What happens when we stop treating AI as a force of nature and start treating it as what it is: a political choice?
AI: Tools or Gods? is a podcast about the stories we tell about artificial intelligence and why they matter. Each episode, host Caroline De Cock talks with researchers, lawyers, policymakers, and advocates who are building a more grounded, democratic alternative to the dominant AI narrative. No prophecies. No panic. Just honest, rigorous conversation about power, accountability, and what technology is actually for.
A companion to the book AI Tools, Not Gods (BTF Press, 2026, foreword by Brewster Kahle) and a production of information labs.
AI: Tools or Gods | The words we write into law (ft. B Cavello)
AI is often framed as a technical challenge, but the real debates are equally political and societal. In this episode, we explore how the way AI is defined shapes regulation, accountability, and public policy. We discuss the importance of public AI, democratic governance, the challenges of regulating rapidly evolving technologies, and why the future of AI depends on the choices society makes today rather than on technological inevitability.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning
Guest
B Cavello is Director of Emerging Technologies at Aspen Digital, where they work at the intersection of AI, law, and the question of who gets to shape the technology that is reshaping everything else. They previously advised Senator Ron Wyden on privacy, internet governance, and algorithmic accountability, and before that led research on fairness and transparency at the Partnership on AI. They are a co-organiser of the Public AI Network, a growing coalition making the case that AI should be provisioned like public infrastructure — like electricity, roads, or libraries — rather than left to the logic of private markets. And they have just published a handbook that does something deceptively simple and genuinely important: it traces where the legal definitions of AI actually come from, and shows what happens when you choose one over another.
🔗LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcavello/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcavello/)
🔗Website: https://bcavello.com (https://bcavello.com/)
23 Jun 2026
AI: Tools or Gods? | If AI is an answer machine, what happens to the questions? (ft. Pia Lauritzen)
In this episode of AI: Tools or Gods?, philosopher and researcher Pia Lauritzen explores the role of questions in an age increasingly defined by answers. Drawing on decades of research into human questioning, she argues that while AI can help us solve problems faster, it cannot tell us what is worth pursuing, why it matters, or how we should live. The conversation examines curiosity, critical thinking, technology, and the uniquely human capacity to ask meaningful questions.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning
Guest
Pia Lauritzen is a Danish philosopher, tech inventor, and the person who has spent twenty-five years studying something the rest of us take entirely for granted: questions. She has analysed more than 30,000 questions asked by people across the world, written five books, and created two digital tools, Qvest and Question Jam, to give many thousands of people access to the power of asking. She writes a regular column on tech and transformation for Forbes, and her TEDx talk on what we don't know about questions has introduced her research to audiences far beyond academia. She is, in the most literal sense, a philosopher of the question. And in a world that is increasingly obsessed with answers, that turns out to be exactly the perspective we need.
🔗LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pia-lauritzen
🔗Website: https://www.qvest.io
🔗Website: https://www.pialauritzen.dk
16 Jun 2026
AI: Tools or Gods | Who Shapes the Future of AI? - Part 2 (ft. Payal Arora)
Part 2 of our conversation with Payal Arora explores why optimism matters in the age of AI, what the Global South can teach us about digital innovation, and why technology should be understood as a tool that reflects human values rather than an autonomous force shaping our future.
From AI companionship and digital inclusion to policymaking, innovation, and global power dynamics, this episode challenges some of the most common assumptions about technology and its role in society.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning
Guest
Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University. She has spent two decades doing fieldwork in some of the places the AI conversation most rarely reaches: factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas across India, Brazil, China, South Africa, and the Middle East. She is the author of The Next Billion Users and From Pessimism to Promise, both grounded in that fieldwork, and Forbes named her the next billion champion and the right kind of person to reform tech. Her work has been cited by many thousands of researchers, read across many thousands of classrooms, and it makes one of the most uncomfortable arguments in contemporary technology studies: that the story we tell about AI being dangerous is not a neutral observation. It is a story shaped by where you stand.
🔗LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/payalarora (https://www.linkedin.com/in/payalarora/)
🔗Website: payalarora.com (http://payalarora.com/)
2 Jun 2026
AI: Tools or Gods? | Is the AI doom narrative a Western export? - Part 1 (ft. Payal Arora)
Part 1 of this two-part podcast explores the growing divide between Western fears of AI and the more optimistic, practical ways technology is being used across the Global South. The conversation challenges dominant narratives around AI, arguing that digital tools can empower people, create opportunities, and expand global connection when approached with creativity, agency, and human-centered thinking rather than fear and restriction.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning
Guest
Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University. She has spent two decades doing fieldwork in some of the places the AI conversation most rarely reaches: factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas across India, Brazil, China, South Africa, and the Middle East. She is the author of The Next Billion Users and From Pessimism to Promise, both grounded in that fieldwork, and Forbes named her the next billion champion and the right kind of person to reform tech. Her work has been cited by many thousands of researchers, read across many thousands of classrooms, and it makes one of the most uncomfortable arguments in contemporary technology studies: that the story we tell about AI being dangerous is not a neutral observation. It is a story shaped by where you stand.
🔗LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/payalarora
🔗Website: payalarora.com
19 May 2026
AI: Tools or Gods | Who benefits from the hype? (ft. Maria Sukhareva)
The dominant narrative around AI suggests that the public simply misunderstands the technology — that better education will eventually align expectations with reality. But what if the hype is not a misunderstanding at all? In this episode, we examine the growing gap between what AI systems can actually do and what companies, investors, and public figures claim they can do. We discuss AI agents, hallucinations, enterprise failures, regulation, AGI narratives, and why both hype and backlash risk damaging serious AI research and practical applications.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning
About The Guest
Maria Sukhareva has been working in natural language processing since 2008, long before AI became a mainstream headline topic. She is a Principal AI Expert at a DAX company and the author of AI Realist, a newsletter focused on evidence-based analysis of AI systems, their limitations, and their real-world applications. Maria is one of the clearest voices in the field arguing for treating AI as a serious technical discipline rather than a speculative ideology.
🔗LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msukhareva (https://www.linkedin.com/in/msukhareva)
🔗Website: https://www.airealist.org (https://www.airealist.org/)
🔗Substack: https://msukhareva.substack.com (https://msukhareva.substack.com/)
30 Apr 2026
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