Married to the Machine: Living with AI

AI actors, politicians, hallucinations and how schoolkids could work with large language models (without cheating)

Presented by Stephanie Power and Professor David Reid

Concept, recording, and editing: Stephanie Power

Sound design and music composition: Matt Power

Married To The Machine: Living With AI is a news podcast, currently in proof-of-concept stage. It is a non-commercial entity.

Credits:

Particle 6, AI Comedy Sketch, BBC Sound ...

Married To The Machine looks at how AI is impacting you in the real world. Designed for GenX listeners - those who need to know about AI, especially at work, this episode looks at the UK/US tech prosperity deal, the environmental impact of data centres - how much drinking water do you use posting those pics of your dog with human teeth? One listener asks if AI will take all creative jobs, and a mutiny is in the offing, with the AI ...

Professor David Reid, Stephanie Power and the AI Guy discuss scraping authors' creative works to train machines. With a new feature, 'Professor Dave Predicts' we talk about how far we are from AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, which is when AI can do EVERYTHING we can.

Concept, recording and editing: Stephanie Power

Sound design and jokes: Matt Power

Power Productions Ltd

Married To The Machine: Living With AI is a news podcast, c...

AI Workslop is costing businesses thousands, according to a report by Stanford University and Better Up. We explain what workslop is. And Prof Dave gives us an idiot's guide to deepfakes.

Presenters: Professor David Reid and Stephanie Power

recording and editing: Stephanie Power

sound design and jokes: Matt Power

Married To The Machine: Living With AI is a new podcast, in proof-of-concept phase.

Thanks to:

Nationwide Building Society f...

The Department for Education has comissioned a review into the schools curriculum. But have they done enough on AI? The Prof thinks not.

And we try to work out what AI the Ministry of Justice is planning to use to stop prisoners going AWOL.

Presenters: Professor David Reid and Stephanie Power

Recording and Editing: Stephanie Power

Sound Design and Jokes: Matt Power

Married To The Machine: Living With AI is a news podcast, in proof-of-...

Vibe Coding was the Collins Dictionary 2025 'word' of the year. But what is it? Who coined the phrase? And what are the pitfalls of using vibe coding for digital creation?

In this bonus episode, we answer all those questions, and wonder if the former Chief Constable of West Midlands Police understands what AI is.

Further reading:

https://blog.tenzai.com/bad-vibes-comparing-the-secure-coding-capabilities-of-popular-coding-agents/

https:...

Something kicked off in late January. Moltbook - a social space for AI agents. Somewhere humans could, apparently, only observe. Is it really sci-fi adjacent? Prof Dave explains what appears to be going on.

And we talk to the Leader of Barnsley Council, as it is crowned the UK's first Tech Town.

Further reading:

https://hai.stanford.edu/policy/simulating-human-behavior-with-ai-agents

https://theconversation.com/uk

bbc.com/news/articles...

Is it possible to measure how much energy, water and emissions are used to power your AI searches? Can you trust an academic report from Google? And why is the US Department of Defense getting into a row with Dario Amodei's Anthropic

Further reading:

https://arxiv.org/html/2508.15734v1

Some of our sketch voices and the AI Guy are created using Google AI Studio.

Presenters: Professor David Reid and Stephanie Power

Recording, editing and...

Anthropic has signed a deal, worth millions, with the US Department of Defense. But now Anthropic wants to impose red lines on the use of its AI. The response from President Trump? They're just a bunch of leftwing nutjobs.

In episode nine, we imagine a 'liberal elite' AI trying to negotiate with an angry Government department that's just renamed itself the Department Of War.

Are we in an AI existential crisis?

Sketch written by Matt...

In a departure from our usual style, we have devoted this episode to an interview with Sam Stockwell, Senior Researcher at the Turing Institute.

He talks about the work of the Institute and a report they have recently written about how AI is used to spread misinformation after crisis events, like the Southport attacks.

Futher reading: https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/new-report-calls-urgent-action-tackle-ai-information-threats-followi...

Who remembers the BBC's Computer Literacy Project from the 1980s?

It was created to help prepare people in the UK for the massive and widespread adoption of computers.

And here we are, looking at the massive and widespread adoption of AI.

Professor Dave has had a brilliant idea, and we are asking the BBC's new Director General, to consider it. Reith 2.0 - a large language model, made by a trusted institution, to equip the UK populat...

When we first started this podcast, I asked Prof Dave how, growing up in 1970s Toxteth and at a school that didn't even offer O levels, he'd got into computing in the first place.

He said it was through computing magazines, but also because of a growing gaming industry in Liverpool.

We found one of those games makers, Eugene Evans. And he agreed to talk to us.

You know the history of Liverpool and football, Liverpool and music. But ...