In Progress with Tim Miller

When you log in to play with friends, someone has to keep the whole thing running. Tom Penrose has spent 15 years doing the unsexy work behind the world's biggest games, including helping move Apex Legends to new infrastructure while hundreds of thousands of people were playing. He joins Tim to talk about what AI is really changing in game development, why juniors can now build things they don't fully understand, and why a game made entirely by machines may never replace the reason we press play in the first place: connecting with other people.

Food is one of the ways we show love. So what happens when we find out a machine made it? Food safety expert Ruth Baker joins Tim to unpack the research showing people enjoy the exact same meal less the moment they know a robot cooked it, why imperfection turns out to be part of the appeal, and why that one human moment, the plate handed over with a smile, might be the bit worth protecting.

Graham Bell has been a graphic designer for 30 years, creating somewhere between 55,000 and 60,000 pieces of artwork for everyone from local cafés to Ferrari, Shell and the University of Oxford. He started when artwork was photographed by a camera the size of a small car, and watched that entire world vanish within a couple of years when the Mac arrived.Now it's happening again. In this conversation, Graham is refreshingly honest about what AI and Canva have done to his business, the clients he's lost, and why he went from fearing AI to using it every single day. We talk about the designers who refused to adapt last time, why "good enough" is reshaping the industry, whether people actually care if art is made by a human, and what a 30-year career teaches you about riding a wave of change rather than being swept away by it.Find out more about Graham:Website: absolutegraphics.co.ukLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/graham-bell-90323316In Progress with Tim Miller explores the human side of AI and robotics. Find the human signal in the noise at inprogress.show

Tim sits down with Nick Finch, a personal trainer turned life coach who helps people perform well, not just physically but mentally.We get into what performing well really means, why so much of it comes back to the mind, and how a fitness coach often ends up being a rock, a friend and an accidental counsellor.Nick loves AI and uses it for everything, but he is honest about its limits. We explore where it fits in coaching and where it does not: building training plans through good prompting, why beginners get stuck with generic programs, and that odd moment when you realise something was made by AI and feel yourself disconnect. We also dig into accountability, whether you can really answer to an AI the way you answer to a person, and what happens when people turn to chatbots for support they used to get from a human.Nick also shares his own story, from bullied skinny kid to the military, bodybuilding and a love of daft, brilliant endurance challenges.A warm, curious conversation about staying human as the tools around us change, and finding the human signal in the noise.Guest: Nick Finch, host of the Perform Well podcast.Exploring the human side of AI and robotics.

Tim sits down with Kit Higginson, philosophy teacher and founder of the Southampton Philosophy Forum, for a proper wrestle with what AI and robotics mean for being human. From the Enlightenment to the printing press, from AI-generated music to humanoid robots in the home, they dig into the big one: if technology takes away the struggle, does it take away the meaning too? A warm, honest conversation between an optimist and a sceptic, covering suffering, creativity, transhumanism, and why Kit thinks the real danger isn't the technology but who controls it.Find Kit at the Southampton Philosophy Forum, meeting twice a month, "a place for interesting people to have interesting conversations".