AI chatbots are everywhere. They answer questions, offer advice, and even provide emotional support. But what happens when they hallucinate or deliver unreliable information? Who’s responsible when these tools cause real harm?

Kashmir Hill of The New York Times and Jeff Horwitz of Reuters have been investigating questions like these for years. Hill has broken major stories on facial recognition, privacy, and AI systems. Horwitz’s reporting has exposed how tech companies handle harmful content, often revealing significant failures. Both have documented serious problems with how these technologies actually work in practice.

In this conversation, moderated by Monica Nickelsburg, host of KUOW Public Radio’s Booming podcast, Hill and Horwitz will share what they’ve learned about AI chatbot harms. They’ll discuss dangerous misinformation, unexpected safety failures, and the question of corporate accountability. As chatbots become more common in our daily lives, what should users know? Where are the gaps in how these systems get tested and released?

The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots discussion, co-sponsored by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Tech Policy Lab and Technology & Social Change Group, in partnership with KUOW Public Radio, will include time for your questions.

The discussion will be preceded by a 20-minute conversation featuring M. Linsey Kitchens, a teacher-librarian at Sedro-Woolley High School in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. Kitchens, a former Center for an Informed Public Community Fellowship member, will share insights from her recent work adapting lessons from the Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? AI humanities online course — co-developed by CIP faculty members Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West — for her high school students who then shared these skills and lessons with local senior citizens during an innovative local intergenerational learning event in February.