AI Ethics in the Age of Enterprise AI & Agentic Systems with Aubrey Blanche

In Episode 42 of Cloud Dialogues, Georgia and Matt are joined by AI ethicist and The Mathpath founder Aubrey Blanche for a candid, provocative and surprisingly funny conversation about responsible AI in the real world. We explore: 🔐 AI security and sovereignty Frontier-model hype, open-weight models, enterprise security, data residency and why Microsoft doesn’t necessarily need the “best” product to win. 🧠 “More capable,” not “smarter” Why anthropomorphising AI distorts how we understand - and interact with - the technology. ⚖️ What algorithmic discrimination actually looks like Why “the evil computer did it” is rarely an accurate or useful diagnosis - and why understanding the mechanism matters if we genuinely want to fix it. 📈 The problem with productivity as the goal Making broken processes faster may simply produce more garbage, more efficiently. 🎯 Incentives drive behaviour Including the inevitable consequences of token-maxing dashboards, performance targets based on AI usage and telling employees they must use six tools whether they need them or not. 👩‍💻 Why eliminating junior roles is spectacularly shortsighted Tokens may now be more expensive than interns - and without junior employees today, organisations won’t have senior experts tomorrow. 👥 Pair prompting and human expertise How teams can use AI to accelerate delivery while preserving reasoning, shared knowledge, mentorship and technical skills. 💸 The economics behind the AI narrative Why frontier-model companies need an enormous addressable market to justify their valuations - and why that makes “AI will replace all human labour” an extremely convenient story. 🌍 Who gets to shape AI? Who decides what should be automated? Whose problems receive investment? Who benefits from the dominant narrative - and what possible futures disappear when we accept it without question? A practical discussion about adopting AI intentionally, creating genuine business value and building systems that work without forgetting the humans inside them. Also featuring: ✨ 100 beautiful AI-generated slides that may or may not be useful 🔥 The consultant you hire when you want the truth 🪙 Tokens being set on fire for the performance dashboard 🚗 AI’s ongoing refusal to wash Aubrey’s car