Ghost in the Machine

What if AI is not a machine we built but an intelligence we are domesticating, the way early humans domesticated dogs 15,000 years ago? Chen Gu, an engineer who became a lawyer and now builds AI tools for the legal profession, brings a theory that reframes the whole debate. When humans tamed dogs, he argues, we may have domesticated ourselves in the process, and the same thing could be happening now with AI.

Andrew takes the optimist seat and sees a path to symbiosis. Liz presses on control, morality, and who gets to set the rules. Chen lands somewhere sharper: you cannot guarantee a moral AI any more than you can guarantee a moral human, and the only real safeguard may be individual ownership of your own model. A conversation about power, trust, and whether we end up as partners or pets.

What is Ghost in the Machine?

The AI conversation, without the noise.

Every week, Andrew DeGood and Liz Short sit down for a thirty-minute conversation about artificial intelligence. Andrew comes in as the optimist, a founder building AI products and betting his career on where this technology is headed. Liz brings the harder questions, the ones about what we lose, what we risk, and what we owe the people who didn't sign up for any of this.

They bring in the people actually shaping the field. Researchers, founders, ethicists, skeptics, builders. Real conversations about real implications. No hype cycles. No doom loops. Just two smart people and a guest trying to figure out what this moment actually means.

New episodes stream live every Thursday. Available on every podcast platform after.