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Life, Automated

von Ryan Institute on Complexity at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management

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Life, Automated explores how to live, work, and make decisions in a world increasingly shaped by machines. Through thoughtful conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and more, we do our best to make sense of how technology is changing—and how it is changing us. We ask: What does the economy look like if AI can do much of what humans can? Will AI tools isolate us further, or steer us back toward community and common ground? Can the average person expect to be better off a decade from now? And what the heck should we tell a sixteen-year-old who wants to know whether learning German (or design, or coding, or the piano) is still worth it? Life, Automated is grounded and non-ideological, going deep without getting too technical. Because you shouldn’t need to be an “AI person” to understand the future we’re collectively building.

Host Jess Love is a science writer with a PhD in cognitive psychology and is the Sr. Director for the Ryan Institute on Complexity at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her writing has appeared in The American Scholar, Discover, Quartz, and more.

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  1. Is Math the Canary in the AI Coal Mine? (with Bryna Kra)

    What happens when AI can produce a mathematical proof before any human understands it? And what does that mean for the rest of us? Northwestern mathematician Bryna Kra (https://www.math.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/bryna-kra.html), a for

  2. Is Technology Making Our Lives Less Gratifying? (with Ian Bogost)

    Modern technology has generally made our lives faster, easier, and more convenient. But in swapping out stick shifts and paper menus for automatic transmissions and QR codes, have we accidentally optimized away many of the rich sensory expe

  3. The Cybersecurity Crisis Is About More Than “Rogue AI” (with V.S. Subrahmanian)

    AI is making cyberattacks cheaper, faster, and more sophisticated. Recent reports of autonomous agents compromising Hugging Face show how quickly misaligned systems can create real-world risk. But ideally those same tools could help defende

  4. Will We Still Learn Languages When Machines Can Translate? (with Abby Walker)

    Live AI translation tools are making it easier to converse across languages without a human translator, a phrasebook, or years of study. So will we all just stop taking Spanish or Mandarin classes? Sociolinguist Abby Walker (https://liberal

  5. AI, Artists, and the Future of Creative Work

    Generative AI is able to conjure new images, stories, and songs at lightning speed. So what does this mean for humans artists, storytellers, and musicians? In this special Labor Day episode, we speak with economists Ben Jones (https://www.k

  6. Why AI Might Not Change Education Much at All (with Justin Reich)

    “AI will revolutionize education!” “No, it will destroy it!” Well, which is it? If history is any guide, the impact will be limited in either direction. In this episode, MIT education researcher Justin Reich (https://tsl.mit.edu/team/justin

  7. An Optimist’s Take on AI and the Future of Learning (with Sébastien Martin)

    As AI tools spread through classrooms, many educators see a “cheating factory.” Kellogg Professor Sébastien Martin (https://sebastienmartin.info/) sees things differently: as a chance to reinvent how and what we teach. In his operations man

  8. Our Chatbot Friends and Lovers (with Pat Pataranutaporn)

    What does a healthy relationship with AI look like? Pat Pataranutaporn (https://www.media.mit.edu/people/patpat/overview/), researcher at the MIT Media Lab, explores how chatbots can either support or undermine human flourishing. Pat explai

  9. Chatbots Don’t Fool Us, We Fool Ourselves (with Joshua Jay)

    When people go to a magic show, they expect to be fooled. That’s part of the fun. And magician Joshua Jay (https://www.joshuajay.com/) says much of the magician’s work is helping people fool themselves. Our brains are hardwired to fill in g

  10. Does AI Have to Be Bad News for the Planet? (with Meghan Busse)

    Are you hurting the planet every time you query a chatbot? Economist Meghan Busse (https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/busse_meghan/) suggests that may be the wrong question. In this episode, we zoom out from the

  11. To Thrive Alongside AI, Find the Bottlenecks (with Ben Jones)

    Will AI actually take over every job ever? Economist Ben Jones (https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/jones_benjamin_f/⁠) doesn't think so. Drawing from historical evidence around innovation, Jones argues that auto

  12. Coming July 15th! Life, Automated

    Life, Automated explores the surreal, exciting, and occasionally terrifying ways AI and automation are reshaping our daily lives. Through thoughtful conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and more, we do our best to make se

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