Shows
New Books NetworkEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to repl...2025-07-231h 05
New Books in Economic and Business HistoryEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to repl...2025-07-231h 05
New Books in Politics and PolemicsEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to repl...2025-07-231h 05
NBN Book of the DayEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to repl...2025-07-231h 05
KPFA - UpFrontEmily Bender and Alex Hanna on The AI Con00:08 Emily M. Bender is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR); they’ve co-authored the book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want
The post Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on The AI Con appeared first on KPFA.
2025-07-1159 min
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Why "AI" Is a Con: Our Book Launch! (with Vauhini Vara), 2025.05.08It's finally here! The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want hit the shelves in May. In this special bonus episode, Alex and Emily speak to tech journalist Vauhini Vara at one of the book's online launch events, where they covered the misleading nature of the term "artificial intelligence," why the use of tools like ChatGPT will only ever cheapen human labor and enrich the already powerful, and how people can fight the narrative that these technologies are inevitable.Vauhini Vara is a technology reporter and writer. Her journalism has...2025-07-071h 16
Teaching in Higher EdThe AI Con, with Emily M. Bender & Alex HannaEmily M. Bender & Alex Hanna share about their book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want on episode 576 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
Quotes from the episode
What’s going on with the phrase artificial intelligence is not that it means something else than what we’re using it to mean, it’s that it doesn’t have a proper referent in the world.
-Emily M. Bender
There’s a much broader range of people who can have opinions on...2025-06-2641 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000"Like Magic Intelligence in the Cloud", 2025.05.26Because Sam Altman hates opening his laptop, OpenAI is merging with iPhone guy Jony Ive's design firm in the name of some mysterious new ChatGPT-enabled consumer products: Alex and Emily go full Mystery Science Theater and dissect the announcement video. Plus how tech billionaires like Sam Altman mythologize San Francisco while their money makes it less livable for everyone else.References:Sam Altman and Jony Ive are merging (Video)Emplacedness, real estate, and gentrification in San FranciscoAnthropic? More like anthropomorphicKaren Hao on her new...2025-06-2059 min
This Machine Kills408. Synthetic Text Extruder Hype (ft. Emily Bender, Alex Hanna)We chat with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna — authors of AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want — and pierce the veil of hype by getting into how these systems actually work and, importantly, the work they cannot do despite claims by boosters and doomers alike. Think of datasets like ImageNet or LAION-5B as big vats of pink slime and LLMs like ChatGPT as “synthetic text extruding machines” that turn pink slime into nuggets of text. It’s easy to forget that these magical mystery machines are direct descendants of very unexciting things like...2025-06-041h 19
Techtonic with Mark Hurst | WFMUEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, authors, "The AI Con" from Jun 2, 2025
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, authors, "The AI Con"
Tomaš Dvořák - "Gameboy Tune"
- "Mark's intro"
- "Interview with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna" [0:02:55]
- "Mark's comments" [0:44:42]
XTC - "Real By Reel" [0:54:37]
https://freeform.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/152572
2025-06-0300 minTechtonic with Mark Hurst | WFMUEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, authors, "The AI Con" from Jun 2, 2025
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, authors, "The AI Con"
Tomaš Dvořák - "Gameboy Tune"
- "Mark's intro"
- "Interview with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna" [0:02:55]
- "Mark's comments" [0:44:42]
XTC - "Real By Reel" [0:54:37]
https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/152572
2025-06-0300 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000The "AI"-Enabled Immigration Panopticon (with Petra Molnar), 2025.05.05This week, Alex and Emily talk with anthropologist and immigration lawyer Petra Molnar about the dehumanizing hype of border-enforcement tech. From hoovering up data to hunt anyone of ambiguous citizenship status, to running surveillance of physical borders themselves, "AI" tech is everywhere in the enforcement of national borders. And as companies ranging from Amazon, to NSO Group, to Palantir all profit, this widening of automation threatens a future of faceless human rights violations with no attempts at accountability of any kind.Petra Molnar is associate director of York University's Refugee Law Lab, and a faculty...2025-05-281h 01
The Nation PodcastsGenerative AI is Not Inevitable w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna | Tech Won't Save UsOn this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna to discuss some of the harms caused by generative AI, address the industry's ploys to keep the public invested while companies flounder under the weight of unmet promises, and what folks can do to push back.Emily M. Bender is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University of Washington. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Institute. They are the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Cr...2025-05-2253 min
Tech Won't Save UsGenerative AI is Not Inevitable w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex HannaParis Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna to discuss the harms of generative AI, how the industry keeps the public invested while companies flounder under the weight of unmet promises, and what people can do to push back.Emily M. Bender is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University of Washington. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Institute. They are the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a cr...2025-05-2253 min
Tomayto TomahtoThe AI Con w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex HannaThe AI Con may as well be the answer to the question: what happens when a linguist and a sociologist come together to write a book? Co-written by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con isn’t just a book, it’s an instruction manual to guide readers through this era of AI hype. In short, this book does what academic scholarship does best: close read texts, historical patterns, marketing schemes, statistics, politics, and more—and find a way to connect these granular details and examples to broader trends in our society. The AI Con sits along this c...2025-05-191h 06
All TWiT.tv Shows (Video)Intelligent Machines 819: Put The Fries in the Bag
The Copyright Office Issues A Largely Disappointing Report On AI Training, And Once Again A Major Fair Use Analysis Inexplicably Ignores The First Amendment
Trump Appointees Blocked From Entering US Copyright Office
Meta's new AI glasses could have a 'super-sensing' mode with facial recognition
Three things we learned about Sam Altman by scoping his kitchen
The House GOP Quietly Slipped In An AI Law That Would Accidentally Ban GOP's Favorite 'Save The Children' Laws
neat Gemini airline hack
Interview with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
AI Use Damages Professional Reputation, Study Suggests
Gemini smarts are coming to more Android...2025-05-152h 40
Big Technology PodcastAI’s Drawbacks: Environmental Damage, Bad Benchmarks, Outsourcing Thinking — With Emily M. Bender and Alex HannaEmily Bender is a computational linguistics professor at the University of Washington. Alex Hanna is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. Bender and Hanna join Big Technology to discuss what their new book, “The AI‑Con," which they describe as the layered ways today’s language‑model boom obscures environmental costs, labor harms, and shaky science. Tune in to hear a lively back‑and‑forth on whether chatbots are useful tools or polished parlor tricks. We also cover benchmark gaming, data‑center water use, doomerism, and more. Hit play for a candid debate that will leave you smarter...2025-05-141h 01Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000AGI: "Imminent", "Inevitable", and Inane, 2025.04.21Emily and Alex pore through an elaborate science fiction scenario about the "inevitability" of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI by the year 2027 - which rests atop a foundation of TESCREAL nonsense, and Sinophobia to boot.References:AI 2027Fresh AI Hell:AI persona bots for undercover copsPalantir heart eyes Keir StarmerAnti-vaxxers are grifting off the measles outbreak with AI-formulated supplementsThe cost, environmental and otherwise, of being polite to ChatGPTActors who sold voice & likeness find it used for scams...2025-05-141h 05
Enjoy This Vivid Full Audiobook And Feel The Difference.The AI Con by Emily M. Bender, Alex HannaPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/2/audible/16410to listen full audiobooks.
Title: The AI Con
Author: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
Narrator: Jade Wheeler
Format: mp3
Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
Release date: 05-13-25
Ratings: 4 out of 5 stars, 15 ratings
Genres: Computer Science
Publisher's Summary:
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily...2025-05-137h 50Experience The Immersive Full Audiobook Now, Busy Professionals!The AI Con by Emily M. Bender, Alex HannaPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/2/audible/8895to listen full audiobooks.
Title: The AI Con
Author: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
Narrator: Jade Wheeler
Format: mp3
Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
Release date: 05-13-25
Ratings: 4 out of 5 stars, 15 ratings
Genres: Workplace & Organizational Behavior
Publisher's Summary:
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist...2025-05-137h 50Indulge In A Unforgettable Full Audiobook On Your Commute.The AI Con by Emily M. Bender, Alex HannaPlease visithttps://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/2/audible/16410to listen full audiobooks.
Title: The AI Con
Author: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
Narrator: Jade Wheeler
Format: mp3
Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
Release date: 05-13-25
Ratings: 4 out of 5 stars, 15 ratings
Genres: Computer Science
Publisher's Summary:
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily...2025-05-137h 50
Keen On AmericaEpisode 2531: Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on the AI ConIs AI a big scam? In their co-authored new book, The AI Con, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna take aim at what they call big tech “hype”. They argue that large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic are merely what Bender dubs "stochastic parrots" that produce text without the human understanding nor the revolutionary technology that these companies claim. Both Bender, a professor of linguistics, and Hanna, a former AI researcher at Google, challenge the notion that AI will replace human workers, suggesting instead that these algorithms produce "mid" or "janky" content lacking human insight. They accuse tech companies of h...2025-05-1343 min
AI InsideEmily Bender & Alex Hanna: “The AI Con”Jeff and Jason sit down with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, co-authors of The AI Con, to unpack the myths and real-world harms behind today’s AI hype. They discuss why the term “AI” is so often misused, how Big Tech’s models can fail marginalized communities, and why smaller, community-driven AI projects can better serve local needs. The conversation also explores the pitfalls of generative tools, the challenges of democratizing art, and the urgent need for real accountability in the tech industry
Support the show on Patreon! http://patreon.com/aiinsideshow
Subscribe to the YouTube c...2025-05-0358 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000AI Hell in a Handbasket, 2025.04.14It's been 4 months since we've cleared the backlog of Fresh AI Hell and the bullshit is coming in almost too fast to keep up with. But between a page full of awkward unicorns and a seeming slowdown in data center demand, Alex and Emily have more good news than usual to accompany this round of catharsis.AI Hell:LLM processing like human language processing (not)Jack Clark predicting AGISebastian Bubeck says predictions in "sparks" paper have already come trueWIRED puff piece on the AmodeisFoundation...2025-04-301h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000"AI" Agents, A Single Point of Failure (with Margaret Mitchell), 2025.03.31After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight, or book a flight to a restaurant reservation. Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell joins Emily and Alex to help break down what agents actually are, and what to actually worry about.References:PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprisesAn Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the WebScale...2025-04-171h 03
DJ HannaPOP TARTS - MIXED BY DJ HANNALISA feat. Doja Cat & RAYE - Born Again (Purple Disco Machine Extended Remix)Kevin McKay, Rimbano - Gimme More (Extended Mix)Mattei & Omich, Re-Tide, Katy Alex - Give Me Your Love (Extended Mix)BLOND:ISH - Call My Name (Extended Mix)René Amesz & LEIIYA - Into The Dark (Extended Mix)David Penn x Vintage Culture x Raphaella - Just Stay The Night (Extended Mix)James Alexandr - Look At Me (feat. Nada-Leigh) (Extended Mix)Jules Liesl - Cherry (Mark Picchiotti Extended Remix)Mattei & Omich, Re-Tide, Katy Alex - Work It Out (E...2025-04-101h 28Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Linguists Versus 'AI' Speech Analysis (with Nicole Holliday), 2025.03.17Measuring your talk time? Counting your filler words? What about "analyzing" your "emotions"? Companies that push LLM technology to surveil and summarize video meetings are increasingly offering to (purportedly) analyze your participation and assign your speech some metrics, all in the name of "productivity". Sociolinguist Nicole Holliday joins Alex and Emily to take apart claims about these "AI" meeting feedback tools, and reveal them to be just sparkling bossware, with little insight into how we talk.Nicole Holliday is Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley.Quick note: Our guest for this...2025-04-021h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency', 2025.03.03Emily and Alex read a terrible book so you don't have to! Come for a quick overview of LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman's opus of magical thinking, 'Superagency: What could possibly go right with our AI future' -- stay for the ridicule as praxis. Plus, why even this tortuous read offers a bit of comfort about the desperate state of the AI boosters.References:The cursèd book itselfAI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World BenchmarkMilitants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto A...2025-03-1900 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000The War on Knowledge (with Raina Bloom), 2025.02.24In the weeks since January 20, the US information ecosystem has been unraveling fast. (We're looking at you Denali, Gulf of Mexico, and every holiday celebrating people of color and queer people that used to be on Google Calendar.) As the country's unelected South African tech billionaire continues to run previously secure government data through highly questionable LLMs, academic librarian Raina Bloom joins Emily and Alex for a talk about how we organize knowledge, and what happens when generative AI degrades or poison the systems that keep us all accurately -- and contextually -- informed.Raina Bloom is the...2025-03-051h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese), 2025.01.27Sam Altman thinks fusion - particularly a company he's personally invested in - can provide the energy we "need" to develop AGI. Meanwhile, what if we just...put data centers on the Moon to save energy? Alex, Emily, and guest Tamara Kneese pour cold water on Silicon Valley's various unhinged, technosolutionist ideas about energy and the environment.Dr. Tamara Kneese is director of climate, technology and justice at the Data & Society Research InstituteDue to some technical issues during our recording, this week's episode is a bit shorter than usual.References:...2025-02-1946 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000The UK's Misplaced Enthusiasm (with Gina Neff), 2025.01.20In January, the United Kingdom's new Labour Party prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a new initiative to go all in on AI in the hopes of big economic returns, with a promise to “mainline” it into the country’s veins: everything from offering public data to private companies, to potentially fast-tracking miniature nuclear power plants to supply energy to data centers. UK-based researcher Gina Neff helps explain why this flashy policy proposal is mostly a blank check for big tech, and has little to offer either the economy or working people.Gina Neff is executive director of the Mi...2025-02-051h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Sam Altman's Fever Dream, 2025.01.13Not only is OpenAI's new o3 model allegedly breaking records for how close an LLM can get to the mythical "human-like thinking" of AGI, but Sam Altman has some, uh, reflections for us as he marks two years since the official launch of ChatGPT. Emily and Alex kick off the new year unraveling these truly fantastical stories.References:OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-PubFrom the blog of Sam Altman: ReflectionsMore about the ARC Prizeo3's environmental impactThe brain is a computer is...2025-01-221h 02
PCWB - A Professor & a Comedian Walk Into a BarPCWB EP5: Chat with Professor Alex Hanna and Comedian David Donnick on AI and it’s role in educationIn Episode 5: How is AI effecting education? What are Trump’s contributions to the border crisis? How different is Institutionalism vs Gentrification? In our 5th episode Mike and Sepehr chat with Professor Alex Hannah and comedian David Donnick about election predictions and what’s best for America. Tune in! Thank you for supporting our channel, Please share this video on your social media to spread awareness. We appreciate the support! Tap the link in bio to listen now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you pod. #PCWBpodcast ALEX HANNA: 👉 https://alex-hanna.comDAVID D...2024-12-311h 23Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 47: Hell is Other People's AI Hype, December 9 2024It’s been a long year in the AI hype mines. And no matter how many claims Emily and Alex debunk, there's always a backlog of Fresh AI Hell. This week, another whirlwind attempt to clear it, with plenty of palate cleansers along the way.Fresh AI Hell:Part I: EducationMedical residency assignments"AI generated" UCLA course"Could ChatGPT get an engineering degree?"AI letters of recommendationChaser: 'AI' isn't Tinkerbell and we don’t have to clapPart II: Potpourri, as in really rotten...2024-12-301h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 46: AGI Funny Business (Model), with Brian Merchant, December 2 2024Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it sure seemed like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and company were luring investor dollars to their newly-formed venture solely on the hand-wavy promise that someday, LLMs themselves would figure out how to turn a profit.Brian Merchant is an author, journalist in residence at the AI Now Institute, and co-host of the tech news...2024-12-181h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 45: Billionaires, Influencers, and Ed Tech (feat. Adrienne Williams), November 18 2024From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with no education expertise keep using their big names and big dollars to hype LLMs for classrooms. Promising ‘comprehensive AI tutors', or just ‘educator-informed’ tools to address understaffed classrooms, this hype is just another round of Silicon Valley pointing to real problems -- under-supported school systems -- but then directing attention and resources to their favorite toys. Former educator and DAIR research fellow Adrienne Williams joins to explain the problems this tech-solutionist redirection fails to solve, and the new ones it creates.Adrienne Williams started organizing in 2018 while workin...2024-11-261h 00
The Social ComplexEp 68 - The Risks of AI: Ethics and Impact Exploration with Dr. Alex HannaWhen we talk about artificial intelligence, there’s no denying the many advantages it brings to the table. But, like anything great, there’s also a dark side to the moon. AI isn’t without its challenges—and that’s to be expected, especially given how rapidly the technology is evolving. So, what are the societal implications of this growth? Where do we stand with current technological advancements and the regulations either in place or under consideration? And how can we work toward a healthy, balanced relationship with AI—if that’s even possible?Joining me today is Dr. Alex Ha...2024-11-2646 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 44: OpenAI's Ridiculous 'Reasoning', October 28 2024The company behind ChatGPT is back with bombastic claim that their new o1 model is capable of so-called "complex reasoning." Ever-faithful, Alex and Emily tear it apart. Plus the flaws in a tech publication's new 'AI hype index,' and some palette-cleansing new regulation against data-scraping worker surveillance.References:OpenAI: Learning to reason with LLMsHow reasoning worksGPQA, a 'graduate-level' Q&A benchmark systemFresh AI Hell:MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index'CFPB Takes Action to Curb Unchecked Worker SurveillanceCheck out future streams...2024-11-131h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 43: AI Companies Gamble with Everyone's Planet (feat. Paris Marx), October 21 2024Technology journalist Paris Marx joins Alex and Emily for a conversation about the environmental harms of the giant data centers and other water- and energy-hungry infrastructure at the heart of LLMs and other generative tools like ChatGPT -- and why the hand-wavy assurances of CEOs that 'AI will fix global warming' are just magical thinking, ignoring a genuine climate cost and imperiling the clean energy transition in the US.Paris Marx is a tech journalist and host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us. He also recently launched a 4-part series, Data Vampires, (which features Alex) ab...2024-10-311h 01Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 42: Stop Trying to Make 'AI Scientist' Happen, September 30 2024Can “AI” do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, “Can we automate the entire process of research itself?”Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT in the writing of research papers. But people keep trying to make “AI Scientists” a thing. Just ask your chatbot for some research questions, or have it synthesize some human subjects to save you time on surveys.Alex and Emily explain why so-called “fully automated, open-ended scientific discovery” can’t live up to the grandiose promises of tech c...2024-10-1059 min
No SubstitutesThe Big Uh Oh! ft. Alex HannaOn this week's episode of No Substitutes, we are joined by Alex Hanna, he talks about working at the Comedy Store, school lunches, his dad being in the FBI, we find out if he is Japanese or not, and so much more!
No Substitutes was created by Lumi Ray and Christopher Kapoh-Perez
0:00 How Alex Hanna Got Hired At The Comedy Store
4:37 Lumi Ray Is Actually Part Japanese
6:46 The Three Ingredients You Need To Be A Stand-Up Comedian
8:10 The Best Comedy Club Food
2024-10-011h 10Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 41: Sweating into AI Fall, September 9 2024Did your summer feel like an unending barrage of terrible ideas for how to use “AI”? You’re not alone. It's time for Emily and Alex to clear out the poison, purge some backlog, and take another journey through AI hell -- from surveillance of emotions, to continued hype in education and art.Fresh AI Hell:Synthetic data for Hollywood test screeningsNaNoWriMo's AI failAI is built on exploitationNaNoWriMo sponsored by an AI writing companyNaNoWriMo's AI writing sponsor creates bad writingAI assistant rickrolls customersProgramming LLMs with "fiduci...2024-09-261h 01Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 40: Elders Need Care, Not 'AI' Surveillance (feat. Clara Berridge), August 19 2024Dr. Clara Berridge joins Alex and Emily to talk about the many 'uses' for generative AI in elder care -- from "companionship," to "coaching" like medication reminders and other encouragements toward healthier (and, for insurers, cost-saving) behavior. But these technologies also come with questionable data practices and privacy violations. And as populations grow older on average globally, technology such as chatbots is often used to sidestep real solutions to providing meaningful care, while also playing on ageist and ableist tropes.Dr. Clara Berridge is an associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. He...2024-09-131h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 39: Newsrooms Pivot to Bullshit (feat. Sam Cole), Aug 5 2024The Washington Post is going all in on AI -- surely this won't be a repeat of any past, disastrous newsroom pivots! 404 Media journalist Samantha Cole joins to talk journalism, LLMs, and why synthetic text is the antithesis of good reporting.References:The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI: "AI everywhere in our newsroom."Response: Defector Media Promotes Devin The Dugong To Chief AI Officer, Unveils First AI-Generated BlogThe Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LLMs in the NewsroomAlso: New Washington Post CTO comes fr...2024-08-291h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 38: Deflating Zoom's 'Digital Twin,' July 29 2024Could this meeting have been an e-mail that you didn't even have to read? Emily and Alex are tearing into the lofty ambitions of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who claims the future is a LLM-powered 'digital twin' that can attend meetings in your stead, make decisions for you, and even be tuned to different parameters with just the click of a button.References:The CEO of Zoom wants AI clones in meetingsAll-knowing machines are a fantasyA reminder of some things chatbots are not good forMedical science shouldn't...2024-08-141h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 37: Chatbots Aren't Nurses (feat. Michelle Mahon), July 22 2024We regret to report that companies are still trying to make generative AI that can 'transform' healthcare -- but without investing in the wellbeing of healthcare workers or other aspects of actual patient care. Registered nurse and nursing care advocate Michelle Mahon joins Emily and Alex to explain why generative AI falls far, far short of the work nurses do.Michelle Mahon is the Director of Nursing Practice with National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country. Michelle has over 25 years of experience as a registered nurse in various settings. In her role...2024-08-021h 00
The World We Are BuildingDr. Alex Hanna - Cutting Through the Hype: On the Importance of Quality Data and Community-Driven DesignIn this episode of "The World We're Building," Ally sits down with Dr. Alex Hanna, the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Dr. Hanna is a computational sociologist by training, working to tackle some of the most pressing socio-technical challenges with a focus on the data. Dr. Hanna shares quality data practices and both the necessary and sufficient criteria for achieving "good AI". Dr. Hanna also debunks the myth of AI hype and describes the harm it can cause.
For further information about the DAIR team that Dr. Hanna references...2024-07-2545 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 36: About That 'Dangerous Capabilities' Fanfiction (feat. Ali Alkhatib), June 24 2024When is a research paper not a research paper? When a big tech company uses a preprint server as a means to dodge peer review -- in this case, of their wild speculations on the 'dangerous capabilities' of large language models. Ali Alkhatib joins Emily to explain why a recent Google DeepMind document about the hunt for evidence that LLMs might intentionally deceive us was bad science, and yet is still influencing the public conversation about AI.Ali Alkhatib is a computer scientist and former director of the University of San Francisco’s Center for Ap...2024-07-191h 02
FEEDING SUCCESSAlex Willis - Transforming The Landscape Of Womens' FootballAfter their daughter Tate and her friends had faced rejection from their pathway team, Alex and Jools set up the Sussex Lionesses to enable them to still compete in the JUNIOR PREMIER LEAGUE (JPL)
Alex's family's enthusiasm for women's football is undeniable.
Their holistic approach to coaching to create complete players and young women: a mind, food and body approach.
The FA were so impressed with what they were doing with the Sussex Lionesses, they asked Alex and Jools to set up a REGIONAL TALENT CENTRE (RTC) in Sussex and they now work with a team of world class coaches.
"...2024-07-0855 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 35: AI Overviews and Google's AdTech Empire (feat. Safiya Noble), June 10 2024You've already heard about the rock-prescribing, glue pizza-suggesting hazards of Google's AI overviews. But the problems with the internet's most-used search engine go way back. UCLA scholar and "Algorithms of Oppression" author Safiya Noble joins Alex and Emily in a conversation about how Google has long been breaking our information ecosystem in the name of shareholders and ad sales.References:Blog post, May 14: Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for youBlog post, May 30: AI Overviews: About last weekAlgorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya...2024-07-031h 01Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 34: Senate Dot Roadmap Dot Final Dot No Really Dot Docx, June 3 2024The politicians are at it again: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's series of industry-centric forums last year have birthed a "roadmap" for future legislation. Emily and Alex take a deep dive on this report, and conclude that the time spent writing it could have instead been spent...making useful laws.References:Driving US Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United StatesTech Policy Press: US Senate AI Insight Forum TrackerPut the Public in the Driver's Seat: Shadow Report to the US Senate AI Policy...2024-06-201h 03Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 33: Much Ado About 'AI' 'Deception', May 20 2024Will the LLMs somehow become so advanced that they learn to lie to us in order to achieve their own ends? It's the stuff of science fiction, and in science fiction these claims should remain. Emily and guest host Margaret Mitchell, machine learning researcher and chief ethics scientist at HuggingFace, break down why 'AI deception' is firmly a feature of human hype.Reference:Patterns: "AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions"Fresh AI Hell:Adobe's 'ethical' image generator is still pulling from copyrighted materialApple advertising...2024-06-051h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 32: A Flood of AI Hell, April 29 2024AI Hell froze over this winter and now a flood of meltwater threatens to drown Alex and Emily. Armed with raincoats and a hastily-written sea shanty*, they tour the realms, from spills of synthetic information, to the special corner reserved for ShotSpotter.**Lyrics & video on Peertube.*Surveillance:*Public kiosks slurp phone dataWorkplace surveillanceSurveillance by bathroom mirrorStalking-as-a-serviceCops tap everyone else's videosFacial recognition at the doctor's office*Synthetic information spills:*Amazon products called “I cannot fulfill that request”AI-generated obituariesX's Grok treats Twitter trends as newsTouch the button. Touch it.Meta’s chatbot enters privat...2024-05-2357 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm the humans who are vital to scientific research.Dr. Molly Crockett is an associate professor of psychology at Princeton University.Dr. Lisa Messeri is an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, and author of the new book, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles.References:AI For Scientific Discovery...2024-05-071h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 30: Marc's Miserable Manifesto, April 1 2024Dr. Timnit Gebru guest-hosts with Alex in a deep dive into Marc Andreessen's 2023 manifesto, which argues, loftily, in favor of maximizing the use of 'AI' in all possible spheres of life.Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team, in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace. Timnit also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black...2024-04-191h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 29: How LLMs Are Breaking the News (feat. Karen Hao), March 25 2024Award-winning AI journalist Karen Hao joins Alex and Emily to talk about why LLMs can't possibly replace the work of reporters -- and why the hype is damaging to already-struggling and necessary publications.References:Adweek: Google Is Paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI PlatformThe Quint: AI Invents Quote From Real Person in Article by Bihar News Site: A Wake-Up Call?Fresh AI Hell:Alliance for the FutureVentureBeat: Google researchers unveil ‘VLOGGER’, an AI that can bring still photos to lifeBu...2024-04-031h 02Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 28: LLMs Are Not Human Subjects, March 4 2024Alex and Emily put on their social scientist hats and take on the churn of research papers suggesting that LLMs could be used to replace human labor in social science research -- or even human subjects. Why these writings are essentially calls to fabricate data.References:PNAS: ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasksBeware the Hype: ChatGPT Didn't Replace Human Data AnnotatorsChatGPT Can Replace the Underpaid Workers Who Train AI, Researchers SayPolitical Analysis: Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human SamplesBehavioral Research Methods: Can large...2024-03-131h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 27: Asimov's Laws vs. 'AI' Death-Making (w/ Annalee Newitz & Charlie Jane Anders), February 19 2024Science fiction authors and all-around tech thinkers Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders join this week to talk about Isaac Asimov's oft-cited and equally often misunderstood laws of robotics, as debuted in his short story collection, 'I, Robot.' Meanwhile, both global and US military institutions are declaring interest in 'ethical' frameworks for autonomous weaponry.Plus, in AI Hell, a ballsy scientific diagram heard 'round the world -- and a proposal for the end of books as we know it, from someone who clearly hates reading.Charlie Jane Anders is a science fiction author. Her...2024-02-291h 04Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 26: Universities Anxiously Buy in to the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard), February 5 2024Just Tech Fellow Dr. Chris Gilliard aka "Hypervisible" joins Emily and Alex to talk about the wave of universities adopting AI-driven educational technologies, and the lack of protections they offer students in terms of data privacy or even emotional safety.References:Inside Higher Ed: Arizona State Joins ChatGPT in First Higher Ed PartnershipASU press release version: New Collaboration with OpenAI Charts theFuture of AI in Higher EducationMLive: Your Classmate Could Be an AI Student at this Michigan UniversityChris Gilliard: How Ed Tech Is Exploiting Students2024-02-1559 min
The Good RobotWhy You Shouldn't Believe the AI Hype with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna In this episode, we talk to Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. AI ethics legends and now the co-hosts of the Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast which is a new podcast where they dispel the hype storm around AI. Emily is a professor of linguistics at university of Washington and the co-author of that stochastic parrots paper that you may have heard of, because two very important people in the Google AI ethics team allegedly got fired over it, and that's Timnit Gebru and Meg Mitchell. And Alex Hanna is the director of research at the Distributed AI Research I...2024-02-0629 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 25: An LLM Says LLMs Can Do Your Job, January 22 2024Is ChatGPT really going to take your job? Emily and Alex unpack two hype-tastic papers that make implausible claims about the number of workforce tasks LLMs might make cheaper, faster or easier. And why bad methodology may still trick companies into trying to replace human workers with mathy-math.Visit us on PeerTube for the video of this conversation.References:OpenAI: GPTs are GPTsGoldman Sachs: The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic GrowthFYI: Over the last 60 years, automation has totally eliminated just one US occupation.2024-02-0156 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 24: AI Won't Solve Structural Inequality (feat. Kerry McInerney & Eleanor Drage), January 8 2024New year, same Bullshit Mountain. Alex and Emily are joined by feminist technosolutionism critics Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney to tear down the ways AI is proposed as a solution to structural inequality, including racism, ableism, and sexism -- and why this hype can occlude the need for more meaningful changes in institutions.Dr. Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Dr. Kerry McInerney is a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and a Research Fellow at the AI Now Institute. Together they...2024-01-171h 00Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 23: AI Hell Freezes Over, December 22 2023AI Hell has frozen over for a single hour. Alex and Emily visit all seven circles in a tour of the worst in bite-sized BS.References:Pentagon moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously kill humansNYC Mayor uses AI to make robocalls in languages he doesn’t speakUniversity of Michigan investing in OpenAITesla: claims of “full self-driving” are free speechLLMs may not "understand" output'Maths-ticated' dataLLMs can’t analyze an SEC filingHow GPT-4 can be used to creat...2024-01-101h 04Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 22: Congressional 'AI' Hearings Say More about Lawmakers (feat. Justin Hendrix), December 18 2023Congress spent 2023 busy with hearings to investigate the capabilities, risks and potential uses of large language models and other 'artificial intelligence' systems. Alex and Emily, plus journalist Justin Hendrix, talk about the limitations of these hearings, the alarmist fixation on so-called 'p(doom)' and overdue laws on data privacy.Justin Hendrix is editor of the Tech Policy Press.References:TPP tracker for the US Senate 'AI Insight Forum' hearingsBalancing Knowledge and Governance: Foundations for Effective Risk Management of AI (featuring Emily)Hearing charterEmily's opening remarks...2024-01-0357 minMystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld), November 20 2023Researchers Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld join Alex and Emily to examine what software companies really mean when they say their work is 'open source,' and call for greater transparency.This episode was recorded on November 20, 2023.Dr. Sarah West is the managing director of the AI Now Institute. Her award-winning research and writing blends social science, policy, and historical methods to address the intersection of technology, labor, antitrust, and platform accountability. And she’s the author of the forthcoming book, "Tracing Code."Dr. Andreas Liesenfeld is assistant professor in both the Centre fo...2023-11-301h 04Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000Episode 20: Let's Do the Time Warp! (to the "Founding" of "Artificial Intelligence"), November 6 2023Emily and Alex time travel back to a conference of men who gathered at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956 to examine problems relating to computation and "thinking machines," an event commonly mythologized as the founding of the field of artificial intelligence. But our crack team of AI hype detectives is on the case with a close reading of the grant proposal that started it all.This episode was recorder on November 6, 2023. Watch the video version on PeerTube.References:"A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence" (1955)Re...2023-11-211h 04