Episode 5. The End of Human Past: Professor Andrew Hoskins on AI, Digital Memory and Epistemic Warfares in a Synthetic Age

In this episode of the Intelligence Explosion podcast, host Tamim Asey is joined by Professor Andrew Hoskins, Professor of AI, Memory & War at the University of Edinburgh. A leading authority on digital memory and conflict, Professor Hoskins has written extensively on how technology transforms the ways societies record, remember and forget.

He currently leads the ERC/UKRI-funded WARSHARE project, a five-year study of digital participation in the Russian war against Ukraine. His landmark works include Radical War: Data, Attention & Control in the Twenty-First Century, and his forthcoming books Memorybot: AI and the End of the Human Past and The AI Memory Machine: Why the Past is All Over will push the debate even further.

In this episode we cover:
•How memory itself has become a frontline in contemporary conflict.
•The rise of “epistemic warfare” and the battle for truth in the digital age.
•How AI reshapes remembrance and orchestrates forgetting in real time.
•The weaponisation of archives, testimony, and authenticity.
•Digital participation in war and lessons from Ukraine.
•What Memorybot and The AI Memory Machine reveal about the future of collective memory.

Tune in for a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation on AI, war, and the weaponisation of memory.