AI, digital life Greg Swan AI, digital life Greg Swan

Doom, Hope, Doom, Hope, Sushi: What the AI Apocaloptimist Doc Got Right (and Wrong)

Is the AI industry even talking to the rest of us? In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan unpack The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. It's a new documentary that puts the biggest names in AI in one room and asks: is this good or bad? Should we be having kids? And does anyone actually have a plan? From Sam Altman to Geoffrey Hinton to the doomers who think your children won't survive high school, the film swings between terror and hope like a pendulum. And so do we. This episode is for anyone trying to figure out where they land between doom and hope. The AI industry is having its conversation at 30,000 feet. We are having ours on the ground. Come sit with us.

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deep fakes, AI Greg Swan deep fakes, AI Greg Swan

This Is How Reality Ends: Not With a Bang, But a Bunny on a Trampoline

Are we absolutely sure that what we’re seeing is even real? In this episode, we dig into the increasingly blurry line between real and fake online—from AI-generated bunny videos to deepfakes of ourselves, and the billion-dollar platforms that are encouraging all of it. We explore how tech companies like Meta and OpenAI are normalizing synthetic content at scale and what that means for trust, identity, and the future of human connection. This isn’t a “look what AI can do” episode. It’s a conversation about what it’s already doing… to our feeds, our friendships, and our sense of reality.

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AI, digital life Greg Swan AI, digital life Greg Swan

Clankers: Are we being mean to robots?

Are we being mean to robots? Is it just internet snark or the start of something deeper and more dangerous? In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan explore the sudden rise of “clanker” as an anti-robot slur. They dig into whether discrimination toward AI is harmless fun, a new moral frontier, or just a mirror reflecting how we treat anything with less power than us (including each other). Along the way they unpack science fiction, Star Wars lore, power dynamics, Ray Kurzweil’s predictions, and why your Roomba probably deserves a little more respect. This convo will have you rethinking how you talk to Alexa, your self-checkout kiosk, and maybe even your toaster. Because in the future, kindness might be the most human thing we’ve got.

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Is ChatGPT making us dumb or are the headlines?

Did an MIT paper really prove that ChatGPT is scrambling our brains? Or did 54 Boston adults + a flashy press push just scramble the headlines? In this episode, Jenny and Greg Swan tear into the now-viral “Your Brain on ChatGPT” study. Along the way they tackle moral panics, blue-book nostalgia, and why blaming tech is easier than changing how we teach, parent, and work.

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