episode 20

    In February, 2024, Megan Garcia’s 14-year-old son Sewell took his own life. As she tried to make sense of what happened, Megan discovered that Sewell had fallen in love with a chatbot on Character.AI – an app where…

  37. Bonus ‘The Decibel’: How an algorithm missed a deadly listeria outbreak

    · 27 min · Episode 19

    In July, there was a recall on two brands of plant-based milks, Silk and Great Value, after a listeria outbreak that led to at least 20 illnesses and three deaths. Public health officials determined the same strain of…

  38. AI Has Mastered Chess, Poker and Go. So Why Do We Keep Playing?

    · 36 min · Episode 18

    The board game Go has more possible board configurations than there are atoms in the universe. Because of that seemingly infinite complexity, developing software that could master Go has long been a goal of the AI…

  39. How Silicon Valley Monopolized Our Imagination

    · 46 min · Episode 17

    The past few months have seen a series of bold proclamations from the most powerful people in tech. In September, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta had developed “the most advanced glasses the world had ever seen.”…

  40. Margrethe Vestager Fought Big Tech and Won. Her Next Target is AI

    · 35 min · Episode 16

    Margrethe Vestager has spent the past decade standing up to Silicon Valley. As the EU’s Competition Commissioner, she’s waged landmark legal battles against tech giants like Meta, Microsoft and Amazon. Her two latest…

  41. Bonus ‘Lately’: The Great Decline of Everything Online

    · 35 min · Episode 15

    We’re off this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from our Globe and Mail sister show Lately. That creeping feeling that everything online is getting worse has a name: “enshittification,” a term for the slow…

  42. Musk, Money and Misinformation: Tech & The U.S. Election

    · 33 min · Episode 14

    The tech lobby has quietly turned Silicon Valley into the most powerful political operation in America. Pro crypto donors are now responsible for almost half of all corporate donations this election. Elon Musk has gone…

  43. Emily St. John Mandel Imagines The Future

    · 39 min · Episode 13

    What kind of future are we building for ourselves? In some ways, that’s the central question of this show. It’s also a central question of speculative fiction. And one that few people have tried to answer as…

  44. Yoshua Bengio Doesn’t Think We’re Ready for Superhuman AI. We’re Building it Anyway.

    · 42 min · Episode 12

    A couple of weeks ago, I was at this splashy AI conference in Montreal called All In. It was – how should I say this – a bit over the top. There were smoke machines, thumping dance music, food trucks. It was a far cry…

  45. There’s a Way to Cool the Planet. Scientists are Terrified of It.

    · 44 min · Episode 11

    In 2015, 195 countries gathered in Paris to discuss how to address the climate crisis. Although there was plenty they couldn’t agree on, there was one point of near-absolute consensus: if the planet becomes 2°C hotter…

  46. Gaza is a Window into the Future of War

    · 41 min · Episode 10

    For nearly a year now, the world has been transfixed – and horrified – by what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. Yet for all the media coverage, there seems to be far less known about how this war is actually being…

  47. Why Journalism Made a Devil’s Bargain with Big Tech

    · 42 min · Episode 9

    Things do not look good for journalism right now. This year, Bell Media, VICE, and the CBC all announced significant layoffs. In the US, there were cuts at the Washington Post, the LA Times, Vox and NPR – to name just…

  48. How to Hack Democracy

    · 37 min · Episode 8

    Last year, the venture capitalist Marc Andreesen published a document he called “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” In it, he argued that “everything good is downstream of growth,” government regulation is bad, and that…

  49. How AI Turbocharged the Economy (For Now)

    · 39 min · Episode 7

    If you listened to our last couple of episodes, you’ll have heard some pretty skeptical takes on AI. But if you look at the stock market right now, you won’t see any trace of that skepticism. Since the launch of…

  50. Douglas Rushkoff Doesn’t Want to Talk About AI

    · 45 min · Episode 6

    Douglas Rushkoff has spent the last thirty years studying how digital technologies have shaped our world. The renowned media theorist is the author of twenty books, the host of the Team Human podcast, and a professor…

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