The Artificial Human

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong examine the decisions shaping the adoption of military AI in the United States and beyond, asking whether governance is keeping pace — or whether responsibility is being left to the technology’s creators.
A recent dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon revealed that commercial contracts, rather than clear policy, are helping to define how AI can be used by the military. But the disagreement was less about ethics than about timing, with the military pressing ahead to adopt systems before their developers considered them sufficiently reliable.
Dr Brianna Rosen reflects on what this tells us about the lack of detailed policy, regulation and legal frameworks governing AI in warfare, while journalist and author Katrina Manson explains what we can learn from the origins of the US military’s core AI programme as explored in her book, Project Maven, the subject of her book Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.
Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong
Producer: Peter McManus
Sound: Fraser Jackson and Gav Murchie

The recent strikes in Iran were planned, executed and assessed with Ai. Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong find out how Ai is transforming war and asking is the human still meaningfully in the loop?
We hear from Keith Dear, ex-RAF intelligence officer and one of the first people to advise Number 10 on the potential of Ai for the military. He'll explain how Ai is being used in decision making in conflict and how its made compatible with international law. While Dr Elke Schwarz lays out the ethical challenges and concerns about the gradual squeezing out of human involvement in the identification and elimination of targets.
Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fing
Production team: Peter McManus and Rachael O'Neil
Sound: Kris McConnachie and Gav Murchie

As part of the BBC's AI Unpacked week Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong join an audience of pupils, teachers and education experts to ask if artificial intelligence is the future of learning.
Recorded at University College London in their bicentennial year, the programme asks how we can use this revolutionary tool to equip the next generation for a future where Ai will be everywhere. 
The panel features Alex Russell, former head teacher and co‑founder of the charity AI in Education; Professor Sonia Livingstone, social psychologist and member of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI; and Dr Tom Chatfield, author and philosopher of technology.
Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong
Producer: Rachael O'Neill
Sound: Emma Harth and Steve Greenwood

Chat GPT, Gemini etc are most people's idea of artificial intelligence. But are the limitations of the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them an obstacle to achieving Ai that understand the world beyond what its learnt from the internet. That's increasingly the opinion of leading researchers who despite the industries fixation with LLMs are voting with their feet and setting up their own research labs to look at other ways to achieve Ai.
Aleks and Kevin talk with Michael Woolridge, Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford to understand why he thinks LLMs are a hack, before speaking with long time tech innovator Jeff Hawkins about his why his 1000 brains Ai project could produce models that actually understand the world much more like we do.
Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong
Producer: Peter McManus
Research: Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Minnie Harrop
Sound: Steve Greenwood and Sean Mullervy

Aleks and Kevin look at how Ai chatbots and summaries might kill the web as we know it. When people get all the answers they want from their AI, can the sites they've scraped for content survive if no one visits them? Sajeeda Merali of the professional publishers association discusses the challenges her members face. And the original disruptor of spreading information, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, talks about the reliance of Ai on the work of his legions of volunteer 'wikipedians' and why attribution is such an issue.
Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong
Producer: Peter McManus
Research: Rachael O'Neill