Sam Hiner, co-founder and executive director of Young People's Alliance, tells us what REALLY moves AI policy forward in the US. The big reveal is in what's more powerful than big tech's mountain of lobbying funds.

Big tech wants young people to use AI for companionship, but US teens are fighting back with their stories and votes.

Learn more about Young People's Alliance here.

Get involved in the movement and/or start a chapter at your school here.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

AI will NOT take all our jobs, if only we learn from the mistakes of the past.

Welcome to episode 4 of our AI and Work series with Our Lives With Bots!

In this episode, Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, shares a grounded perspective on what AI means for work.

Leveraging lessons from past technological advancements and responses, Arvind shows us just how many misconceptions there are about AI replacing workers and explains how we can ensure a positive and productive future with AI at work.

03:51 Beyond the hype and doom: AI as Normal Technology and what it means for work

06:40 Breaking down misconceptions about AI replacing workers

10:16 Why diffusion or uptake of AI is actually slow

12:48 AI benchmarks aren’t telling us what they’re capable of (ex. The Turing Test)

15:44 Existential threats from superintelligence will be brought about by those most worried about it

19:50 An increasing percentage of human jobs will be related to “AI control” (ex. software engineering)

23:10 Roadblocks for successful integration of AI into your workflow and how to overcome them (reliability of AI outputs, workplace scaffolds, deskilling, integration with other tools)

27:33 What sectors or types of jobs will be most impacted by AI? (software, media, & law)

30:32 How AI will affect workers: diminishing share of income, disruption of training pipelines, lowered work satisfaction

34:49 Agent-agent interaction trends (ex. Moltbook) and what it means for work

37:00 Last words of comfort on “AI will take everybody’s jobs” (lessons from the past)

41:12 Commentary by Rose & Angy

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Hilke Schellmann, author of The Algorithm, shares with us about how bots can hire, monitor, and fire you.

This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Welcome to episode 2 for Series X - “What’s the (AI) Hype?” - where we discuss what’s been happening in the world of artificial intelligence in the past few weeks.

The whole mark of this series is that there is no thread, just a string of hype debated by two psychologists/AI ethicists who love to harp on about Our Lives With Bots.

In this episode, we cover Google’s new personal intelligence, advertising in ChatGPT (but not Claude), AI attachment and empathy hacking, SuperBowl AI ads, fake jobs for AI data mills, an AI toy that leaked private conversations with kids, asking Grok for fact checks on X, Apple’s acquirement of a telepathic AI company, AI pets that patronize you…and more.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

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Links:

Google’s new personal intelligence

Advertising is coming to ChatGPT. But not to Claude oooo (Sam Altman claps back)

AI is hacking attachment and empathy (and should not pretend to have consciousness or emotion)

AI toy Bondu exposed 50k logs of its chats with kids to anyone with a gmail account

What happens when your process of forming beliefs is offloaded onto a chatbot?

Anthropic’s patterns of disempowerment

@ Grok is this true?

ChatGPT launches ChatGPT Health

The AI pet is here (in China)

Apple acquires Q [dot] AI, a surveillance tool
AlterEgo, the “near-telepathic AI”

Hot take? I suppose we should leave it to you to decide. But we'll still add in our opinion, of course. 

Moltbook ISN'T NEW, it's just hyped. And expected. And yet...still interesting and worthwhile to [insert: laugh, sigh...freak out?] about. Especially when it involves renting a human (because robots need your body to get through CAPTCHA, of course).

Enjoy hearing about Moltbook (and its predecessor, AI Village) from the perspective of two psychologists/AI ethicists, Rose and Angy.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

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Links:

Inside Moltbook: The Social Network Where AI Agents Talk And Humans Just Watch

Matt’s X post

AI Village

Gemini freaks out

A psychologist comes to Gemini’s aid

Welcome to Episode 2 of Series 3 on AI & Work, our deep-dive into the part of the AI conversation everyone keeps circling but rarely slowing down to actually think about: skills.

As one big tech exec put it (paraphrasing but not really): AI has never been more powerful — and we’ve never been more confused. Cool cool cool.

In this episode, we zoom out to look at the major trends shaping AI and work in 2026 — from automation and robotics to AI audits and the not-so-sexy but extremely necessary return of critical thinking (yes, that thing we were all told we could outsource). Spoiler alert: the theme is SKILLS SKILLS SKILLS — especially domain expertise and the ability to not blindly trust whatever the model spits out.

We break the conversation down through three (and sometimes four 👀) voices: the companies building these tools, the researchers studying them, the industries using and selling them — and, occasionally, the product itself. We talk institutional pressure, productivity fantasies, and why “just adopt AI” is way easier said than done when time, profit, and quality are all screaming at you.

And because we practice what we preach, Angy puts on her industry-practitioner hat and actually audits AI using AI for this very podcast. Can NotebookLM really read, synthesize, and communicate research accurately enough? Can ChatGPT hold a coherent conversation about epistemology? The answers are… instructive.

We also dig into youth attitudes toward AI and work, what people want AI to automate versus what experts think it can automate, and why uncritical adoption might be the most expensive skill gap of all.

TL;DR: AI isn’t replacing your job — but it is replacing your excuses for not thinking carefully about how you use it.

And, fun fact, chatGPT wrote this blurb! We normally craft the blurbs completely from our own brains, but this time, of course, keeping with the audit trend, we asked chatGPT: “can you create a blurb for our video for series 3 on AI and work and AI's impact on our relationship to work, episode 2 deep dive? Below are some skeleton notes for the episode (see: series 3 ep 2 notes) and example blurbs I've written for all the rest of our episodes (see: past episode blurbs). For this blurb, please conform to how I write the past blurbs - funny, colloquial, and informative/grabbing!”

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Links:

• Audio file for NotebookLM podcast on Shao et. al’s “Future of Work” article

• PDF file for NotebookLM presentation on article

Welcome to Series 3 of Our Lives With Bots on AI & Work, where we explore AI’s impact on the workforce and our relationship to work.

As big tech continues to churn out AI products and companies are tripping over their shoelaces to adopt them, workers are left in the lurch trying to juggle integrating yet another new technology into their workflow. “Move fast and then things are broken, and then you have to move REAL slow to fix them” might just be the tagline of this series. Series 3 of Our Lives With Bots covers just that and more, providing you with both the information and the tools to responsibly integrate AI (or not) into your own work and across your team and organization.

Do you use AI for work? We’d love to hear about your experience through our anonymous survey.

Feeling alienated by automation? You’re not alone. We’re here to give you facts and insights to make AI at work less isolating. In this introductory episode, we cover:

• Adoption of AI (Dayforce research)

• Job Displacement by AI (Goldman Sachs research)

• The Economist (new jobs)

• OpenAI’s two new labor-related initiatives

• Glean’s Work AI Institute to discover what makes AI work at work, deploying AI agents to help organizations integrate AI better

• The impact on entry-level jobs

• Deskilling at the entry and senior level

• Costly reputational risks (ex. Deloitte), spreading misinformation (ex. Springer)

• Anthropic’s research on their workers

• Responsible use and lack of standardized training

• Psychology, of course:

• Individual-level effects

• Automation bias

• Cognitive offloading

• Longer-term cognitive effects

• Relationship to your work

• Collective-level effects

• Work relationships

• Structure of organizations

• Expectations in work

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In our last series, you heard all about the impact of AI on children, teens, and young people, with a focus on AI companions, AI toys, and AI tools used in education. We heard from guest speakers Marisa Zalabak, an educational psychologist, practitioner, and AI ethicist, and Pilyoung Kim, psychologist and director of the Brain, AI, and Child (BAIC) Center at the University of Denver.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Is it human? Is it robot? Do kids believe that AI chatbots can see, feel, and think? Well, they certainly love it when it affirms their ideas. Welcome to the FINAL episode of Series 2 on the impact of AI on children, teens, and youth. In this episode, you’ll gain insight into the younger generation’s perceptions of AI robots and chatbots with Dr. Pilyoung Kim, Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Brain, Artificial Intelligence, and Child (BAIC) Center at the University of Denver.

Apparently, kids aren’t the only ones susceptible to the allure of humanlike AI - their parents are, too. Despite all the stories in the news about the social and mental health impacts of sycophantic AI, Pilyoung’s research shows that parents are more likely to recommend a humanlike AI chatbot to act as a social support for their teens. Further, Pilyoung’s collaborators in Nigeria are intrigued by the idea of AI chatbots posing as elders to maintain continuity of shared cultural values and traditions…but, as Pilyoung points out, the training data for chatbots is so Westernized and, as Angy says, can risk flattening or homogenizing data, leading to a critical loss of diversity.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Links to Pilyoung’s research:

"I am here for you": How relational conversational AI appeals to adolescents, especially those who are socially and emotionally vulnerable

Young children's anthropomorphism of an AI chatbot: Brain activation and the role of parent co-presence

Welcome to Episode 3 of our exclusive Series 2 on the impact of generative AI technologies on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Marisa Zalabak, an AI ethicist and educational psychologist who has worked as a practitioner and observer in over 500 schools in New York City, which has one of the largest education systems in the world. In our conversation, we cover how AI is being implemented in schools, and how teachers and those responsible for the care of vulnerable children are not being given the tools or time to ensure safety with AI. Marisa discusses what she sees as the greatest risk with AI in education - and it’s not what you might expect - and how open conversations and posing the right questions to your kids, neighbors, and others can help you start to make ethical choices with AI and protect young populations from harmful socio-affective AI use.

Marisa is also Co-Founder of GADES (Global Alliance for Digital Education & Sustainability) and Co-Chair of the IEEE AI Ethics Education Committee advancing human well-being with AI systems.

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GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: Our show features sensitive content, including mentions of suicide, self-harm, mental health, and sexual harassment and sextortion. Our developing lives with bots renders these subjects front-of-mind in our discussions, and we want viewers to be aware of this as they follow along.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Welcome to Episode 2 of our exclusive Series 2 on the impact of generative AI technologies on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we’ll cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users.

In this deep-dive episode, we’ll cover recent news and research on generative AI toys and the use of AI in education, providing you with some insane metrics about the AI toy industry in China, the UK, and the US and OpenAI and Mattel’s deal with Barbies and Hot Wheels. We’ll also cover research and news on the new AI toys Curio and Cayla, and discuss the real and potential harms of these new products.

On the education side (36:25), we’ll talk about metrics of student use of AI for schoolwork, studies on how the use of AI impacts brain activity and memory and student GPA and learning, the Alpha School and the Google Effect, research that talks about what people truly want AI to replace - and it’s not creativity or critical thinking, despite where AI’s being applied.

With all that being said, we’ll also discuss how this all fits into the question of what it means to be human and what it means to replace that - especially in terms of parenting, teaching, and creative work.

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GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: Our show features sensitive content, including mentions of suicide, self-harm, mental health, and sexual harassment and sextortion. Our developing lives with bots renders these subjects front-of-mind in our discussions, and we want viewers to be aware of this as they follow along.

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In our last episode, we laid the foundation for the series, covering the ongoing court cases around AI-induced suicide for (now) multiple teen users, Alpha School, the aim of big tech to predict the age of their users to “protect” vulnerable populations like children and youth, people’s perspectives on AI use in the classroom, and a truly interesting new AI toy called “Curio,” co-founded by Grimes that has a generative AI stuffed animal called Grok (!!!), “not to be confused” with Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot on X.

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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Links:

• MIT Technology Review on AI toys

• Guardian article on Curio

• Let the Children Play. Smart Toys and Child Vulnerability

• AI-Driven Design of Emotionally Supportive Toys for Child Development: An Iterative Process

• Pew Research Center on US teen’s use of AI for schoolwork

• Common sense media report on teen companion AI use

• Kosmyna et al (2025): Your Brain on ChatGPT

• Research paper on job sector preferences for AI automation