All Things Considered - AI Emerging 1/2: Robot Helper, Robot Friend?

Download AI Emerging 1/2: Robot Helper, Robot Friend?

Rosa Hunt looks at the ethical and religious implications of AI's growing involvement in our lives.

The first of two programmes looks at our relationship with AI in our daily lives. Artificial Intelligence might be our helper - can it ever be our friend?

Rosa talks to: Zoe Kleinman, BBC News' technology correspondent; Hannah Rowlatt, RNIB Technology for Life coordinator for Wales; Myra Wilson, head of the intelligent robotics group at Aberystwyth University; and John Lennox, Oxford mathmetician and Christian apologist who writes about the interface of science, philosophy and religion.

This edition of All Things Considered was recorded in 2023. Since it was first broadcast, the world of artificial intelligence has moved from the margins into everyday life.

We’re revisiting conversations recorded at a time when generative AI was only just beginning to capture the public imagination. Some of the predictions, hopes and concerns you'll hear may seem remarkably prescient; others reflect a moment before the technology's rapid acceleration became clear. Yet many of the ethical, social, and spiritual questions raised by our contributors remain as relevant today as they were when the programme was first broadcast.

As you listen, it's worth remembering that these discussions took place in a very different technological landscape. But hearing how much has changed in such a short time makes them especially valuable: they offer a snapshot of a time when wider society was beginning to understand what artificial intelligence might mean for our future.

Published on Sunday, 9th August 2026.

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