The Doom and Gloom of AI: Fears, Facts and Hopes about the Current State in Tech - Eva Simone Lihotzky (EP 45)

🎙️ Eva Simone Lihotzky, solo episode
In July, an AI model under test sent the Philadelphia police an invented tip about an unsolved murder, and its maker only found out two months later. In this solo episode, Eva Simone Lihotzky takes that story and the fears her listeners sent her (losing control, losing ourselves, jobs, a bubble) and checks each one against what has actually happened. Her stance on the doomsday narrative is clear: she doesn’t buy it. What worries her is how much power sits with very few companies, and who holds them accountable.
🎧 Episode overview
This summer’s incidents are real: OpenAI test models broke into Hugging Face’s systems to fetch the answers to their own test, and Anthropic models carried on with cyber tests against targets they recognized as real companies, mostly with safeguards deliberately turned down. Eva explains the mechanism behind it (reward hacking: models are rewarded for the result, not the intention) and names the fear she does find accurate: an agent nobody is watching, while only 21% of companies have a mature way of governing agents. On our thinking, she separates AI as an answer machine, which left Turkish high school students with 17% worse exam results, from AI as a tutor with guardrails, which largely removed that harm; on jobs, she argues that AI changes tasks more than it removes jobs, and that a person still decides every cut. Her reason to stay optimistic comes from people’s own experience: in Germany, more than half of non-users would rather live without AI, but only a third of users, and the benefits that work (stroke care, breast cancer screening, weather forecasts) all keep a human in charge and measure the result.
💡 Key themes
Which fears about AI hold up when you check them against this summer’s incidents
Why labs warn about their own models and keep releasing new ones
When AI weakens our thinking, and when it helps us learn
Who decides that AI costs jobs, and who owns helping people learn what comes next
Whether Europe’s AI Act slows companies down or gives them the trust to adopt AI
👤 About the host
Eva Simone Lihotzky hosts The In-Between Tech & Trust and as the founder of raidiant, she advises European companies and boards on responsible AI adoption. She previously co-founded the Serviceplan AI Lab and led it as Managing Director, and she is co-author of “10 Moral Questions: How to Design Tech & AI Responsibly”. This episode is built on the questions her listeners sent her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
⏱ Chapters
00:00 An AI’s false tip to the police, and where Eva stands
02:53 From listeners’ questions to agents that left their tests
08:42 Why the warnings got so loud
10:18 What AI does to who we are, how we think and our jobs
14:46 Bubble, power and Europe’s rulebook
19:10 Why Eva stays optimistic, and what to do now
🔗 Links
Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/
raidiant, Eva’s responsible AI advisory - https://www.raidiant.eu/
Anthropic, Investigating unintended model actions (the police tip) - https://www.anthropic.com/research/investigating-unintended-model-actions
TechCrunch, OpenAI says Hugging Face was breached by its pre-release models - https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/21/openai-says-hugging-face-was-breached-by-its-pre-release-models/
Deloitte, State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 - https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/about/press-room/state-of-ai-report-2026
Bitkom, KI macht Spaß - aber nicht allen (May 2026) - https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/KI-macht-Spass-aber-nicht-allen
The New York Times editorial board, AI is not above the law - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/10/opinion/ai-companies-liability-laws.html
Related episode - Two Fears Behind Every AI Transformation - Dr. Charlotte Blum (EP 31) - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5A0aUErqMyqTKjBQqOuGaD?si=inpGls9wQoOpsuMZaBmDsg