The Moral Dilemmas of AI with Michael Inzlicht
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2026
⏱️ 98 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mickey is BACK with two new papers he has co-authored, a bunch of opinions, and a very unwelcome idea: maybe the problem with AI isn't that it doesn't work but that it works too well!
The first paper, Against Frictionless AI, argues that AI assistance and its ability to take away the effort from thinking, writing, and smooth out social(like) interactions could be robbing those activities of the very thing that makes them worthwhile.
The second paper is a more empirical investigation that presents a bunch of studies examining the topic of the (alleged) moralisation of AI. Some findings suggest that opposition to AI among some people isn't really about risks or trade-offs but rather about non-negotiable sacred moral values. Who knew?
We also discuss effort justification, reproducible research, robosexual allyship, and just how much humanity remains within the cyborg Matthew Browne.
And remember... It's just like our opinion, man!
Links
- Decoding Academia 34: Empathetic AIs? (Patreon Series)
- Ovsyannikova, D., Oldemburgo de Mello, V., & Inzlicht, M. (2025). Third-party evaluators perceive AI as more compassionate than expert humans. Communications Psychology, 3, Article 4.
- Zohar, E., Bloom, P., & Inzlicht, M. (2026). Against frictionless AI. Communications Psychology, 4, Article 39.
- Oldemburgo de Mello, V., Côté, É., Ayad, R., Inbar, Y., Plaks, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2026). The moralization of artificial intelligence (Manuscript under review).
- Paul Bloom's Small Potatoes Substack
- - My friend thinks it's a good idea for us to spend most of our time with AI companions
- - Is it irresponsible for academics to refuse to use AI?
- Mickey's Speak Now Regret Later Substack
- - AI Alarmism Trades on Fear, Not Facts
- Mickey's provocative tweet on his recent paper
- DTG Previous Interview with Mickey on the Replication Crisis, Mindfulness, and Responsible Heterodoxy
- Andy Masley Substack debunking the AI water usage claims
- Andy Masley Substack: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment - a cheat sheet
- Pataranutaporn, P., Karny, S., Archiwaranguprok, C., Albrecht, C., Liu, A. R., & Maes, P. (2025). “My Boyfriend is AI”: A computational analysis of human–AI companionship in Reddit’s AI community. arXiv.
- Critical response to Mickey's paper from Roy Schulam on Substack
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Hello and welcome to the coding the gurus. |
| 0:30.7 | A special interview slash discussion to be it episode with me is the usual co-host matthew brine psychologist extraordinaire and also here is returning guest multiple returning guest michael inslik also called mickey inslik by, professor in the Department of Psychology at Toronto University |
| 0:56.4 | or University of Toronto. And apparently, Mickey, you have a cross-appointment as a professor |
| 1:01.1 | in the Department of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management. It's almost as if you're |
| 1:04.9 | reading it by ours. No, no, I've memorized this. And you have the work and play lab, which a lot of the studies and stuff that we're going |
| 1:14.8 | to be talking about today come from. |
| 1:16.4 | Mickey is on to discuss AI and related topics. |
| 1:19.6 | He has publications coming out. |
| 1:21.1 | But in general, Mickey, we're just always happy to see you. |
| 1:24.7 | Likewise. |
| 1:25.2 | This is, I think, my third return visit. So I'm glad the feeling is mutual. |
| 1:30.3 | I love you guys. And I'm glad you, you tolerate me. Yeah, we have you on like trigonometry has on |
| 1:38.5 | right-wing, UK political, extreme right-wing political figures. I'll take it. |
| 1:46.4 | You're our Nigel Farage. |
| 1:48.6 | Hey, man. |
| 1:55.0 | Yeah, I'm not sure I like that comparison, but I'm here. |
| 1:57.5 | Yeah, Paul Bloom for Sam Harris. |
| 1:58.1 | That's it. Yeah, right. |
| 1:58.9 | That's a nice comparison. |
| 1:59.9 | Or Yowell and Barr for very bad. Oh, right. Okay. Or Yuel in Barr for, |
| 2:01.5 | for very bad wizards, maybe. |
| 2:04.8 | Yeah, yeah, that's right. |
... |
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