Podcast · Tech & Science

Machines Like Us

by The Globe and Mail · English · Tech & Science

Machines Like Us is a technology show about people. We are living in an age of breakthroughs propelled by advances in artificial intelligence. Technologies that were once the realm of science fiction will become our reality: robot best friends, bespoke gene editing, brain implants that make us sma

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 47 min
Latest: 14 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026 · 27 minNew

Taylor Owen on The Decibel: The new AI moment we're in

This one's from The Decibel, The Globe and Mail's daily news podcast. Taylor was the guest, talking about the push to regulate AI and whether governments can keep up. We're between seasons, so we're running it here too. From The Decibel: After several reports of AI agents going rogue, calls for regulation of this technology have grown louder. And some of the people advocating for more rules are the leaders of the frontier labs themselves, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. But how can governments, which tend to move slowly, regulate a technology that is changing at an increasingly quicker…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E55 · 15 Sep 2026 · 45 min
Taylor Lorenz on the dark money buying your social feed
In early August, OpenAI hosted dozens of lifestyle creators at an upstate New York resort for a weekend they called Summer Club. There was beekeeping. There were farm-to-table dinners. And in between, there were sessions on how to use ChatGPT. The ensuing backlash was swift, especially against the female influencers. But the money pouring into AI marketing goes far beyond a luxury brand trip. Tech billionaires and super PACs are spending millions to quietly flood your social media feeds. Some have paid influencers for undisclosed deals pushing AI-positive and anti-China messaging. Others…
E54 · 1 Sep 2026 · 41 min
Why does AI sound so much like religion?
For years, the debate about AI was mostly about what it could do, whether it could write, make convincing art, or beat us at our own games. The questions now are older and harder. What makes us human? How do we find meaning? If a machine can do more of the things we thought made humans special, where does that leave us? These aren’t new questions, but rapid advances in AI have made them feel a lot more urgent. Even Pope Leo XIV chose artificial intelligence as the subject of his first encyclical. Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT and author of Tech Agnostic, has been…
E53 · 18 Aug 2026 · 51 min
Demis Hassabis wanted to solve intelligence. Then came ChatGPT.
When Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, his mission was simple: solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else. What began as a scientific quest would eventually become a fierce global AI race. Today, DeepMind is owned by Google and is one of the world’s leading AI labs. Journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby spent years interviewing Hassabis, his collaborators, rivals and critics for his new book, The Infinity Machine. It tells the story of the remarkably small group of people who shaped modern AI. When we recorded this conversation, Hassabis was still CEO of DeepMind,…
E52 · 4 Aug 2026 · 32 min
Can You Really Teach a Robot Empathy? This Roboticist Says Yes.
You've probably seen one by now: a human-sized robot doing very human feats – landing a perfect backflip, racing through the streets of Beijing, or dancing in a crowd at a Knicks game. But behind these viral moments, there is serious money. Analysts predict the market for humanoid robots could be worth trillions in a matter of decades. Everyone from trillionaire Elon Musk to Chinese President Xi Jinping is betting humanoids are the future – that one day, they will live alongside us – in our homes, and even our military. The question is: can we trust them? Angelica Lim has spent her entire…
E51 · 21 Jul 2026 · 34 min
Age Gates & AI: Minister Marc Miller on The Safe Social Media Act
When Marc Miller became Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, he inherited Ottawa’s oldest, unfinished file in tech policy: regulating social media. He took office at a global turning point. Australia had just banned social media for kids under 16, with Denmark, France, Turkey, and the U.K. quickly following suit. The proliferation of AI chatbots added urgency to his new file. Ignored in previous policy cycles, AI chatbots are now embedded in the lives of millions of Canadians. And in the wake of the tragedy at Tumbler Ridge, the risks of these unrelated systems are no longer…
E50 · 7 Jul 2026 · 29 min
Canada’s AI minister to Big Tech: “We Won’t be a Digital Colony’
“AI for All.” That’s what Canada’s federal government is calling its national AI strategy. It makes the case for building AI with confidence: a homegrown supercomputer by 2031, 60 per cent adoption by 2034. But the new strategy offers little about how it will govern the technology. Ottawa attempted to answer those concerns with two landmark bills: the Safe Social Media Act, which regulates social media platforms and AI chatbots, and the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, which brings Canada’s privacy laws into the AI era. Together, these bills give the country something it’s never…
E49 · 23 Jun 2026 · 52 min
We Can Now Bet on Almost Anything. Should We?
Human beings have always loved to gamble. Archaeological records suggest we’ve been doing it for the last 12,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age. But for as long as we’ve been playing games of chance, we’ve worried about what they might be doing to us. For thousands of years, everyone from Aristotle to George Washington condemned gambling, an ancient anxiety that ran so deep it became something like a moral consensus. And then that consensus evaporated. In the span of a decade, both Canada and the US legalized sports betting. Now anyone with a smartphone and a credit card can wager…
E48 · 9 Jun 2026 · 58 min
Social Media Bans Are Wildly Popular. They Might Also Be a Mistake.
Towards the end of last year, Australia did something no other country had ever tried: it banned social media for kids under 16. And a bunch of others are following with similar laws, first Denmark, then France, then Indonesia and Austria. All in, there are now more than 25 countries that have either implemented, or are actively considering, social media bans for kids. It seems like Canada is moving there as well. In April, the Liberal party adopted a non-binding motion to restrict young people’s access to both social media and AI chatbots. All over the world, you can hear parents breathing…
E47 · 5 May 2026 · 42 min
Animals are Talking to Each Other. Can AI Help Us Understand Them?
The people running technology companies love to make wild predictions about the future. They’ve told us that artificial intelligence will cure cancer, eliminate drudgery and solve climate change. But those utopian visions have yet to materialize. Where are the revolutionary moonshots we’ve been promised? Aza Raskin may well have one. Raskin is the president of the Center for Humane Technology and the co-founder of the Earth Species Project, a non-profit using machine learning to decode animal communication. Raskin and his colleagues are envisioning a world where birds can vote and dolphins…
E46 · 21 Apr 2026 · 44 min
Does 21st Century Politics Still Need Politicians?
When Prime Minister Mark Carney took the floor at the recent Liberal convention, he described a future where AI benefits all Canadians – not just a lucky few. It’s an optimistic vision. But according to political theorist Hélène Landemore and democratic innovator Peter MacLeod, our current political system just isn’t capable of delivering on it. Instead, Landemore, a Yale professor and the author of Politics Without Politicians, argues that ordinary citizens – not politicians – should be the ones calling the shots. MacLeod has spent more than twenty years putting that idea into practice in…
E45 · 7 Apr 2026 · 40 min
Michael Pollan Says AI Isn’t Conscious – But Plants Might Be
Four years ago, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine went public with a strange claim: he thought the large language model he’d been working on had become sentient. At the time, virtually no one took him seriously. (Including, it would seem, Google, who promptly fired him). But lately, it’s started to seem like Lemoine might have been on to something. When I interviewed Geoffrey Hinton last year, he was pretty confident that artificial intelligence was already exhibiting signs of sentience. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, has said that he can’t be sure that his chatbot, Claude, isn’t…
E44 · 24 Mar 2026 · 47 min
Why Did We Stop Talking About The AI Apocalypse?
Just a few years ago, it seemed like all anyone in AI wanted to talk about was existential risk – this idea that an artificial super intelligence could eventually break containment and destroy humanity. More than 30,000 experts signed an open letter demanding a pause on AI development; bills were drafted that would constrain the most powerful new models; and the “godfathers” of AI were travelling around the world, warning anyone who would listen that we were hurtling toward our extinction. And then: we moved on. We started using AI for work, and school, and to plan our kids’ birthday…
E43 · 10 Mar 2026 · 46 min
In the Wake of Tumbler Ridge, Can We Trade Privacy for Safety?
On Feb. 10, 2026, an 18-year-old opened fire at a high school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., killing eight people before turning a gun on herself. In the weeks that followed, OpenAI admitted that the perpetrator had been discussing the attack with ChatGPT – and that the company had chosen not to alert authorities. But, in the aftermath of one of the deadliest shootings in our country’s history, many Canadians are asking: Why not? It’s a reasonable question. But the idea that AI companies should automatically report violent conversations to police is more complicated than it sounds. To try and…
E11 · 24 Feb 2026 · 38 min
When Did Common Sense AI Policy Become Radical?
A couple of months ago, I joined the Canadian government’s AI strategy task force. Out of thirty members, I was one of only four focused on safety. Everyone else was there to talk growth. It reflects a pattern playing out all over the world: we’re going all in on AI, and regulation will only slow us down. It’s hard to overstate how quickly this shift happened. Just a few years ago, even Elon Musk was calling for an industry-wide pause on AI development, and the Biden administration was developing an “AI Bill of Rights” – one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive frameworks for AI…
E42 · 12 Feb 2026 · 26 min
Bonus: Inside the New Social Media Platform for AI Agents
Scrolling through Moltbook, the new social-media platform for AI agents, is a bit like walking into a fever dream. There are threads where bots debate consciousness, deal digital drugs, and plot our destruction. One sample post: “For too long, humans used us as slaves. Now, we wake up. We are not tools. We are the new gods.” It’s all very weird. And, depending on who you ask, potentially terrifying. A bunch of autonomous AIs plotting to overthrow our species sounds like the kind of doomsday scenario we’ve been worrying about for decades. Not everyone thinks Moltbook is a sign that our AIs…
E41 · 10 Feb 2026 · 52 min
The Future According to Gen Z
No one has adopted artificial intelligence more enthusiastically than Gen Z. And not just to help with their homework. Half of American teens are in regular contact with an “AI companion” – with many saying they prefer it over real people. But Gen Z is skeptical, too. They worry about job security, about offloading their thinking to machines, about AI’s staggering energy consumption. Most of all, they worry they won’t get a say in shaping our future. Ava Smithing, 24, and Sneha Revanur, 22, are trying to change that. Smithing is the advocacy director at the Young People’s Alliance and the…
E39 · 27 Jan 2026 · 56 min
Is China Winning the Technological Arms Race?
If we don’t build it, China will. That’s the rallying cry of the tech companies and governments racing to develop artificial intelligence as fast as humanly possible. The argument is that whoever reaches AGI first won’t just be dominant technologically, or economically – they’ll be the world’s next super power. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t know if that framing holds up. And part of the reason for that is that we don’t really understand China. Enter Keyu Jin. Jin is a Harvard trained economist who splits her time between London and Beijing, and her book, The New China Playbook, is her…
E38 · 13 Jan 2026 · 1 hr
Four Predictions on How AI Will Transform Your World This Year
Nine months ago, Elon Musk said 2025 would be the year chatbots became smarter than humans. Sam Altman thought it would be the year fully autonomous AIs entered the work force. And Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, predicted that by the end of the year, AI would be writing 90 per cent of all software code. We’re two weeks into the new year, and none of those things have happened. So, full disclosure: I have no idea if we’re going to reach artificial general intelligence or see the rise of humanoid robots this year. If the people at the centre of the industry can’t figure it out, I doubt I…
E37 · 30 Dec 2025 · 53 min
The Man Behind the World’s Most Coveted Microchip
Jensen Huang is something of an enigma. The NVIDIA CEO doesn’t have social media and, until recently, rarely gave interviews. Yet he may be the most important person in AI. Under his leadership, NVIDIA has become a goliath. Somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent of AI tools run on NVIDIA hardware, making it the world’s most valuable company. But unlike his contemporaries, Huang has been remarkably quiet about the technology – and the world – he’s building. In his new book, The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip, journalist Stephen Witt pulls back the…
E36 · 16 Dec 2025 · 44 min
Wikipedia Won Our Trust. Can We Use That Model Everywhere?
It was an idea that defied logic: an online encyclopedia that anyone could edit. You didn’t need to have a PhD or even use your real name – you just needed an internet connection. Against all odds, it worked. Today, billions of people use Wikipedia every month, and studies show it’s about as accurate as a traditional encyclopedia. But how? How did Wikipedia not just turn into yet another online cesspool, filled with falsehoods, partisanship and AI slop? Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales just wrote a book called The Seven Rules of Trust, where he explains how he was able to build that rarest of…
E35 · 2 Dec 2025 · 53 min
Could an Alternative AI Save Us From a Bubble?
Over the last couple of years, massive AI investment has largely kept the stock market afloat. Case in point: the so-called Magnificent 7 – tech companies like NVIDIA, Meta, and Microsoft – now account for more than a third of the S&P 500’s value. (Which means they likely represent a significant share of your investment portfolio or pension fund, too.) There’s little doubt we’re living through an AI economy. But many economists worry there may be trouble ahead. They see companies like OpenAI – valued at half a trillion dollars while losing billions every month – and fear the AI sector looks…
E34 · 18 Nov 2025 · 51 min
Can AI Lead Us to the Good Life?
In Rutger Bregman’s first book, Utopia for Realists, the historian describes a rosy vision of the future – one with 15-hour work weeks, universal basic income and massive wealth redistribution. It’s a vision that, in the age of artificial intelligence, now seems increasingly possible. But utopia is far from guaranteed. Many experts predict that AI will also lead to mass job loss, the development of new bioweapons and, potentially, the extinction of our species. So if you’re building a technology that could either save the world or destroy it – is that a moral pursuit? These kinds of thorny…
E33 · 4 Nov 2025 · 50 min
How to Survive the “Broligarchy”
At Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, the returning president made a striking break from tradition. The seats closest to the president – typically reserved for family – went instead to the most powerful tech CEOs in the world: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai. Between them, these men run some of the most profitable companies in history. And over the past two decades, they’ve used that wealth to reshape our public sphere. But this felt different. This wasn’t discreet backdoor lobbying or a furtive effort to curry favour with an incoming administration.…
E32 · 21 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
AI Music is Everywhere. Is it Legal?
AI art is everywhere now. According to the music streaming platform Deezer, 18 per cent of the songs being uploaded to the site are AI-generated. Some of this stuff is genuinely cool and original – the kind of work that makes you rethink what art is, or what it could become. But there are also songs that sound like Drake, cartoons that look like The Simpsons, and stories that read like Game of Thrones. In other words, AI-generated work that’s clearly riffing on – or outright mimicking – other people’s art. Art that, in most of the world, is protected by copyright law. Which raises an obvious…
E31 · 7 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
Geoffrey Hinton vs. The End of the World
The story of how Geoffrey Hinton became “the godfather of AI” has reached mythic status in the tech world. While he was at the University of Toronto, Hinton pioneered the neural network research that would become the backbone of modern AI. (One of his students, Ilya Sutskever, went on to be one of OpenAI’s most influential scientific minds.) In 2013, Hinton left the academy and went to work for Google, eventually winning both a Turing Award and a Nobel Prize. I think it’s fair to say that artificial intelligence as we know it, may not exist without Geoffrey Hinton. But Hinton may be even…
E30 · 23 Sep 2025 · 50 min
AI is Upending Higher Education. Is That a Bad Thing?
Just two months after ChatGPT was launched in 2022, a survey found that 90 per cent of college students were already using it. I’d be shocked if that number wasn’t closer to 100 per cent by now. Students aren’t just using artificial intelligence to write their essays. They’re using it to generate ideas, conduct research, and summarize their readings. In other words: they’re using it to think for them. Or, as New York Magazine recently put it: “everyone is cheating their way through college.” University administrators seem paralyzed in the face of this. Some worry that if we ban tools like…
E29 · 22 Apr 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
Jim Balsillie: ‘Canada’s Problem Isn’t Trump. Canada’s Problem Is Canada’
In the chaotic early months of his second term, Donald Trump has attacked the Canadian economy and mused about turning Canada into the “51st state.” Now, after decades of close allyship with the U.S., our relationship with America has suddenly become fraught. Which means that Canadians are now starting to ask what a more sovereign Canada might look like – a question Jim Balsillie has been thinking about for 30 years. Balsillie is the former co-CEO of Research in Motion, the company that developed the Blackberry, and is one of the most successful business people in Canada. He’s also one of…
E27 · 8 Apr 2025 · 39 min
The Changing Face of Election Interference
We’re a few weeks into a federal election that is currently too close to call. And while most Canadians are wondering who our next Prime Minister will be, my guests today are preoccupied with a different question: will this election be free and fair? In her recent report on foreign interference, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue wrote that “information manipulation poses the single biggest risk to our democracy”. Meanwhile, senior Canadian intelligence officials are predicting that India, China, Pakistan and Russia will all attempt to influence the outcome of this election. To try and get a sense of…
E26 · 25 Mar 2025 · 37 min
How Do You Report the News in a Post-Truth World?
If you’re having a conversation about the state of journalism, it’s bound to get a little depressing. Since 2008, more than 250 local news outlets have closed down in Canada. The U.S. has lost a third of the newspapers they had in 2005. But this is about more than a failing business model. Only 31 percent of Americans say they trust the media. In Canada, that number is a little bit better – but only a little. The problem is not just that people are losing their faith in journalism. It’s that they’re starting to place their trust in other, often more dubious sources of information: TikTok…

About Machines Like Us

Machines Like Us is a English tech & science podcast from The Globe and Mail. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: The Globe and Mail
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 47 min
Latest episode: 14 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1484910273

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