Life, Automated explores how to live, work, and make decisions in a world increasingly shaped by machines. Through thoughtful conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and more, we do our best to make sense of how technology is changing—and how it is changing us. 

We ask: What does the economy look like if AI can do much of what humans can? Will AI tools isolate us further, or steer us back toward community and common ground? Can the average person expect to be better off a decade from now? And what the heck should we tell a sixteen-year-old who wants to know whether learning German (or design, or coding, or the piano) is still worth it?

Life, Automated is grounded and non-ideological, going deep without getting too technical. Because you shouldn’t need to be an “AI person” to understand the future we’re collectively building.

Host Jess Love is a science writer with a PhD in cognitive psychology and is the Sr. Director for the Ryan Institute on Complexity. The show is a production of Kellogg's Ryan Institute on Complexity and is distributed by KQED. You can reach us at lifeautomatedpod@gmail.com.