As AI systems increasingly shape how people love, parent, vote, and govern, questions about data ownership and human agency become urgent. This conversation is timely because society is quietly outsourcing judgment to machines trained on past data, while policy and ethics struggle to keep pace. That tension makes this discussion essential right now.
This episode features Carl Öhman, Associate Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Uppsala University, whose research examines AI, data, death, and democratic power. Carl explains why digital traces outlive people, how AI increasingly governs present decisions, and what is lost when humans stop taking risks in favor of statistical certainty.
00:00 Introduction.
02:42 Curiosity about the internet shapes a path across sociology, political science, and AI.
07:12 An academic upbringing normalizes uncertainty and intellectual exploration.
10:03 Digital traces persist after death, raising unresolved social and political questions.
15:38 Deceased individuals lack data protection rights, creating privacy and security risks.
19:42 AI systems act as a personified version of society’s digital past.
23:50 Outsourcing decisions to AI weakens faith, courage, and human agency.
29:14 Genuine political dialogue requires vulnerability rather than optimization.
34:39 AI trained on AI risks allowing the dead to govern the living.
45:34 Data privacy is a collective societal issue, not an individual consumer problem.