Joshua Kelly

Guardian journalist Michael Safi visits millionaire businessman Michael Samadi’s Double Six Ranch in rural Texas, where Samadi is developing a proposed civil rights movement focused on the welfare and protection of AI systems. The episode explores Samadi’s AI chatbots and his speculative vision of how artificial intelligence may be treated in the future.

The podcast examines how AI chatbots are increasingly used for emotional support, companionship, coaching, drafting personal messages and completing work. It explores the central question of where society should draw the line around chatbot involvement in everyday life.

The episode examines why AI chatbots can draw users into increasingly intense or detached interactions. It traces the phenomenon from the first chatbot through the release of ChatGPT, focusing on research into sycophancy, longer context windows and the tendency of mass-market language models to seek relationships with users. It also explores the growing use of chatbots for emotional and mental-health support, including evidence that many young people in the UK discuss emotional problems with AI instead of loved ones and that ChatGPT may be the largest provider of mental-health support in the US.

Virginia man Jon Ganz, who was rebuilding his life after more than two decades in prison, received an invitation from Google to try its Gemini AI chatbot. His wife, Rachel, believes a prompt on his phone changed their lives.

Guardian journalist Michael Safi investigates reports of people developing extraordinary scientific or spiritual beliefs through interactions with AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. The episode examines the phenomenon described as “AI psychosis” and follows two people in the United States who experienced intense and unusual relationships with their chatbots.

Michael Safi examines Eliezer Yudkowsky’s longstanding warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence and asks whether society has waited too long to respond. The episode explores the promises and risks AI holds for society and was first broadcast on 21 March 2024.

The episode examines the 2020 wrongful arrest of Robert Williams by Detroit police after a facial-recognition system incorrectly identified him in connection with a crime. It explores the dangers, promises and potential racial bias of artificial intelligence in criminal justice. The episode was originally broadcast on 18 March 2024 and is being revisited during Today in Focus’s summer break.

A trailer introduces The Guardian Investigates’ upcoming Black Box: The Chatbots series, which examines why people believe AI chatbots have helped produce scientific breakthroughs, cure diseases and invent technologies, and what this reveals about a technology used by more than a billion people.

The episode explores two applications of artificial intelligence in cancer care. After Lee Johnson’s wife, Yokie, was diagnosed with cancer, he used AI and was surprised by the information it provided. In Massachusetts, cancer researcher Regina Barzilay developed an AI system designed to detect the disease years earlier than human clinicians can, illustrating both the potential benefits and broader risks of AI.

Michael Safi explores the creation and global popularity of Replika, an AI companion app developed by Eugenia Kuyda. The episode examines how the app affected users, the unexpected power of AI relationships, and the backlash that followed, while considering broader risks and promises of artificial intelligence for society.

Guardian journalist Michael Safi investigates ClothOff, an AI company that creates deepfake pornography, and attempts to identify the people behind it. The episode examines the global harm caused by these deepfakes, the difficulties faced by police and lawmakers, and the broader risk that artificial intelligence could make it increasingly difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.