AI Chatbots

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chat GPT, Gemini, Meta AI, and Grok. In episode 145 of Overthink, David and Ellie talk about AI chatbots. Are relationships between humans and AI valuable? Or should we shame people for using LLMs? And what are we doing when we use these technologies: expanding or outsourcing our cognition? They explore the dangers of using chatbots as romantic partners and therapists, considering how the how the principle of ‘Yes, And…’ at the core of LLMs can lead to delusion and even what’s now called “AI psychosis.” They discuss the fatigue surrounding the predominance of AI in our everyday lives and the negative environmental effects of it. In the bonus, your hosts dive deeper into the history of AI, its benefits and drawbacks, and the relationship between AI and embodiment.

Works Discussed:

Andrea Klonschinski and Michael Kühler, “Romantic Love Between Humans and AIs: A Feminist Ethical Critique”

Gavin Mueller, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job

Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence

Michael Wooldridge, A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going

N+1 Editors, “Large Language Muddle”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Overthink.
0:19.6	The podcast where two philosophers think about the big questions of life without asking Chad JupT.
0:25.2	I'm David Penaugusman.
0:26.8	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:28.7	Ellie, whether we like it or not, AI chatbots are everywhere.
0:32.3	They are in the workplace.
0:34.8	They are in the school classroom. they are in our private homes.
0:40.3	Especially living in San Francisco, I feel like I cannot go anywhere without running into like
0:44.3	10 people that are working at the latest AI startup because of the culture there.
0:49.9	Even the billboards when you drive into San Francisco, it's like dystopian or utopian depending on your view.
0:56.9	And since the introduction of LLMs or large language models to the general public in the form of these like consumer facing chatbods,
1:05.9	it's become clear that AI is unavoidable now for most of us, no matter our career or what we do.
1:12.6	Yeah. Customer service, asking Google, et cetera, et cetera. Like, even if you want to avoid it,
1:18.5	it's practically impossible to do so. And I think it's easy to see how AI is extremely useful
1:25.5	in automating people's everyday tasks. Like there are certain things in life
1:29.4	that are dull, that are boring, that we maybe don't have a lot of knowledge on and that we're
1:34.3	require more than just a simple Google search. And for that, the sort of consolidating functions of
1:41.3	something like chat GBT can be really useful. It takes things that require thinking
1:47.0	and spits out a clean grammatical, well-formatted answer. And so, for instance, I had a friend who
1:53.5	not only used chat GBT to build a trip itinerary for her, but also to help her with her packing list.
2:00.8	And this is really interesting. This is like one of my most stylish friends. I don't know if it was like her whole wardrobe or something, but she input a bunch of stuff into chat, GBT, and she asked it to come up with a packing list for her. And this was a trip she was doing into the countryside. And it told her that one of the things she should bring are these white boots. And she was like, I never would have thought to bring white boots on this trip.
2:21.0	And then after the trip, she reported that they were her most useful item that she had packed.
	...

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