In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Walter Quattrociocchi, complexity scientist and professor of computer science, about what really happens when language becomes automated and answers arrive without the effort of thinking.

Their conversation circles around:

• Why large language models simulate judgment rather than possess it, and why benchmarks miss the point
• The concept of "Epistemia" - when fluent wording replaces verification and we feel we know without having evaluated
• How AI increases content production while quietly eroding trust in content itself
• Reliability, error, and the danger of delegating decisions to systems that cannot recognise their own mistakes
• Whether expertise becomes rarer - and more valuable - in a world full of convincing but ungrounded answers

It is less a debate about machines becoming intelligent, and more a question of what happens to human judgment when fluency becomes cheap and cognitive labour optional.

Do you want to know more about Walter Quattrociocchi?

Walter Quattrociocchi is Full Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, leading the Center of Data Science and Complexity for Society (CDCS). His research interests encompass data science, network science, cognitive science, and data-driven modeling of dynamic processes in complex networks. Professor Quattrociocchi has an extensive publication record in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including Nature and PNAS. His research on misinformation spreading has informed the Global Risk Report 2016 and 2017 of the World Economic Forum. International media have extensively covered his work, including Scientific American, New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fortune, Poynter, and The Atlantic.

In 2017, Professor Quattrociocchi coordinated the round table on Fake News and the role of Universities and Research in countering fake news, chaired by the President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Mrs. Laura Boldrini. In 2018, he served as the scientific advisor to the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM), and in 2020, he was a member of the Task Force to Counter Hate Speech, appointed by the Minister of Innovation. He has recently been one of the Principal Investigators of the IRIS research coalition (UK/G7) focused on combating misinformation about vaccine hesitancy and climate change.

In 2023, the US State Department appointed him to the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) on the topic of Data-Driven Policies.

Professor Quattrociocchi is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches and guest lectures at major academic institutions and other organizations.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Kathy Pham, global AI leader at Workday and long-time voice in responsible technology. The conversation moves straight past surface-level “AI is cool” talk and into agency, purpose, governance, and what actually happens when autonomous systems meet real work and real people.

4 sharp conversation topics from the episode

• Agency vs purpose - how giving tools more autonomy can quietly remove meaning from the very tasks we thought we were optimizing
• The balance between technology fading into the background and moments where its presence must be explicit.
• How governance can be an accelerator, and why good rules and architecture do not slow innovation but actually make teams move faster without creating tech and social debt
• The tension between flexible, composable systems and the need for clear structures so AI can navigate finance, HR, and planning without going off the rails

This episode is less about “what AI can do” and more about what we should let it do, and what happens to human purpose when efficiency becomes the default answer.

Do you want to know more about Kathy Pham?

Kathy Pham is vice president of artificial intelligence at Workday. She also serves as the first Workday AI ambassador, and hosts the AI Horizons video series.

A computer scientist and product leader, Kathy has experience across industry, academia, non-profits, venture capital, and government. In addition to her role at Workday, Kathy’s a senior advisor at Mozilla, where she co-founded the Mozilla Builders Incubator and Mozilla Responsible Computing, funding and enabling start-up founders and academics. And she’s on the faculty at Harvard University, where she created and teaches the Product Management and Society course and co-founded the Ethical Tech Working Group. She also serves on various technology and non-profit boards.

Previously, Kathy served as the inaugural executive director of the National AI Advisory Committee, was deputy chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and was a founding engineering and product member of the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, where she helped build critical digital services in government across three presidential administrations. In addition, Kathy spent over a decade building large scale systems in industry and healthcare at Google (search, health, people operations), IBM, and Harris Healthcare. She also previously served as a fellow at the MIT Media Lab and at the Harvard Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, where she co-founded ai-in-the-loop, exploring how AI fits into the human world.

Kathy completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Supelec in Metz, France.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Phil Lee, the Managing Director of Digiphile and a leading legal expert on data privacy, GDPR, and the evolving EU digital rulebook. It is a conversation that moves beyond the hype of the AI Act to explore the practical, often messy reality of compliance, investigating how organizations can navigate the "regulatory vicious circle" without stifling innovation.

4 sharp conversation topics from the episode:

- How excessive complexity in legislation causes companies to accidentally fall out of compliance, prompting regulators to create more rules, which only deepens the problem. - Why the biggest governance headache isn't always new tools, but existing vendors quietly rolling out AI features - like a PDF reader suddenly sending data to servers in China via a software update. - The legal reality that systems cannot be held accountable, meaning that regardless of how autonomous an AI agent becomes, a human must always remain in the loop to absorb the liability. - Looking beyond personal data (GDPR) to the new Data Act, which essentially serves as competition law designed to break vendor lock-in and force cloud providers to make proprietary data portable.

This conversation sets the tone and the reality for the interplay of regulation and innovation and is not to be missed by practitioners in the field of AI and data.

Do you want to know more about Phil Lee?

Phil is a lawyer with over 20 years' experience, specialising in data protection and artificial intelligence. His practice focuses mainly on technology, cloud and digital media companies, and he has worked in both London and California.

Phil Lee runs UK challenger law firm, Digiphile, which specialises in data protection, AI, and digital regulation. Digiphile's mission is to provide its global clients across all sectors with simple, strategic and actionable legal advice.

He holds CIPP/E, CIPM, AIGP and FIP status with the IAPP, and a degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University.