Trust Issues

Ailish McLaughlin

How AI works, where it's going, and what it means for our futures: these are the questions Trust Issues sets out to answer, so you can make your own mind up about the technology reshaping work and life. Because right now, most coverage of artificial intelligence sits in one of two camps. There's the tech bro hype, all confidence and "this changes everything." And there's the doom, the worst of the worst, the stuff that makes you want to close the laptop and not open it again. Neither is much help when what you actually want is to decide, sensibly, whether and how AI belongs in your own life. Food labels help us understand what's in our food and where it's come from so we can make informed decisions about what we eat that align with our goals and values. That's what's missing with AI. So on Trust Issues, we read the label. Every episode, host Ailish McLaughlin sits down with someone who builds AI, works with it or thinks hard about it, and works through those same three questions: how does it actually work, where is it going, and what could it mean for us. No jargon you need a glossary for. No one telling you what to do. Just an honest conversation that leaves you better equipped to decide for yourself. Ailish works in AI and is curious about where it's heading. But she also asks the questions you'd want asked. The "hang on, what does that actually mean for my job, my brain, my kids" questions. You don't need to be technical. You just need to trust yourself. New episodes every week, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Episodes

  1. ElevenLabs: Deepfakes, Darth Vader and How to Know If You Are Speaking to AI

    1d ago

    ElevenLabs: Deepfakes, Darth Vader and How to Know If You Are Speaking to AI

    ElevenLabs: Deepfakes, Darth Vader and How to Know If You Are Speaking to AI AI can now clone a human voice so well that you might not realise you are talking to a machine. So how do you know who, or what, is really on the other end of the line? In this episode of Trust Issues, host Ailish McLaughlin sits down with Louise Meyer-Schönherr from ElevenLabs, one of the fastest growing AI voice companies in the world, to unpack how AI voice technology actually works, where you are already encountering it, and how to protect yourself from voice deepfakes and scams. ElevenLabs builds the text-to-speech, speech-to-text and voice agent models behind a huge amount of the AI audio you hear every day. That includes dubbed YouTube videos, AI-narrated podcasts on Spotify, Darth Vader in Fortnite, and the voice assistants inside apps like Revolut and Klarna. Louise breaks down what voice cloning is, how ElevenLabs combines its voice models with large language models to build conversational AI agents, and the safety guardrails (watermarking, no-go voices, verification and moderation) designed to stop bad actors. We also get into the big trust questions: the Joe Biden voice deepfake, whether AI voice is coming for voice actors' jobs, what happens to your data when you speak to an AI agent, and a simple trick for working out whether you are on a call with a human or an AI. Whether you run a small business and are curious about AI receptionists, you are a creator thinking about audiobooks and dubbing, or you just want to stay discerning in an AI world, this one is for you. In this episode: What ElevenLabs is and what voice AI actually doesHow AI voice cloning and text-to-speech workWhere you are already hearing AI voices (Spotify, YouTube, Fortnite, Revolut, Klarna)Voice deepfakes, the Joe Biden calls, and how ElevenLabs blocks "no-go" voicesHow to tell if you are speaking to a human or an AIWhat happens to your data when you talk to a voice agentAre AI voices a threat to voice actors?ElevenLabs' mission to give one million people their voice backHow small businesses can use AI voice agents for reception, bookings and supportThe future of voice as the primary interface for technology Guest: Louise Meyer-Schönherr, ElevenLabs · Host: Ailish McLaughlin Trust Issues is the podcast about AI, bias, trust and discernment.

    1h 9m
  2. Why opting out of AI is actually harming your future self with Kate Minogue

    Mar 18

    Why opting out of AI is actually harming your future self with Kate Minogue

    You can't opt out of AI. It's already in your Uber, your Netflix, your news feed. So the real question is: do you want to understand it, or let someone else decide how it works for you? Kate Minogue (ex-Meta, AI advisor, founder of The AI Leadership Lab) joins us to talk incentives, algorithms, user power, and why checking out of AI is the worst thing you can do right now. SHOW NOTES About the Guest Kate Minogue is an AI advisor and fractional product leader with 6 years at Meta and a background spanning data science, gaming, fintech, and banking. She's passionate about helping non-technical business leaders get confident with AI, and recently launched The AI Leadership Lab, a course designed to do exactly that. Find Kate on LinkedIn or at kate-minogue.com. In This Episode The Uber driver who checked out of AI (and why that's not actually possible)Netflix vs TikTok: same technology, completely different incentivesWhy understanding incentives is the key to trusting (or not trusting) AIAI hallucinations explained: what Kate told her sister that made her stop being scaredHow your data actually shapes the AI products being builtMisinformation, deepfakes, and AI-generated content: which fears are warrantedWhy CEOs and graduates are behaving the same way around AI right nowThe "safe zones" framework for AI use in organisationsHow users (yes, you) can influence how AI developsUS vs Europe: deregulation vs responsible AI as competitive advantageWhat teams actually want from leaders in the age of AI (it's not expertise)"Do it because the men are doing it and they are not apologising for it" Mentioned in This Episode The AI Leadership Lab (Kate's course for non-technical business leaders)Max Tegmark (AI safety researcher, Web Summit talk)DeepSeek (Chinese AI lab)Sora (OpenAI's image/video generation app)EU AI Act and GDPRBoxer CEO memo ("AI is for you, not to you")Women in Africa building their own AI models (Web Summit)

    1h 16m
  3. AI - magic or maths? A no-jargon guide on how AI actually works.

    Mar 11

    AI - magic or maths? A no-jargon guide on how AI actually works.

    Last week, Florence helped us get our heads around the right mindset for using AI. But there were a lot of words flying around. Agents. LLMs. Machine learning. What do those things actually mean? And more importantly, does it matter? This week we're joined by Raji Ramakrishnan, a product leader at Lloyds Banking Group who works on agentic AI observability. Which, yes, is a mouthful. But by the end of this episode, you'll actually know what all of those words mean. And that's kind of the point. Raji breaks down the entire AI landscape in a way that finally makes sense. She starts with the basics (AI is not magic, it's maths, data and programming) and walks us through how machines learn using an analogy that anyone who's taught a child flashcards will immediately get. Supervised learning? That's you holding up the flashcard. Unsupervised learning? That's the kid pointing at a cat in the street having figured it out on their own. But this episode isn't just a glossary. It's about why understanding this stuff actually matters. Raji makes a compelling case that AI is coming whether you engage with it or not. Your mobile provider, your bank, your electricity company are all already using it. And the more you understand, the better equipped you are to know when to trust it and when to push back. We also get into hallucinations (why AI confidently makes stuff up), the difference between generative AI and agentic AI, and what banks are actually doing behind the scenes to make sure AI doesn't go rogue. Spoiler: there are real humans watching. In this episode, we cover: AI, machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, agentic AI: what each one actually means and how they connectThe flashcard analogy: how machines learn in a similar way to children (supervised vs unsupervised learning)Why AI is a prediction machine, not a truth machine, and why that distinction mattersHallucinations: what they are, why they happen, and why you should always sense-checkAgentic AI: what changes when AI can take actions on its own, not just generate contentObservability and guardrails: what's actually happening inside banks to keep AI in checkWhy jargon is an unnecessary barrier to entry and how to not let it hold you backThe mobile phone analogy: remember buying minutes for your Nokia 3310? AI adoption is on the same trajectory

    1h 9m
  4. Drunk Interns, Lazy Brains and Knowing When to To use AI

    Feb 25

    Drunk Interns, Lazy Brains and Knowing When to To use AI

    This week we're kicking things off with a big question: is AI making us lazy? There's a study from MIT that suggests our brains might be outsourcing more than we realise. And with our brains not fully developing until around age 32, what does it mean that we're handing over so much cognitive work to AI tools before we've even finished cooking? To help us figure it out, we're joined by Florence Jumpp, a product leader who's been working in AI and machine learning since 2019. Florence has a background in experimental psychology, and she's built her whole AI career around solving problems rather than obsessing over the tech itself. Florence introduces us to her "drunk intern" framework. It's exactly what it sounds like. Think of AI as a capable but overconfident intern who's had a few too many. They'll absolutely get stuff done for you, but you wouldn't send them to the board meeting. And you definitely wouldn't have them work on your hardest problems. She also shares her VEER framework for deciding which tasks to hand off to AI: looking at a task's Value, Enjoyment, Effort and Risk to decide whether it's a good one to hand off to AI. In this episode, we cover: Why thinking of AI as a "drunk intern" helps you use it more wisely (and why Florence's is called Jack)The VEER framework for figuring out what to delegate to AI and what to protectCognitive offloading: why your brain has stopped taking notes in personal conversations tooHow Florence uses Zapier to never face a post-holiday email wall againWhy doing the hard thing still matters, and how to force yourself to sit with the blank pageThe positive feedback loop: using freed-up time to get even better at AI, not just filling it with more workWhy the people who think for themselves are the ones who'll stand out About our guest: Florence Jumpp is a product leader specialising in AI and machine learning, with a background in experimental psychology. She brings a neuroscience lens to how we should think about AI's impact on our brains and our work. Resources mentioned: Zapier (zapier.com) for building AI-powered automationsMIT study on AI and cognitive offloading

    1h 24m

About

How AI works, where it's going, and what it means for our futures: these are the questions Trust Issues sets out to answer, so you can make your own mind up about the technology reshaping work and life. Because right now, most coverage of artificial intelligence sits in one of two camps. There's the tech bro hype, all confidence and "this changes everything." And there's the doom, the worst of the worst, the stuff that makes you want to close the laptop and not open it again. Neither is much help when what you actually want is to decide, sensibly, whether and how AI belongs in your own life. Food labels help us understand what's in our food and where it's come from so we can make informed decisions about what we eat that align with our goals and values. That's what's missing with AI. So on Trust Issues, we read the label. Every episode, host Ailish McLaughlin sits down with someone who builds AI, works with it or thinks hard about it, and works through those same three questions: how does it actually work, where is it going, and what could it mean for us. No jargon you need a glossary for. No one telling you what to do. Just an honest conversation that leaves you better equipped to decide for yourself. Ailish works in AI and is curious about where it's heading. But she also asks the questions you'd want asked. The "hang on, what does that actually mean for my job, my brain, my kids" questions. You don't need to be technical. You just need to trust yourself. New episodes every week, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.