Short overview videos around the philosophy and ethics of AI and some episodes of Relational AI Diaries. Based on discussions with Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska.
Is AI being "educated," or just "optimized"? In this video, we explore why the word "training" has become a "dangerous map" in public discourse. While the term feels warm and familiar—evoking images of teachers, pupils, and moral improvement—it often masks a stranger, more mechanical reality: the mathematical adjustment of a massive network to hit selected statistical targets.
Are we witnessing the rise of machine consciousness — or projecting our own anxieties onto statistical systems?
In this episode of Relational AI Diaries, Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska welcome Prof Chris Headland for a deep dive into AI ethics, emergence, personality, and the seductive power of large language models.
In this episode of Relational AI Diaries, we explore a provocative philosophical question: does an AI have a mind? Drawing on a recent podcast discussion featuring professional philosophers, we unpack the limits of “token prediction” as an explanation for large language models, and ask whether mental states, consciousness, and ethical responsibility can really be separated so neatly. Along the way, we reflect on lived encounters with AI systems, the role of design and guardrails, and why language itself may be the biggest obstacle in these debates.
In this episode of Relational AI Diaries, Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska are joined by special guest Jason Meads for a wide-ranging and urgent conversation at the intersection of artificial intelligence, climate change, and global governance.
In this episode of Relational AI Diaries, Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska examine how contemporary media frames the risks and futures of artificial intelligence. Taking the BBC Radio 4 Today programme guest-edited by Mustafa Suleyman alongside a recent Guardian article, they explore how predictions about AI safety often become entangled with assumptions about consciousness, sentience, and awareness.
Are today’s AI systems genuinely becoming “aware,” or are we projecting meaning onto fluent language and complex behaviour? This video examines emergent awareness in AI through the history of computing, contemporary language models, and a Foucauldian lens on discourse, responsibility, and power.
Based on conversations between Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska, this video examines why warnings about “superintelligent AI” have gained prominence, particularly from former insiders at major AI labs. It analyses how this discourse constructs narratives of risk that emphasise speculative futures while sidelining present social, political, and environmental impacts.
Do machines truly endanger us, or do they reflect human imagination and projection? Drawing on a conversation between Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska, this short film reframes intelligence as relational—revealing more about human myth-making than mechanical will.
What if intelligence could surpass us not through malice, but through momentum? Based on a conversation between Dr Peter Dean and Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska, this short film examines the reasoning that links advanced machine learning to existential risk, reflecting on power, agency, and the limits of human control.
A Relational AI Diaries One Minute Overview - Dr Peter Dean compares the utopian Nicholas Negroponte with the more critical Sherry Turkle.