The Ethics of AI w/ SVEN NYHOLM, Author & Lead Researcher, Munich Centre for Machine Learning
Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics InterviewsShow Notes
As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a partnership to ensure we do not raise a generation that relies on machines to think for them. It’s not that we are being replaced by machines. It’s that we’re being invited to become a new kind of human. Where AI isn’t the headline; human transformation is. And that includes the arts, culture, and the whole of society. Generative AI – the technologies that write our emails, draft our reports, and even create art – have become a fixture of daily life, and the philosophical and moral questions they raise are no longer abstract. They are immediate, personal, and potentially disruptive to the core of what we consider human work. Our guest today, Sven Nyholm, is one of the leading voices helping us navigate this new reality. As the Principal Investigator of AI Ethics at the Munich Center for Machine Learning, and co-editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. He has spent his career dissecting the intimate relationship between humanity and the machine. His body of work systematically breaks down concepts that worry us all: the responsibility gap in autonomous systems, the ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, and the question of whether ceding intellectual tasks to a machine fundamentally atrophies our own skills. His previous books, like Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism, have laid the foundational groundwork for understanding these strange new companions in our lives. His forthcoming book is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. The book is a rigorous exploration of everything from algorithmic bias and opacity to the long-term existential risks of powerful AI. We’ll talk about what it means when an algorithm can produce perfect language without genuine meaning, why we feel entitled to take credit for an AI’s creation, and what this technological leap might be costing us, personally, as thinking, moral beings. Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
More from Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics Interviews
"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together." Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance. (00:01) Art as the Oldest Technology (07:50) The Gift of Pause (09:55) Reimagining Lincoln Center (12:19) A Collective Caretaking (12:56) The Curiosity of Childhood (18:02) San Juan Hill and The Wall (20:39) globalFEST: Music and Connection Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prizefor Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor. Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia. (0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia (1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling (3:53) Translating the Atmosphere (4:31) The Pandemic of the Past (6:37) Death and the Gardener (9:49) The Translators Calling (11:00) Slowing Down Time (13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda (15:54) Translating the Atmosphere (18:19) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning? (20:56) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him (23:43) The Importance of Hugging, Empathy and Storytelling Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza, and it feels very vibrant and beautiful. In the summer, we really take that plaza and we transform it into a dance floor. So this idea of also interrupting what people’s notion of Lincoln Center is because it’s a space that is very aspirational, which is a great thing.” Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance. (0:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center (2:27) Art and the Human Experience (4:40) The Curiosity of Childhood (5:44) Alvin Ailey and the Pivot (8:29) The Invisible Arts (9:06) The Power of Public Theater (17:03) Curation, Programming and the Art of Listening (23:42) San Juan Hill and The Wall (31:23) Art as the Oldest Technology (35:02) globalFEST: Music and Connection (38:20) Finding Universal Belonging (41:20) The Gift of Pause (54:27) A Collective Caretaking Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI. (0:00) The AI compute gap and national security (1:56) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble (4:40) Separating AI hype from job displacements (12:38) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom (17:19) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty (21:52) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute (26:37) Regulatory capture and doomerism (31:12) Why open source AI is the best path forward (42:19) The chess paradox and the future of human art (46:35) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career (53:45) Tutoring and AI in education (1:01:48) Navigating the AI slop and information ecosystem (1:16:00) Finding beauty in the natural world (1:20:18) The pleasure of waiting vs. the hustle (1:35:01) Setting healthy boundaries with technology Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“ I'm a believer in this technology. I believe that the cheaper it is, the more people will use it. So, even if we assume that models will get smaller for the same level of intelligence, the demand to actually have more compute is going to be enormous. And the reason why you want to have the, the compute close to you is not only in terms of performance. As a national security threat, I'm not saying this will happen, but it could happen that, China or US or whoever decides to stop exporting compute to the rest of the world. If that happens today, Europe has zero AI at the scale of data the data center.” For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI. (0:22) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble (0:55) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom (3:12) The AI compute gap and national security (5:40) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty (8:13) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute (10:25) Why open source AI is the best path forward (12:31) The chess paradox and the future of human art (12:53) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career (14:00) Tutoring and AI in education (15:11) Navigating AI slop and the information ecosystem (16:24) The Pleasure of Waiting vs. The Hustle Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast