Robert Mahari examines the consequences of addictive intelligence, adaptive responses to regulating AI companions, and the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Robert and Kimberly discuss the attributes of addictive products; the allure of AI companions; AI as a prescription for loneliness; not assuming only the lonely are susceptible; regulatory constraints and gaps; individual rights and societal harms; adaptive guardrails and regulation by design; agentic self-awareness; why uncertainty doesn’t negate accountability; AI’s negative impact on the data commons; economic disincentives; interdisciplinary collaboration and future research.
Robert Mahari is a JD-PhD researcher at MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Law School where he studies the intersection of technology, law and business. In addition to computational law, Robert has a keen interest in AI regulation and embedding regulatory objectives and guardrails into AI designs.
A transcript of this episode is here.
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