Enough About AI

Dónal and Ciarán start a new season for 2025, with a slight change in format to bring you roughly quarterly updates on the themes and topics required to help you know enough about AI. This first episode of 2025, recorded in mid February, gives a summary of what's happened since last November and answers some of your submitted questions. (Thanks for those!) Topics in this episode

Dónal and Ciarán discuss the ways - both real and imagined in fiction - that AI could bring about civilization-ending doom for us all. What can we learn from how sci-fi has treated this topic? What are the distant and nearer potential dooms, and what can we do now, apart from saying thanks to ChatGPT? Oh, and note that listening to this episode may drastically affect your life an

Dónal and Ciarán discuss some of the concerns about misinformation and disinformation that have emerged with the rise of impressively capable GenAI models, and provide some detail on what their effects might be. They discuss the calls for regulation and how this has begun to take shape in the EU, Ireland, and elsewhere. Topics in this episode What are the implications for misinfo

Dónal and Ciarán discuss the vast ocean of data that Large Language Models (LLMs) depend on for their training, covering some of the issues of access to that data and the biases reflected within it. This episode should help you better understand some aspects of the AI training process. Topics in this episode What data is being used to train models like ChatGPT?What are "supervise

Dónal and Ciarán talk you through everything that's emerged since capable Large Language Models entered the chat a few years ago - up to late 2024, at least! This episode covers the companies, models, and tools that have become central to contemporary GenAI, and will broaden your understanding of where things are beyond ChatGPT. Topics in this episode What are Transformer models

Dónal and Ciarán go back, back, back to see how the long history of computing machines connects to the AI revolution we're in now. Topics in this episode How far back does the history of humans building machines to aid our thinking go?Why are French weaving machines and alcoholic poet's daughters involved?How does the history of computing go through County Cork in the 1800s?Who a

Dónal and Ciarán start the series with some explainers that should help you sound much more knowledgeable discussing the state of contemporary AI at your next dinner party. Topics in this episode What is AI? Why has it seemed to appear so recently and become so important?What's the difference between AI and GenAI?What is ChatGPT and how do models like it work?What are the other i