In this episode, Kieren and Riku kick off the new year by exploring the pitfalls of mass AI adoption, noting that chatbots like ChatGPT now have over 800 million weekly users. They discuss recent usage reports that analyse how the world is actually using these tools, contrasting short-term productivity gains with the dangers of "cognitive offloading" and the homogenization of creative work. Tune in for a guide on how to stop treating AI as an oracle and instead leverage it as a co-pilot that augments rather than replaces human thought.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Local Forecast – Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY.

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In this episode, Kieren and Riku get a guided tour of Isambard-AI – the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, ranked 11th most powerful and 4th greenest in the world – with Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith and Dr Emma Rose from the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing. They explore how national-scale AI really runs, what all that compute is used for in areas like health and finance, and why building this kind of sovereign AI infrastructure matters for the UK’s future.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Kieren and Riku tackle the polarising question of whether AI deserves legal rights and if consciousness is actually the right metric to use. Joined by Dr. Miranda Mowbray, an AI ethics expert from the University of Bristol, they explore the dangers of anthropomorphisation and reveal how even malware could pass certain tests for consciousness. They examine fascinating legal precedents where non-living entities, from corporations and rivers to religious idols, already hold rights, and discuss how these frameworks might close the accountability gap for autonomous systems. Tune in to discover why granting rights to AI might really be about protecting humans, and how the public can help shape future regulation

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Local Forecast – Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY.

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In this Short Stuff episode, Kieren and Riku ask which chatbot is actually best for you? With so many models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and now millions more), they argue there’s no single winner and it very much depends on what you’re doing. Joined by Anthony Duncalf, CEO of Switchboard AI, they explore how “routing” your prompt to the right model could be the future, with one smart layer quietly orchestrating many AIs behind the scenes.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this pivotal episode, Kieren and Riku are joined by Dr Huw Day, researcher and co-organiser of Data Ethics Club at the University of Bristol — an open-to-all journal club on data and AI ethics. Together, they argue that ensuring AI systems align with ethical principles is now a crucial societal priority. You’ll get a clear tour of core pillars such as fairness, transparency and accountability, plus the gritty realities of bias, deepfakes and the human cost of “alignment work” performed by data labellers. We compare government approaches to AI policy, then share practical ways consumers and society can steer development in a responsible direction.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Local Forecast – Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY.

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In this Short Stuff episode, Kieren and Riku ask whether today's AI boom is overheating. They weigh up record-breaking valuations and concentrated market gains against Big Tech's real profits and fast-improving models, and explain why many firms haven't yet seen returns. Finally, they consider what a sharp correction could mean for the wider economy, and how likely it is to happen.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

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In this episode, Kieren and Riku unpack AlphaFold, widely hailed as one of AI’s biggest breakthroughs. We demystify the staggeringly hard problem of predicting how proteins fold into the 3D shapes that determine function, a task that once took years of experiments. We explain how DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 changed the game, and what that really means (and doesn’t). With Dr Jennifer Fleming — Coordinator of the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) and AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AFDB) lead — we explore how 200+ million predicted structures are accelerating drug design, vaccine research and climate solutions. This episode is the third in our AIBIO-UK mini-series.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Local Forecast – Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY.

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In this Short Stuff episode, Kieren and Riku ask a simple question: how can we trust chatbots with our most personal data? They unpack what "open source" really means for LLMs (open weights vs training code vs datasets), argue for nutrition-label-style transparency, and share practical tips like when to run a model locally for privacy and what trade-offs to expect.

Birds for Scale, Smarties is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.