Richard Dawkins Finds Love, Isolation as a Societal Norm, and Other AI News (with Hagen Blix)

Is this chatbot sentient? Is AI my friend? Is isolation hackable? Trent and Caitlin discuss recent AI news, Sam Altman's troubles legal and otherwise, labor organizing as a strategy against the worst fears of AI experts, and whether Richard Dawkins is conscious, in this news digest episode with linguist and AI researcher Hagen Blix.

Resources

https://bookshop.org/p/books/why-we-fear-ai-on-the-interpretation-of-nightmares-hagen-blix/377a4501006cfc55?ean=9781945335174&next=t

Letter to Meta leadership https://mcipetition.com/

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/tech-workers-silicon-valley-trump

https://jacobin.com/2025/12/hype-artificial-intelligence-vc-capital

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-ai-training-data-2026-04-21/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/18/sam-altman-house-attack-ai

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/12/technology/openai-trial-sam-altman-elon-musk

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-layoffs-bad-vibes-mark-zuckerberg-ai/

https://tech-insider.org/meta-layoffs-8000-employees-135-billion-ai-capex-2026/

https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/?edition=us

https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius/