VCM: What sparked the idea for your podcast?

Baratunde: The idea for this podcast, maybe, was sparked in birth when my mother brought a computer home when I was, like, six years old. She got me a bike and a computer, and both of them, I think she really thought could help me not just survive, but thrive in the world. But more practically, I’d say, within the past four years I've been extra curious about this AI moment. It seems like it's defining so much of our future, but we need more say in it. And so what's a place that we could go to ask tough questions, to play around and find out, as the saying goes sometimes. And to actually engage in creating our future rather than just having it dumped on us by a small group of people who have their ideas of what our future should be.

We want a human future where we're living with these machines in some sort of harmony

VCM: Who do you envision as your audience and how do you plan on engaging with them?

Baratunde: Mostly humans. I do expect the machines to tune in because we're going to be talking about them, but primarily we're making this for a human audience. And the person who's tuning in, whether watching or listening, they're curious. They might be a little apprehensive because this future is unfolding so fast. It might make some of them nervous. I think some of them are very excited, and I think all of them have in common the idea that we want a human future where we're living with these machines in some sort of harmony, right? Not Skynet, in either direction, not like enslavement or servitude, but I think people want to feel a sense of possibility and hope and want to be able to go somewhere where it's not strictly celebratory, but also not like the sky is falling, the end is nigh, sort of talk. Someone who is looking for a little bit of a balanced take on what might be possible here, and how we can still shape what’s possible.

VCM: What are some takeaways or recurring themes you hope that people get from coming to this podcast?

Baratunde: What I want people to really take away from this show is that the future is something we make, not something that happens to us. It's not something we just download from an app store. It's something that we consciously choose to participate in and build together with our fellow humans and with some of these machines, and ideally with our Earth as well. That's what I want people to come back to.

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VCM: How do you plan on engaging with your audience?

Baratunde: Connecting with and engaging with the audience is the whole point. I can't be out here preaching like “we build a future together,” and then it's just me talking to someone, telling you what the future should be. We are going to be asking questions of our audience. We're going to be offering experiments and activities for people to do. We're going to be doing some direct call-ins and submissions and feedback, not just reading listener mail, but listening to listener mail and viewer mail on the show. We really want this to be not merely a conversation between me and someone who's sitting at this table with me, but between us and each other. And as we grow the show, we want to create opportunities for folks to see and hear from each other as well.

VCM: Do you have a favorite moment, story, or lesson learned from the show?

Baratunde: We created a custom AI of our own to help us make the show and to have us experiment ourselves. We didn't want this to just be a conversation. Part of the premise is that in order to define this future and our life with machines, we should engage. So what's making the show? We're engaging with AI directly, and we had this AI synthesize an interview moment with one of our guests who is focused on music and hip hop, and the AI came up with its own hip hop lyrics. And the guest was very impressed. So impressed. He was like, “I need one of these for myself.” So that's a memorable moment, especially considering how early we are in the process. I think I had a very emotional moment talking with Arianna Huffington about an AI health coach, and I'm excited and skeptical in equal parts around all these promises. But when I asked her why this was the focus in terms of a dent one can make in the healthcare crisis in this country and world, she talked about the number of people who are suffering amputations every year because of diabetes. And it's like, yes, we need systemic policy change and reform, and we can't wait for that. We have to take every opportunity we have available to us to positively affect people now. And her motivation around that got me more motivated around that, and it brought it out of an academic discussion into a very real life and death situation.

We purposely call this show Life With Machines. It's not the machine show. It’s not like machines and a little bit of life sprinkled on the side. We're centering it on life, in every aspect of our lives, and how we want that life to look and feel. And then what role can machines, technology, AI have in helping us achieve that life? It's just been so important for us to center this on life. It's not a gadget show. It's a human show featuring some gadgets and some software, yes, and sometimes no.

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