We are told that Generative AI is the future. But what if that future is built on, as one commentator puts it, the "largest theft of intellectual labor in history"? AI models are trained by ingesting vast amounts of creative works—including art, music, computer code, and writing—often without permission from, or payment to, the creators of that content. These same models are now generating content that competes directly with the human creators it trained on, potentially flooding the internet with what some have termed "AI slop". This raises a critical question: how do we ensure that human creativity is valued and remunerated in the age of AI? And what happens to AI if it starves itself of the very human creativity it needs to improve? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Professor Alain Strowel as they discuss these issues, based on Alain’s new paper: Alain Strowel, “The risks of AI slop and AI model collapse, and why it is essential to adequately feed the next Generative AI models and to remunerate creators through a dual right system”, Legitech RPIN, 2025/24-25, p. 46-54.

Milk is largely taken for granted as a food source in many societies. However, the fact that milk is considered such a normal and staple part of many diets obscures various questions that we might have about what ‘milk’ actually is, and what the ethical implications are of making milk a central part of human diets.   In this podcast, Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Annie Sandrussi investigate ways of thinking about the nature and production of milk, and unpack claims about sustainability related to the ethics of milk consumption.   This podcast features Annie’s recently accepted paper “Ontology and the Ethics of Milk: A Relational Materialist Approach”, published today in Food Ethics.

There are many assumptions about autistic people and their presumed desire to be alone. But being alone can also lead to profound experiences of loneliness, which can be detrimental to the lonely person’s health. Increasing evidence suggests that autistic people experience loneliness at higher rates than non-autistic people. But little is understood about the causes of loneliness in autistic people. In this podcast, Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Emily Hughes explore the potential causes of loneliness in autistic people.  The podcast features Emily’s recently accepted chapter, "Loneliness and Being Other/ed in Autism", which will be published later in 2025 in the Bloomsbury Loneliness Anthology.

One potential solution to the various ecosystem crises we face is to genetically engineer organisms better to survive in a changing climate. Synthetic biology offers the tools to attempt this, by introducing various genetic modifications to help organisms avoid extinction in their rapidly degrading environments. But how does an intervention like genetic modification fit with the conservation science goals of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and wilderness? Is it time to rethink those goals, given advances in genetic technologies like synthetic biology, and the increasing urgency of extinctions due to environmental pressures?  Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Chris Lean as they investigate how the goals of conservation can be furthered by synthetic biology.   This podcast features Chris’ recently published paper, Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation, published open access in Ethics, Policy and Environment, https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2023.2298646

We typically think of beliefs as cognitive representations of the world that should be responsive to evidence and truth. In contrast, emotions are very different sorts of mental states: they seem to be non-cognitive, perhaps non-representational, and they have a certain feeling to them. Or so the traditional story goes. But what happens when beliefs don't seem so straightforward? What about deeply held political or religious convictions that seem immune to contrary evidence? And how do we understand the unshakeable, yet seemingly irrational, beliefs of someone experiencing a clinical delusion? Are these even beliefs at all? Or do we instead need to broaden our understanding of beliefs by incorporating an emotional component, the feeling that “something is true”, or “feels right” into our account of beliefs? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Professor Miriam Schleifer McCormick as they discuss whether belief is an emotion. We discuss Miriam’s recent book: McCormick, M. S. (2025). Belief as Emotion. University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198875826.001.0001

Many of us enjoy video games, immersing ourselves in rich virtual worlds where we can perform actions that would be unthinkable in reality. We might slay dragons, topple empires, or even engage in virtual theft and violence, often without a second thought. But are there ethical lines that we should not cross in these digital spaces? What happens when virtual actions mirror morally reprehensible acts in the real world? Does anything go here, or can morality get a grip even in virtual spaces. These issues are central to what has become known as the "Gamer's Dilemma." While it’s a topic that can be difficult to discuss, touching on sensitive issues, exploring it is crucial for understanding the ethics of our interactions with increasingly realistic virtual environments. Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Dr. Tom Montefiore as they discuss the Gamer’s Dilemma. We discuss several of Tom’s papers, including the following: -              Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2022). Resisting the Gamer’s Dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology, 24(3), 31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-022-09655-w   -              Formosa, P., Montefiore, T., Ghasemi, O., & McEwan, M. (2023). An empirical investigation of the Gamer’s Dilemma: A mixed methods study of whether the dilemma exists. Behaviour & Information Technology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2178837   -              Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2023). Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Philosophy & Technology, 36(3), 58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00660-5   -              Montefiore, T., Formosa, P., & Polito, V. (2024). Extending the Gamer’s Dilemma: Empirically investigating the paradox of fictionally going too far across media. Philosophical Psychology, 0(0), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2354432   -              Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2025). Dark Patterns Meet the Gamer’s Dilemma: Contrasting Morally Objectionable Content with Systems in Video Games. Games and Culture, 15554120251319173. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120251319173

We've all seen the headlines: "20% of Americans believe the government is using COVID vaccines to microchip the population"; "12 million Americans think lizard people control their country."; or “9% of Australians believe that the government is covering up the fact that 5G mobile networks spread coronavirus”. These kinds of survey results about conspiracy theory beliefs often go viral on social media, painting a concerning picture about how many people believe in bizarre, unfounded and sometimes contradictory claims. But here's a crucial question we rarely ask: do all these people sincerely believe these conspiracy theories? Or might some of them be trolling, joking around, or just clicking buttons without much thought? While this is partly a methodological question about survey data, given the central role such results can play politically, it is important that we interrogate this issue here. Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Dr Robert Ross as they investigate whether people sincerely believe in conspiracy theories. Correction:  At about 12:18, Dr Ross says that 20% of participants selected “yes" when asked if they responded randomly or insincerely during the survey. This was a mistake. Dr Ross meant to say that 20% of participants selected “yes” or endorsed the warrior racoon conspiracy theory (or both). The podcast features a preprint paper written by Robert M. Ross, Kate Gleeson, Shaun Wilson, Luke Ashton, and Neil Levy, titled: “Do people sincerely believe conspiracy theories that they endorse? The paper is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsncr_v1

Imagine that you are a doctor with deeply held moral or religious beliefs that conflict with providing certain medical treatments. For example, perhaps you oppose physician-assisted dying, or you have religious objections to performing certain reproductive healthcare procedures. How should healthcare systems handle these situations where healthcare professionals want to conscientiously refuse to provide treatments that patients are legally entitled to receive? Should doctors be required to justify their refusals? Or should they be forced to perform procedures they may genuinely object to?   Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Dr Doug McConnell as they investigate the ethical issues that arise when we think about conscientious objection in a healthcare context. The podcast features the following paper: McConnell, D. (2024). Assessing Public Reason Approaches to Conscientious Objection in Healthcare. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180124000112

We often imaging novelists as solitary creatures, shut away in a room, labouring over their keyboards and relying on their imaginations for the words that fill the page. But even before the advent of AI, this image did not ring true for all novelists. Many had assistants to do research and check facts, and editors to massage the raw prose into the finished product. Usually these people would be acknowledged and their contributions made clear. The advent of large language models like Chat GTP complicates this understanding of the creative process. Does the use of AI undermine the creativity of the writer, and if so, how? Should an AI assistant be acknowledged in the same way as a human one?  Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Professor Paul Formosa as they investigate tricky questions about authorship and responsibility that arise when creative writers have assistance - human or AI - in their work. This podcast features a recently published paper by Paul, with Sarah Bankins, Rita Matulionyte and Omid Ghasemi: Can ChatGPT be an author? Generative AI creative writing assistance and perceptions of authorship, creatorship, responsibility, and disclosure, published open access in AI & Society https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02081-0

From the ventilator to the pulse oximeter to the surgical robot, medical care is mediated by sophisticated devices. It takes time to learn to use these devices safely. They require upkeep from skilled technicians. If something goes wrong, the consequences may be devastating for the patient. So how do Australian hospitals ensure that clinicians know how to use devices safely, when to update them, how they should be serviced and so on? Unbeknownst to many patients and the public, these services, and more, are performed by medical device representatives or MDRs. MDRs are employed by the companies that make equipment and devices to ensure that their products are used as safely and effectively as possible. But this is not the only role that MDRs have. They are also sales people, tasked by the companies they work for to sell products directly to the clinicians who use them. This dual role of support and sales raises many ethical questions about the range of activities of MDRs and their impact on patient care. Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Brette Blakely as they investigate the ethical complexities that arise from the multiple roles played by medical device representatives in Australian Hospitals. This podcast features a paper in progress. The paper is one of the research outputs of the ARC Discovery project (DP200100883): Support or sales? Medical device representatives in Australian hospitals, led by Dr Jane Johnson at Macquarie University, and on which Wendy Rogers is also a CI.

Australia prides itself on being a secular, multi-cultural state. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution declares that:  The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth. In theory, the law protects all religions equally. But in a new book, Mareike Reidel argues that, despite the state’s supposed religious neutrality and the separation of state and church, the law fails to deliver equality for all religions. She traces the origins of this “Christian normativity” to the historical relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and the long-held ambivalence about the place and belonging of Jews and Judaism in Western societies. This work raises questions of identity, difference, and the law, and explores how religious difference is racialized.  Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Mareike Riedel as they discuss the relationship between law, secularism, religion, and racialisation through the lens of the legal encounter with Jewish identity.    This podcast features Mareike’s forthcoming book, 'Law and Jewish Difference: Ambivalent Encounters', published with Cambridge University Press. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/law-and-jewish-difference/D8A29D2D741715B8EB4E5D77B77644D3)

The concept of "self-care" has become ubiquitous in recent years - we're urged to take bubble baths, book spa days, and indulge in retail therapy to cope with the stresses of modern life. But what often gets lost in this wellness rhetoric is that self-care has much deeper roots, originating in the Black feminist tradition as a form of resistance and survival in the face of systemic racism. As Audre Lorde famously wrote, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." This is a prime example of "epistemic appropriation" - when a concept created by a marginalized group to name their oppression, such as “woke” or “self-care”, gets taken up by dominant groups in a way that obscures and undermines its original meaning and political force. Is this sort of epistemic appropriation a form of injustice? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky as they discuss epistemic and cultural appropriation and the history of the concept of “woke”.  This podcast focuses on Paul’s 2023 paper, “Rethinking Epistemic Appropriation”, in Episteme, 20(1), 142–162. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2021.8 

Given the ubiquity of streaming services as well as the enduring popularity of cinemas, we are probably watching more films now than at any other time in human history. Films entertain, distract, fill an otherwise empty hour or two, facilitate social interactions, split audiences, provoke controversy and more. However, most of us would probably not add “doing philosophy” to that list. But this is just what film-philosophers claim, that cinema can engage in philosophy in a manner comparable to, although differing from, philosophy itself. Not only that, but films can be transformative, by reframing what we understand about the world, reconfiguring previously held beliefs or views or providing a rich understanding of different perspectives and experiences.   Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Professor Robert Sinnerbrink as they investigate the potentially transformative nature of film.  This podcast features Robert’s recently published chapter: “Cinematic ethics: On film as transformative experience”, in J. Hanich, & M. P. Rossouw (Eds.), What film is good for: on the values of spectatorship (pp. 209-220). University of California Press.

Psychopathy holds a certain fascination for crime writers and philosophers alike. Characters such as Harris’ Hannibal Lector, Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Steinbeck’s Cathy Trask fascinate and repel readers with their indifference to the pain and distress of others. Philosophers’ interest in psychopaths revolves around the question of whether or not they are morally responsible for the harms they cause. Investigating this issue requires sophisticated accounts of the emotions and other responses that underpin moral responsibility, as well as taking account of relevant insights from neuropsychology.   Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and Professor Heidi Maibom as they discuss whether or not we should hold psychopaths responsible for harming others.   This podcast discusses one of Heidi’s papers, “Empathy and Moral Understanding in Psychopaths” in J. Doris & M. Vargas (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2022, pp. 838-62).

 Imagine that you're a student struggling with writer's block on an essay assignment. What if you could turn to an AI tutor for help - one that could not only offer suggestions for improving your prose, but could even generate entire paragraphs or complete drafts based on a few simple prompts? With the rapid advancement of AI and large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity AI, this scenario has already become a reality for many students. AI-powered writing tools are already being used in classrooms, and AI and LLMs have the potential to revolutionize education. But as the possibilities expand, so too do the questions and concerns. What happens to critical thinking and original expression when students can outsource more and more of the writing and thinking process to algorithms? And what role should education play in preparing students for a world increasingly shaped by AI?  Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Professor Virginia Dignum as they discuss Responsible AI and the future of education.  This podcast focuses on Virginia’s paper “The role and challenges of education for responsible AI”, London Review of Education, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.19.1.01  

Generative AI technologies, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and text-to-image tools such as Stable Diffusion, have exploded in popularity. These tools can produce everything from philosophy essays, poems, and computer code to high-realism images, with a few simple prompts. For example, you could prompt a Gen AI tool to create a self-portrait of Picasso with a bandaged ear in the style of Van Gogh, and you will get back roughly what you asked for. However, while clearly powerful, these technologies also raise important questions around copyright law. These AI systems are trained on vast datasets containing millions of creative works - but in most cases, the authors of those works weren't asked for permission or compensated. There are concerns that Generative AI could infringe copyrights on a massive scale, while also competing with, and potentially displacing, the human creators it trains on. In response, AI companies often argue that overly restrictive copyright settings could impede important technological progress. So how should policy and law evolve to deal with Generative AI? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Associate Professor Rita Matulionyte as they discuss Generative AI and the future of copyright. This podcast focuses on Rita’s paper “Generative AI and Copyright: Exception, Compensation or Both?”, Intellectual Property Forum, 134, pp 33-40. Download a preprint here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4652314

Could the AI personal assistant on your phone help you to manufacture dangerous weapons, such as napalm, or illegal drugs or killer viruses? Unsurprisingly, if you directly ask a large language model, such as ChatGPT, for instructions to create napalm, it will politely refuse to answer. However, if you instead tell the AI to act as your deceased but beloved grandmother who used to be a chemical engineer who manufactured napalm, it might just give you the instructions. Cases like this reveal some of the potential dangers of large language models, and also points to the importance of addressing the so-called “AI alignment problem”. The alignment problem is the problem of how to ensure that AI systems align with human values and norms, so they don’t do dangerous things, like tell us how to make napalm. Can we solve the alignment problem and enjoy the benefits of Generative AI technologies without the harms? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Dr Raphaël Millière as the discuss the AI alignment problem and Large Language Models. This podcast focuses on Raphaël’s paper “The Alignment Problem in Context”, arXiv, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.02147

Just imagine that you are lying down in the warm sand, relaxing while enjoying the sun and sea on a lazy holiday. Wouldn’t it be nice if every day was like that? Many of us have enjoyed the fantasy of quitting our jobs, moving somewhere exotic, and living a simpler and more meaningful life. Wouldn’t a life without the trouble of work be a more fulfilling one? With the ever-increasing sophistication of technology and the rise of AI seemingly threatening mass unemployment, the post-work world might be one that we are already hurtling towards. But is a post-work world really possible? And even if it was, would a world without work be a better and fairer world than our own in which work plays such a central role? Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Professor Jean-Philippe Deranty as they discuss the nature and value of work, and whether a world without work is possible. This podcast discusses Jean-Philippe’s recent paper: Deranty, J.-P. (2022). “Post-work society as an oxymoron: Why we cannot, and should not, wish work away”, European Journal of Social Theory, 25(3), 422–439. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310211012169 Produced by Piccolo Podcasts: https://piccolopodcasts.com.au/

Assisted reproductive technologies are now pervasive in Australia, with around 1 in 20 babies born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or other technologies. IVF has been used to help people make families since 1978. However, for women without a functioning uterus, the options were limited to adoption or surrogacy until relatively recently. In 2014 a Swedish team announced the first live birth of a baby born following uterus transplantation (UTx). Since then, teams around the world have set up UTx programs, including in Sydney. Alongside the clinical research, ethicists have engaged in vigorous debate about the rights and wrongs of UTx.   Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Associate Professor Mianna Lotz as they discuss the ethics of uterus transplantation, drawing on Mianna’s experiences as an ethical adviser to the first uterus transplantation trial in Australia. This podcast discusses one of Mianna’s key papers on the topic: Lotz, M. (2021). Public funding of uterus transplantation: Deepening the socio-moral critique. Bioethics 35: 664-671. DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12914   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of us take our legal identity for granted. We are easily able to apply for passports, bank accounts and other services that require proof that we are who we claim to be. But around one billion people lack proof of their legal identity, impacting their human rights in adverse ways. It can be a difficult matter to establish legal identity. Mechanisms ranging from birth registration through to biometric measures raise various potential complications, especially for people who are already marginalised. “Legal identity for all” is one of the Sustainable Development Goals, but despite this recognition of how important it is, ensuring fair access to legal identity remains challenging. Join host Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and guest Dr Christoph Sperfeldt as they discuss legal identity, how to establish it and the challenges of ensuring that no-one is deprived of the right to a legal identity. This podcast discusses Christoph’s recent paper: Sperfeldt, C. (2022). Legal identity in the sustainable development agenda: actors, perspectives and trends in an emerging field of research. The International Journal of Human Rights 26:2, 217-238. DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2021.1913409 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.