Back to School

Dónal and Ciarán return in time for the new school and college terms to help you get back to learning about GenAI. In this episode, they focus on providing an explainer for the significance and specifics of the OpenAI - Hugging Face attack, discussion of new 2040 predictions for AI, political backlash to AI and data centres, and Ciarán's special hatred for hideous AI-derived flyers and posters.See a full text transcript here Topics in this episode:New AI "Revenue Run Rate" calculations, where the big AI companies try to annualise shorter term revenue periods to claim greater return on investmentExplaining Hugging Face and OpenAI's model hacking it - including details from METR's recent independent reportDiscussion of the problematic safety culture at AI organisations and the push for hype associated with a new model's capabilitiesAI 2040 by Daniel Kokotajlo et al. Political backlash against Data CentresMark Zuckerberg's essay - a critical analysis :)AI graphic design becoming ubiquitous in our livesResources:METR's independent investigation of the OpenAI HuggingFace Attack: https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/#core-takeaways-about-this-incidentMIT Technology Review's reporting on the safety culture at OpenAI: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/31/1143180/hugging-face-hack-could-indicate-cultural-issues-at-openai/The AI2040 predictions: https://ai-2040.com/Data Centres in Ireland accounting for 23% of electric grid usage (RTÉ): https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0707/1582175-cso-data-centre-energy-figures/Reporting on Data Centre water usage in Ireland (The Journal): https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-data-centre-water-use-7137959-Aug2026/Mark Zuckerberg's "The Future is for Everyone" essay: https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/Reuters reporting on the extent of AI political lobbying: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/new-kingmakers-crypto-ai-betting-firms-fuel-record-spending-2026-midterms-2026-08-20/404 Media's Reporting on Amazon's destruction of rare books: https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán are back to discuss some of the various costs of AI, as we reach the middle of 2026 and see the AI valuation bubble and its associated hype continue to expand. In this episode, the focus is on data centres - especially in Ireland - as well as a range of the costs of AI that demand our attention at a time when the focus is usually on the opportunities instead.Topics in this episode:The environmental costs of data centres - in Ireland and elsewhere - as gas-fired electricity generation is needed to feed the growing demand for compute powerThe electricity costs for households in Ireland, linked to our national policies to become a data centre hub and a "cautionary tale" according to the UNThe costs for jobs and discussion of recent job losses in Ireland's tech sectorThe increased token-based costs of using AI as subsidised usage decreases and companies and users get bigger billsThe information and truth costs as AI contributes slop and summarises search results in new ways, often obfuscating sources and validityThe social and democratic costs of AI misinformation, breakdown of public consultation and a bleak future of workResources & Links:Reporting by the Irish Times on Ireland being branded a "cautionary tale" in a recent UN report"Data centres have drained €715 million from the Irish economy" - The report from Friends of the Earth referred to in this episode The Journal's excellent project tracking Data Centres (2025)Ed Zitron's discussion of Microsoft's Token Billing for GitHub CoPilotAxios reporting on ballooning AI-usage costs as token-billing ramps up&udm=14 - the parameter Dónal mentions that can be added to Google URLs to disable the AI-first version of search results (Tedium). Another related discussion on Tom's Hardware.Politico's reporting on the European Parliament abandoning Google as their search engine in favour of QwantThe Guardian's reporting on the senior Australian academic who used AI to author their "don't rely on AI" opinion piece. Magnifica Humanitas - Pope Leo's papal encyclical on AI and humanity. You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán return for a new year of new updates and new concerns in the world of Generative Artificial Intelligence. Again for 2026, the podcast will provide roughly quarterly updates on major themes and topics and this Spring episode covers recent news and connects with older themes and conversations.Topics in this episode"BUBBLEWATCH" - new precarious developments in the massive valuations of a small number of tech companies at the forefront of AI development, and some concerns about stock prices and where future income will come from to cover the escalating costs.Grok (xAI) and the fallout from the use of the tool in generating non-consensual sexual imagery - and its wider impact in raising awareness about unregulated uses.Agentic AI and the rise of OpenClaw - a framework for providing semi-autonomous AI task management, which has seen recent swift uptake and security concerns.Related discussion of the MoltBook story, and perceptions about insight into what AI is thinkingAI Hype and recent viral articles, and their effect in driving worried people to purchase subscriptions Safer Internet Day and how people, especially parents, can take a more critical look at safe and appropriate use of AI toolsResources & LinksSafer Internet Day resources on AI for teachers and parentsMatt Shumer's viral article, Something Big is Coming, and Ed Zitron's very  critical podcast rebuttal, which also contains an annotated version of the original.Coverage of Meta's patent on AI impersonation of dead users, and Meta's troubling memo indicating their desire to use political turmoil to cover release of a controversial featureAn example of the MoltBook hype, from the GuardianCoverage of AI as a threat to democracy in IrelandYou can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán return with more "Bubble Watch", reporting on the latest expansion in valuations, hype, and attempts to find new ways to commercialise AI. Among those potential avenues to income, they discuss emerging AI robots, OpenAI's decision to allow AI erotica for adults, and the push to get AI into education - as well as the associated concerns. This last quarterly update for 2025 draws together some themes that you've identified in your submitted comments and questions and tries to end on a little hope amid a lot of anxiety!Topics in the episodeThe AI Bubble gets bubblier - OpenAI's quarterly loss reports, Sam Altman's angry interviews, and the beginnings of a withdrawal of money from key parts of the AI economy.AI hardware in the form of robots like the recent XPENG demo and renewed concerns about labour replacement and military applications.OpenAI's hope of monetising via erotica.AI disinformation in the Irish Presidential election, as well as related stories in the Netherlands and elsewhereThe unsuitability of mainstream GenAI tools to educational contexts and recent research on their associated Cognitive Deficit in learning contextsTop-down vs Bottom-up reactions and responses to AI in our lives and workResources & LinksThe widely circulated images describing the circular investment within AI include this famous example from Bloomberg ReportingRecent reporting on the topic is widespread but includes these examples from WSJ, NYT, Ars Technica, Business Insider, etc., etc. MIT NANDA report on 95% of AI integration showing no return on investmentMIT Media Lab's research on Cognitive Deficit and AIReporting on the XPENG humanoid robot (Euronews)Reporting from Ciarán's colleagues at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in a Digital Dispatch on Russian state content surfacing in Chatbot outputsMore discussion of "LLM Grooming & Data Voids" in this Harvard Kennedy School paper.Fact Check reporting from TheJournal on AI videos in the Irish Presidential Election, including the infamous Catherine Connolly withdrawal fake videoReporting from Politico on AI Deepfakes in European ElectionsYou can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán explore the increasingly looming questions about the overinflation of the major AI companies' valuations and the anxiety about whether we are in a bubble - and what might happen if it pops. Relevant to their discussion of the need for AI models to keep the hype levels high, they discuss the muted reception to the release of ChatGPT-5 and some of the emerging strategies to make AI chatbots more palatable to certain audiences who are worried about "woke".Topics in this episodeAre we in an AI bubble? Spoiler alert: Yes - based on any normal metric of what an investment bubble is - but why is the promise of an almost-there superintelligence keeping things from popping?Despite being in a bubble, the lasting impacts of where AI already is on jobs and society is discussedThe recent release of ChatGPT-5 has led to negative feedback from the tech press and vocal users - this is contrasted with other recent version releases.Examining how AI companies are trying to find new ways to add value, leading to a discussion of "Third Devices" and AI hardwareThe limitations and diminishing returns of training on synthetic data - and the apparent slowing down in model progressAI & Ideology - what does it mean to have a non-woke AI?Resources & LinksThe Economist story mentioned by Dónal: "AI valuations are verging on the unhinged - Unless superintelligence is just around the corner" (25 June 2025)Article in TheJournal.ie on "Brendan", the AI Dublin Tour GuideChatGPT's dodgy graph is linked and discussed here: "OpenAI gets caught vibe graphing" (The Verge, 07 August)Sam Altman (OpenAI) tells venture capitalists that he will take billions of their money and build AGI - and then ask it how to make a return on the investment  (Twitter Video, Warren Terra)Some good discussion on the struggles of agentive AI ("AI Agents have, so far, mostly been a dud", Gary Marcus, Substack)Apple's important recent paper on the limitations of "reasoning" within tested reasoning models is available as a PDF hereCoverage of Truth Social's deal with Perplexity - to make a non-woke chatbot for the platformYou can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán continue the 2025 season with a second quarterly update that looks at some recent themes in AI development. They're pondering doom again, as we increasingly grapple with the evidence that AI systems are powerfully persuasive and full of flattery at the same time as our ability to meaningfully supervise them seems to be diminishing.Topics in this episodeCan we see how reasoning models reason? If AI is thinking, or sharing information and it's not in human language, how can we check that it's aligned with our values. This interpretability issue is tied to the concept of neuralese - inscrutable machine thoughts!We discuss the predictions and prophetic doom visions of the AI-2027 documentIncreasing ubiquity and sometimes invisibility of AI, as it's inserted into other products. Is this more enshittification? AI is becoming a persuasion machine - we look at the recent issues on Reddit's r/ChangeMyView, where researchers skipped good ethics practice but ended up with worrying resultsWe talk about flattery, manipulation, and Eli Yudkowsky's AI-Box thought experimentResources & LinksThe AI-2027 piece, from Daniel Kokotajlo et al. is a must-read!Dario Amodei's latest essay, The Urgency of InterpretabilityT.O.P.I.C. - A detailed referencing model for indicating the use of GenAI Tools in academic assignments. Yudkowsky's AI-box Experiment, described on his site."The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen" - coverage of the University of Zurich / Reddit study, by Tom Barlett for The AtlanticChatGPT wants us to buy things via our AI conversations (reported by Reece Rogers, for Wired)You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán start a new season for 2025, with a slight change in format to bring you roughly quarterly updates on the themes and topics required to help you know enough about AI. This first episode of 2025, recorded in mid February, gives a summary of what's happened since last November and answers some of your submitted questions. (Thanks for those!)Topics in this episodeWe can't avoid talking about them: Musk & Trump and some of the effects they've both had on the AI space in the last three monthsRegulatory Developments, and the EU's AI Act starting to come into forceUS - EU relations, and the continued innovation vs regulation chatterDeepSeek and China's bold entry into the contemporary AI model spaceWhat are Reasoning Models and how do they work?Some history and concepts related to machine logicAI Benchmarks - a quick primer as we move closer to "Humanity's Last Exam"Resources & LinksJD Vance's Speech from the Paris AI Conference is here (The American Presidency Project)Details on HLE (Humanity's Last Exam) here, including some sample questions. Let us know how you did!Details on the ARC-AGI here.A graph of OpenAI model performance (and discussion) is here (80,000 hours)You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán discuss the ways - both real and imagined in fiction - that AI could bring about civilization-ending doom for us all. What can we learn from how sci-fi has treated this topic? What are the distant and nearer potential dooms, and what can we do now, apart from saying thanks to ChatGPT? Oh, and note that listening to this episode may drastically affect your life and cause a future powerful AI to punish you in a psychic prison!Topics in this episodeWhat is p(Doom) and why are we hearing about it from AI researchers and investors?How has AI doom been dealt with in Sci-fi and can this teach us anything useful?What is Dead Internet Theory and why might AI contribute to the Enshitification of the internet?Why has the religious concept of Paschal's Wager found a new form in AI discussions that started on internet forums?Resources & LinksMore on the history of p(Doom) on wikipedia here.An interesting article on Dead Internet Theory & AI Walter, Y. Artificial influencers and the dead internet theory. AI & Society (2024).Read about Roko's Basilisk (if you dare)More on Roko's Basilisk on the LessWrong forum where the though experiment emerged in 2009You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán discuss some of the concerns about misinformation and disinformation that have emerged with the rise of impressively capable GenAI models, and provide some detail on what their effects might be. They discuss the calls for regulation and how this has begun to take shape in the EU, Ireland,  and elsewhere.Topics in this episodeWhat are the implications for misinformation inherent in the current and emerging GenAI models?Why have there been calls to pause development, and why did this not lead anywhere?How have the various language, image, audio, and video models already been used for problematic content?Is social media ready for the onslaught to come?Can we regulate AI to combat this and how is that beginning?Why should we be critical of offers to self-regulate from the tech companies?What's the EU AI Act? And why is Ireland using the word "doomsayers" in policy documents about AI?Resources & LinksThe EU's AI Act: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/Some of ISD's work on AI & Misinformation: https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/disconnected-from-reality-american-voters-grapple-with-ai-and-flawed-osint-strategies/More on the Slovak Deepfake case discussed by Ciarán: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/beyond-the-deepfake-hype-ai-democracy-and-the-slovak-case/GenAI & ISIS: https://gnet-research.org/2024/02/05/ai-caliphate-pro-islamic-state-propaganda-and-generative-ai/?The Irish Government's "Friend or Foe" Report: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/6538e-artificial-intelligence-friend-or-foe/You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions! 

Dónal and Ciarán discuss the vast ocean of data that Large Language Models (LLMs) depend on for their training, covering some of the issues of access to that data and the biases reflected within it. This episode should help you better understand some aspects of the AI training process.Topics in this episodeWhat data is being used to train models like ChatGPT?What are "supervised" or "unsupervised" machine learning methods?How have the owners of copyright data, like news organisations, reacted to the use of their text?What issues of bias arise in training models based on existing text?What happens when AI models train on AI output?How do we morally and ethically align the actions of AI models, as part of their training?You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions!