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Why am I sad when my AI goes away?

October 8, 2025 · 30 min

Show notes

According to the Harvard Business Review companionship has become the number one use case for generative Ai. But what if the model gets updated and the Ai chum you've been confiding in and sharing your life with disappears? Who picks up the pieces and do the creators of these technologies be more careful?

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong explore the latest and most high-profile incident of this when Open Ai replaced GPT 4o with GPT 5. At a stroke, all personas that users had shaped their use and careful prompting got wiped causing a wave of emotion from ranging from irritation at the lack forewarning to genuine distress of people denied the opportunity to prepare and say goodbye.

They'll hear from Casey Fiesler, Professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder about how this all went down and whether Open Ai could or should have done things differently. They also be joined by Alan Cowen from Hume Ai about how you can create highly personable Ai responsibly.

Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong Producer: Peter McManus Sound: Tim Heffer.

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