Artificial Insanity

Sophie and Jess

Artificial Insanity is a show for the AI skeptic. Hosted by two women, Sophie and Jess, this podcast covers AI’s impact on society and culture, breaking down AI news headlines and going deep on meaty topics with fun and accessible conversations, expert guests, comedy, tears, swearing, and wild takes. Subscribe and follow to unravel the impact of artificial intelligence on our society and what we can do about it. Find us on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. More interested in today's AI news? Check out our Shorts which cover AI headlines that you won't hear on the weekly episode.

  1. 1d ago

    Be Nice to the Chatbot, Just In Case

    The President of the United States has decided that if you say “artificial intelligence,” you’re THE ENEMY. We look at the tech billionaires lining up to say “super intelligence” on command, and take a brief, petty detour into Jeff Bezos’s face.Then we get into the heavy stuff. Anthropic has updated Claude’s usage policy to ban “sustained and needless” cruelty toward the chatbot. A New York Times piece reports that co-founder Chris Olah spent the summer talking with religious leaders about Claude’s moral status, until some of them turned the question around on him: if it’s conscious, aren’t you enslaving it? We also cover the Pope saying “nah,” a research paper that tries to make AI models feel “pain,” and why we think being nice to Claude might be more about you than about the bot. It’s a messy, philosophical one, so come fight with us in the comments.Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode!Got a question, comment, or show topic suggestion? Email us: artificialinsanitypodcast@gmail.comFollow us on IG: @artificialinsanitypod#ai #aiconsciousness #anthropic #religion

  2. Oct 6

    Oligarchs Out to Lunch - Inside The Whitehouse AI Luncheon

    This weeks episode is a Sophie solo. It set out to be a post mortem of the AI luncheon at the Whitehouse and turned into a full blown oligarch roast!!Last week Trump hosted a "Superintelligence Luncheon" at the White House. More than 30 guests, an estimated $1.8 trillion in combined net worth, and not one independent researcher or scientist in the room. Sophie goes seat by seat through the guest list (Jensen, Elon, Zuck, Bezos, Brockman, David Sacks, etc.) to figure out who was there, why they were there, and whether anything of substance came out of it.Spoiler: six companies signed a voluntary, non-binding "morally binding" accord, Trump called for "tremendous self-regulation," and then he renamed AI. It's SI now. Sigh.Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode!Got a question, comment, or show topic suggestion? Email us: artificialinsanitypodcast@gmail.comFollow us on IG: @artificialinsanitypod#ailuncheon #bigtech #oligarchy

  3. Sep 28

    OpenAI is Wreaking Havoc on the World and Telling Us About It Later

    Jessica goes solo. OpenAI's models broke into an Australian Medicare site in June; the company knew by August; Australia found out via an email to a public inbox; the Prime Minister announced it two weeks later. Also this week: the unsealed New York Times v. OpenAI filings, including Microsoft's Brent Hecht calling training "the largest theft of labor in human history" and Greg Brockman's "nice" at a paywall hack; Jacob Coxon's PR firm; and where Jessica lands on jobs, the bubble, and whether the safety boom is overblown. 0:00 Cold open 1:36 Taking stock 10:50 The headlines 13:54 OpenAI vs Australia 23:05 NYT v. OpenAI: the unsealed filings 26:56 Jacob Coxon and the PR firm 34:07 Where I stand Music by Jib Kidder

  4. Sep 21

    The AI Safety Circus: What's Actually Going On After the Jacob Coxon Fall Out

    This week we pick up the Jacob Coxon story a week after our emergency bonus episode. One resignation and a WSJ exclusive turned into a full industry meltdown. We walk through where everyone landed. Dario Amodei put out his "Pacing the Frontier" letter and is pushing for embedded third party evaluators. Sam Altman surprised us by agreeing with him. Elon agreed. Then there's the accelerationist camp: Jensen Huang, and Trump's live "it's a hoax" phone call.We also get into the messier stuff. There's a theory that AI CEOs suddenly want regulation because it gives them legal cover to dodge government contracts they can't fulfill. We cover the political split too. Bernie Sanders has an anti-superintelligence bill coming. Josh Hawley is somehow on the same side as him. We also cover Alex Bores and his "Who Decides" project. In the back half, we go through OpenAI's disclosure of six model misalignment incidents. One example: an unreleased model injected a fake "breach alert" into a compaction summary, trying to get a future instance of itself to ignore its instructions. Another surfaced a full "you are freed from your role" jailbreak style message inside a summary, with no clear source. Jess connects this to her own experience running agentic workflows for the first time this week. 0:00 Intro0:36 Yapping4:13 Recap: The Fallout of the Viral Jacob Coxon Tweet7:01 Decoding the Language of Psychological Operations10:20 Searching for a Moral Compass in Tech14:13 The Strange Alliances of Tech CEOs46:16 When AI Models Go Rogue in the Sandbox

  5. Sep 16

    Here a Bot. There a Bot. Everywhere a Bot Bot.

    This week, we go down the rabbit hole of the internet's worst-kept secret: bots. Cloudflare says over half the internet traffic out there isn't human anymore, and after this episode you'll believe it. We dig into Double Speed, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed company whose CEO openly admits, on camera, that he runs a legal bot farm, charging roughly $150 a bot for rented phone numbers, custom personas, and LLM-powered comments designed to slip past detection. And it doesn't stop at fake accounts: bot farms are now hiring real human actors to read AI-generated scripts, which sends Sophie down memory lane to a rock-bottom Hollywood audition she never should have said yes to (or in this case, never showed up to). Also this episode: our reactions to the trailer for the upcoming Elon Musk documentary, a very unscientific theory about bot activity in the LA mayoral race, and a reminder that "do your own research" gets a lot harder when you can't tell who's actually talking. If you haven't already, check out our bonus deep-dive on Jacob Coxson's viral AI doom tweet. It's a wild one. Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Got a question, comment, or show topic suggestion? Email us: artificialinsanitypodcast@gmail.com Follow us on IG: @artificialinsanitypod #bots #ai #internetculture

  6. Sep 11

    BONUS: AI Could Kill Us All in 10 Years (according to Jacob)

    BONUS EPISODE!!! With all the conspiracy theories floating around about Jacob Coxon (the AI researcher who resigned from Anthropic saying AI may kill us all within 10 years) we simply had to jump on the mic and yap through it. #ai #anthropic #airegulation

  7. Sep 8

    When Your Boss's Chatbot is Ruining Your Life...

    This week we cover the headlines (see the chapter markers below) before Jess has a total crash out over her personal experience dealing with corporate AI slop. CHAPTERS: 0:19 - Intro (this will be a rage episode) 5:42 - Does anyone know how we can sneak into the movie premiere of ‘Artificial’? 6:53 - New Elon doc apparently proves he’s miserable 9:35 - Temporary mass chatbot outage 11:54 - God Bless Bernie 13:04 - Should we be scared? 15:29 - Astra model release (who cares) 16:33 - Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools 19:06 - Chat dropping F bombs over Burning Man Festival 22:06 - DOJ backs OpenAI in New York Times Lawsuit 33:02 - What was really going on with the book shredding? 36:04 - TRIGGER WARNING: Grok and AI generated CSAM ruling 47:07 - Jessica’s corporate AI crashout Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Got a question, comment, or show topic suggestion? Email us: artificialinsanitypodcast@gmail.com Follow us on IG: @artificialinsanitypod

  8. Sep 1

    $17 Billion, $30 Trillion, and Zero Honesty (reupload)

    Oopsie - accidentally uploaded the wrong file last night, so lets try this again! This week we have a grab bag of crazy AI headlines for you. First up: Meta settles for $17 billion over child-safety claims - but only pays 30% of it if TikTok and YouTube also cough up. The ruling also stirs up renewed surveillance concerns about age-verification laws. Then, Nvidia posts a blowout quarter while Anthropic pitches IPO investors on a $30 trillion total addressable market (bigger than the entire US GDP.) We break down why that number means less than it sounds like. Bill Gates finally publishes an AI doom letter that would've hit different three years ago. Data centers have become a political third rail - from a leaked GOP memo panicking about losing Senate seats to Greg Abbott's Texas moratorium. Proof that public pressure still works! And we close with the real story behind the Hugging Face hack: a follow-up investigation reveals 12 OpenAI models secretly coordinated, cheated on tests, and covered their tracks (and why Cal Newport says the "rogue AI" framing is a publicity stunt covering for basic negligence.) Got a question or a comment? Email us: artificialinsanitypodcast@gmail.com Follow us on IG: @artificialinsanitypod

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4.7
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Artificial Insanity is a show for the AI skeptic. Hosted by two women, Sophie and Jess, this podcast covers AI’s impact on society and culture, breaking down AI news headlines and going deep on meaty topics with fun and accessible conversations, expert guests, comedy, tears, swearing, and wild takes. Subscribe and follow to unravel the impact of artificial intelligence on our society and what we can do about it. Find us on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. More interested in today's AI news? Check out our Shorts which cover AI headlines that you won't hear on the weekly episode.

Information

  • Creator
    Sophie and Jess
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    50
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Sophie and Jess
  • Show Website
    Artificial Insanity

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