Robot Souls & Junk Code: Dr. Eve Poole on Programming Humanity into AI

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Are we building better versions of ourselves in AI – or a master race of very efficient psychopaths?

In this new episode of Singularity.FM, I sit down with Dr. Eve Poole, theologian, leadership scholar, and author of Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity, to ask a simple yet brutal question: what makes us human, and what happens if we leave that out of our machines?

Eve argues that what tech culture treats as “junk code” – our emotions, intuition, stories, uncertainty, meaning-making, and even our mistakes – is not a bug in human design, but rather the core feature that has kept our species alive. And right now, that entire layer of humanity is mostly missing from how we build AI.

We talk about why that’s not just a philosophical oversight, but a design flaw with existential consequences.

In this conversation with Dr. Eve Poole, we explore:

• What is human? Why law, theology, and philosophy all quietly assume something like a soul even when they won’t define it.
• Soul, consciousness & “junk code” – why emotion, intuition, uncertainty, story and meaning-making may be the real hallmarks of humanity.
• Theology, capitalism & AI – how Eve went from the Church of England and an MBA to writing about robots and artificial intelligence.
• The “junk code” thesis – why free will without omniscience requires emotions, intuition, conscience, and stories to keep a species alive.
• Copying only our IQ – how we ended up designing AI that looks more like a master race of high-functioning psychopaths than a full human being.
• Consciousness as emergent… from what? Need, embodiment, and why a simple walking robot might tell us more than a massive LLM.
• Alignment vs parenting – why trying to “control” AI like a tool may be naive, and what it would mean to raise AI more like a child.
• Story, Tolkien & u-catastrophe – how stories train our moral imagination and keep hope alive when doomism feels seductive.
• Why we must “program in humanity” not for AI’s sake, but for ours.

If you care about AI, ethics, theology, leadership, or the future of our species, this interview with Eve Poole goes straight to the hard questions most people dodge.

As always, you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support, you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Dr. Eve Poole?

Dr. Eve Poole is a theologian, leadership scholar, and author whose work bridges ethics, neuroscience, capitalism, and emerging technologies. She holds a PhD from Cambridge, taught leadership for 15 years, and has advised leaders across government, finance, education, and the Church of England.

Her latest book, Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity, argues that our so-called “junk code” – emotion, intuition, story, and even our mistakes – is the missing ingredient in how we design AI and the key to preserving what makes us human.