Home Podcasts Humans On The Loop: Wisdom for an Age of Magical Technologies
Humans On The Loop: Wisdom for an Age of Magical Technologies

Humans On The Loop: Wisdom for an Age of Magical Technologies

Michael Garfield 270 episodes Nov 6, 2026

Hosted by artist and philosopher Michael Garfield, Humans On The Loop explores the edges of science, art, technology, and political economy. The show features transdisciplinary conversations about human agency in an age of automation and the co-evolution of people and technology. It also examines psychedelic and philosophical perspectives on navigating accelerating change. The podcast aims to help listeners ask better questions and expand their sense of what is possible.

Episodes

Why Can’t AI Laugh at a Joke?
Why Can’t AI Laugh at a Joke? Nov 6, 2026 1:39:08 With AI on everyone’s mind, we have to ask: what does it mean to think?When does the brain actually create predictive models and rely on mental representations — and when is it really just a matter of inputs and outputs with no simulation going on in between?Why do we feel pain and find things funny? Not just avoid damage or understand the logic of a joke, but actually feel these things?Agreeing o
What Buddhist Epistemology Teaches Us about The Future of AI
What Buddhist Epistemology Teaches Us about The Future of AI Aug 17, 2026 1:49:57 For Part Two in our Continual Learning mini-series, Dr. Nadav Amir of The University of Ottowa joins me and guest co-host Dr. Adam Safron of Tufts University for a trialogue on the fundamental role of goals in intelligence.Nadav draws on behavioral neuroscience, Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti, control and information theory, and John Vervaeke’s work on “relevance realization” to formally articul
Continual Learning: World Models in Natural & Artificial Intelligence with Adam Safron
Continual Learning: World Models in Natural & Artificial Intelligence with Adam Safron Jul 30, 2026 1:17:46 What does it actually mean for a machine to “understand” the world? Are today’s auto-regressive LLMs truly reasoning, or is statistical text prediction fundamentally distinct from genuine deliberative agency and causal inference? And how do we move away from brittle, post-hoc safety patches toward intrinsic, system-level alignment?This week begins Continual Learning, a new mini-series co-hosted wi
Visionary Ventures & The AI-Native Avant-Garde with William Morgan of Restless Egg
Visionary Ventures & The AI-Native Avant-Garde with William Morgan of Restless Egg Jun 25, 2026 1:03:38 Today’s guest is William Morgan, the co-founder of Restless Egg, a London-based incubator and accelerator designed specifically for a new class of “artist-founders” whose work synthesizes art, technology, and commercial product design.His thesis: The tech sector’s obsession with optimization can’t help us discover the genuinely novel forms of human experience that this intelligent substrate makes
Rewilding Collective Attention: Bioregional Design for Life Online with Andrea Farias
Rewilding Collective Attention: Bioregional Design for Life Online with Andrea Farias Jun 16, 2026 1:27:03 ✨ Become a founding member to access my online courses, including Jurassic Worlding and How To Live In The Future✨ Browse and buy the books we mention on the show at Bookshop.org✨ Stream and download my music at artist-owned (!) Subvert.fm✨ Learn about Atlas Research Group, my new team building sovereign infrastructure for social coherence and collective intelligenceIn the last episode, my convers
Games & Metrics: Agency as Art & Artifice with C. Thi Nguyen
Games & Metrics: Agency as Art & Artifice with C. Thi Nguyen May 26, 2026 1:35:46 ✨ Become a founding member to access my online courses, including Jurassic Worlding and How To Live In The Future✨ Browse and buy all of the books we discuss on the show at Bookshop.org✨ Stream and download my music at artist-owned Subvert.fm✨ Learn about Atlas Research Group, my new team on a mission to build sovereign infrastructure for social coherence and collective intelligenceAbout This Epis
Collective Futurecrafting: Play, Trauma, and The Duty of Care with Mathew Mytka
Collective Futurecrafting: Play, Trauma, and The Duty of Care with Mathew Mytka Apr 27, 2026 1:23:11 ✨ Like/Subscribe/Comment where you listen! YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ Become a member for our reading group, community calls, and years of members-only recordings — including the excellent raps we had recently on Alexander Douglas and Wendell Berry. Our next call is this weekend, May 2, at 2 pm MDT!This week I decant a conversation with the brilliant Mathew Mytka (Website | LinkedIn) — a
Neuroscience in Hyperspace with Andrew Gallimore
Neuroscience in Hyperspace with Andrew Gallimore Mar 25, 2026 1:34:36 In this episode we join pioneering psychedelic neuroscientist Andrew Gallimore (Website | X | Instagram | Substack) to probe the bewildering high-dimensional horizons of DMT research and their implications for our understanding of consciousness and the structure of reality. In his book Death by Astonishment, Gallimore argues DMT expands the brain’s “representational reach,” enabling perception of
(Re)Building Trustworthy Institutions with Nathan Kinch
(Re)Building Trustworthy Institutions with Nathan Kinch Mar 11, 2026 1:25:30 Today’s very overdue conversation is with AI ethicist and organizational trust expert Nathan Kinch of Trustworthy By Design (Website | LinkedIn), asking questions like: How do institutions made of decent, well-meaning people continue to behave out of alignment with their stated values? How do we dig ourselves out of a catastrophic collapse in trust? How can we design practical, participatory “livi
AI Doesn't Have To Be This Way feat. Alex Komoroske
AI Doesn't Have To Be This Way feat. Alex Komoroske Feb 10, 2026 1:21:45 This week go deep with Alex Komoroske, CEO and co-founder of Common Tools, about his vision for a more saner, more intentional tech paradigm in which the historical contingencies that gave us the digital world we have today have been fundamentally reworked.The version of AI most of us have come to accept or reject looks like corporate-owned super-assistants with all your data. Instead, we could ha
Fostering "Prodigies of Uncertainty" with Layman Pascal
Fostering "Prodigies of Uncertainty" with Layman Pascal Jan 27, 2026 1:28:48 The world is getting weirder every day… We need weirdness specialists. Maybe the best guy for the job is my friend, the brilliant “metashaman” (and possible octopus) Layman Pascal. In his own words, Layman “used to be a Canadian meditation teacher, yoga instructor & philosopher of Integral Metatheory but he’s feeling much better now.” He leads the Metamodern Spirituality Labs, hosts The Integral S
Becoming Hyperhuman with Carl Hayden Smith
Becoming Hyperhuman with Carl Hayden Smith Jan 13, 2026 1:18:29 This week we come at technology sideways with help from hyperspace explorer Carl Hayden Smith, Associate Professor of Media at the University of East London (Talks & Papers), Founder of The Museum of Consciousness at New College, University of Oxford , co-founder of the Cyberdelic Nexus, Director at Noonautics and head of Context Engineering at Eleusis.✨ Carl is currently teaching a course on Apoc

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