Podcast appearances and mentions of 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 “T9 word.” We end the episode by chatting about why we shouldn't trust the hype about how AI is going to destroy (or revolutionize) the education sector. ••• The AI Con | Emily Bender and Alex Hanna https://thecon.ai/ ••• On the genealogy of machine learning datasets: A critical history of ImageNet https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517211035955 ••• Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan's new book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite ••• Subscribe to Ed's substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble ••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

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

Dr. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna Dr. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna come on the show to talk about their new book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want” published but LitHub. The book tackles the pitfalls of AI and why it's so crucial to understand the capitalist greed that is manipulating AI behind the scenes. https://thecon.ai/ A new installment of “This Week In Rotten History” from Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional contributors to Tech Policy Press. Justin Hendrix spoke to them about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, just out from Harper Collins.

Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna aren't feeling the AGI. • Support the show by subscribing to our daily newsletter

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . I am talking with Drs. Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of the upcoming book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, and also co-hosts of the live podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. Emily is well known for coining the term “stochastic parrots” in a 2021 paper as a label for generative AI. She is a linguistics professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington and was among the inaugural Time AI 100. Alex is a sociologist who looks at how the data that fuels AI technologies exacerbates racial, gender, and class inequality. She is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. In part 2, we talk about the dangers of uncritical naming, anthropomorphizing, Luddites and bespoke crafting, the effects of synthetic content on interpersonal communications, capitalism, and collective action strategies.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.        

We are in the middle of a hype cycle peak around AI as there are a lot of hyperbolic claims being made about the capabilities and performance of large-language models (LLMs). Computational Linguist Emily M. Bender and Sociologist Alex Hanna have been writing academic papers about the limitations of LLMs, as well as some of the more pernicious aspects of benchmark culture in machine learning, as well as documenting some of the many environmental, labor, and human rights harms from both the creation and deployment of these LLMs. Their book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want comprehensively deconstructs the many of the false promises of AI, the playbook for AI Hype, and the underlying dynamics of how AI is an automation technology designed to consolidate power. Their book unpacks so many vital parts of the Science and Technology Studies narrative around AI including: How big technology companies have been using AI as a marketing term to describe disparate technologies that have many limitations How we anthropomorphize AI tech from our concepts of intelligence How AI Boosting companies are devaluing what it means to be human in order to promote AI technology How AI Boosters and AI Doomers are two sides of the same coin of assuming that AI is all-powerful and completely inevitable How many of the harms and costs associated with the technology are often out-of-sight and out-of-mind. This book takes a critical look at these so-called AI technologies, deconstructs the language that we use as we talk about these automating technologies, breaks down the hype playbook of Big Tech, restores the relational quality of human intelligence that is often collapsed by AI. It also provides some really helpful questions to ask in order to interrogate the hyperbolic claims that we're hearing from AI boosters. We talk about all of this and more on today's episode, and I have a feeling that this is an episode that I'll be referring back to often. This is also the 100th Voices of VR podcast episode that explores the intersection of AI within the context of XR, and I expect to continue to cover how folks in the XR industry are using AI. Being in right relationship to every aspect of the economic, ethical & moral, social, labor, legal, and property rights dimensions of AI technologies is still an aspirational position. It's not impossible, but it is also not easy. But this conversation helps to frame a lot of the deeper questions that I will continue to have about AI. And Bender and Hanna also provide a lot of clues to the red flags of AI Hype, but also some of the core questions to ask that help to orient around these deeper ethical questions around AI. I've also been editing unpublished and vaulted episodes of the Voices of AI that I did with AI researchers at the International Joint Conference of Artificial Intelligence that I did back in 2016 and 2018 (as well as a couple of other conferences), and I'm hoping to relaunch the Voices of AI later this summer to look back at what researchers were saying about AI 7-9 years ago to give some important historical context that's often collapsed within the current days of AI Hype (SPOILER ALERT: this is not the first nor the last hype cycle that AI will have). I'll also be engaging within a Socratic Style Debate where I'll be mostly arguing critically against AI on the last day of AWE (Thursday, June 12th, 2:45p) after the Expo has closed down, and before the final session. So come check out a live debate with a couple of AI Boosters and an AI Doomer. Also look for an interview that I just recorded with Process Philosopher Matt Segall diving more into a Process-Relational Philosophy perspective on AI, intelligence, and consciousness coming here soon. Segall and I are going to explore an elemental approach to intelligence, which is based upon concepts that I explore in my elemental theory of presence talk. Intelligence, privacy,

Paris 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 critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:New York Magazine reported on the consequences of increasingly widespread use of ChatGPT in education.Support the show

On 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 Create the Future We Want.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . When people take a unipolar position that AI is going to be wonderful, or terrible, or inconsequential, they end up painting themselves into a corner where that's the only story they can allow themselves to express, and that obscures the truth. So for us to do our due diligence in exploring the dimensions of AI, today I am talking with Drs. Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of the upcoming book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, and also co-hosts of the live podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. Emily is well known for coining the term “stochastic parrots” in a 2021 paper as a label for generative AI. She is a linguistics professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington and was among the inaugural Time AI 100. Alex is a sociologist who looks at how the data that fuels AI technologies exacerbates racial, gender, and class inequality. She is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. In part 1, we talk about their intentions with the book, cycles of hype and the effects of hype, the dangers of uncritical use of LLMs, “Slow Science”, and academic institutional culture.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.        

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of "The AI Con," say the benefits of AI are being played up while the costs are being played down — and they lay out strategies for fighting the hype.

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

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 devices Amazon Upfront 2025: Prime Video will show you AI pause ads - Fast Company E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper The CryptoPunks NFTs are being sold to a non-profit as their value continues to fall Crypto boys are the worst.... Parisbait: I've watched every single Nicolas Cage film made so far. Here's what I learned about him – and myself Exclusive: InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel Uncle Tony's Reptile Shack neal.fun Testing Paris' language proficiency and youth The uncontroversial 'thingness' of AI Artifice and Intelligence The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency' Information literacy and chatbots as search Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guests: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: storyblok.com/twittv-25 outsystems.com/twit bigid.com/im canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT

The excitement around AI has gotten a bit frothy. Those two magic letters are everywhere, promising everything. Authors Emily Bender and Alex Hanna want us all to take a beat and a more critical look, per their new book "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want."Bender is a linguist at the University of Washington who helped popularize the term "stochastic parrots" to describe large language models. And Hanna is the director of research at the Distributed AI Institute, formerly an AI ethicist at Google. She says claims of AI's artistic prowess can be misleading.

The excitement around AI has gotten a bit frothy. Those two magic letters are everywhere, promising everything. Authors Emily Bender and Alex Hanna want us all to take a beat and a more critical look, per their new book "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want."Bender is a linguist at the University of Washington who helped popularize the term "stochastic parrots" to describe large language models. And Hanna is the director of research at the Distributed AI Institute, formerly an AI ethicist at Google. She says claims of AI's artistic prowess can be misleading.

Emily  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 about where generative AI really stands — and what comes next. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here's 25% off for the first year, which includes membership to our subscriber Discord: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

On this week's Tech Nation, Moira speaks with Journalist Vauhini Vara about her book, “Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age”, which examines how the internet and AI influence who we are.Then, linguist Dr. Emily Bender and ethical AI researcher Dr. Alex Hanna discuss their book, “The AI Con … How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want”.

Artificial intelligence (so-called) is typified by its boom and bust cycles, and we're in a boom now. But as more and more money pours in with decreasing returns, we're going to see a shakeout, and hype is rushing in to stoke the enthusiasm. In other words, the con is on. Dr Emily M. Bender and Dr Alex Hanna are co-hosts of the podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, and the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. They join us for this episode.

Is 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 hyping fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption. Instead of centralized AI controlled by corporations, they advocate for community-controlled technology that empowers users rather than exploiting them. Five Takeaways (with a little help from Claude)* Large language models are "stochastic parrots" that produce text based on probability distributions from training data without actual understanding or communicative intent.* The AI "revolution" is primarily driven by marketing and hype rather than groundbreaking technological innovations, creating fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption.* AI companies are positioning their products as "general purpose technologies" like electricity, but LLMs lack the reliability and functionality to justify this comparison.* Corporate AI is designed to replace human labor and centralize power, which the authors see as an inherently political project with concerning implications.* Bender and Hanna advocate for community-controlled technology development where people have agency over the tools they use, citing examples like Teheku Media's language technology for Maori communities.Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into into how to understand so-called AI technologies.Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. With Emily M. Bender, she also runs the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and her podcast. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. She is also recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany's Queer 50 (2021, 2024) List and Business Insider's AI Power List, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Has AI hype gone too far? Are companies and their executives hyping up artificial intelligence to drive up their profits and help the rich get richer? Dr. Alex Hanna and Dr. Emily Bender join David Rothkopf to answer these questions and discuss their new book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want.” This material is distributed by TRG Advisory Services, LLC on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has AI hype gone too far? Are companies and their executives hyping up artificial intelligence to drive up their profits and help the rich get richer? Dr. Alex Hanna and Dr. Emily Bender join David Rothkopf to answer these questions and discuss their new book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want.” This material is distributed by TRG Advisory Services, LLC on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a lot of hype about artificial intelligence. And authors Emily Bender and Alex Hanna say the hype about AI’s future is overshadowing the harm the technology is causing today. They’re here to talk about their upcoming book The AI Con. The AI Con will be out on May 13th. Emily and Alex will be in Seattle for two launch events you can check out: Monday, May 19 | 7PM Elliott Bay Book Company Tuesday, May 20 | 7PM Third Place Books We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Seattle Now in your feed. Got questions about local news or story ideas to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at seattlenow@kuow.org, leave us a voicemail at (206) 616-6746 or leave us feedback online.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 channel! http://www.youtube.com/@aiinsideshow Enjoying the AI Inside podcast? Please rate us ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcatcher of choice! Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, renowned for her work in computational linguistics, language technology, and as co-author of the influential "Stochastic Parrots" paper. Alex Hanna is a sociologist and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), whose work focuses on how data in computational technologies shapes racial, gender, and class inequalities. Buy their new book "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" at http://thecon.ai Note: Time codes subject to change depending on dynamic ad insertion by the distributor. CHAPTERS: 00:00⁠ - Podcast begins 01:44 - Introducing Emily Bender and Alex Hanna 02:23 - Why “AI” Is Misleading: Better Terms for Today's Tech 04:31 - What Is AI Actually Good For? Real-World Use Cases 06:29 - Hidden Data Opportunities in AI and Language Models 07:20 - Community-Driven AI: Real Benefits Beyond Big Tech 09:45 - The Thai Library Thought Experiment: Why AI Lacks Meaning 14:23 - Inside DAIR: Building Alternative AI Futures ⁠19:13 - AI and Creativity: Remixing, Music, and Fair Compensation 24:00⁠⁠ - Does AI Democratize Creativity or Homogenize Voices? 33:47 - Debunking AI Doomerism and TESCREAL: Media's Role 40:29 - Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: Podcast Origins and Mission 42:07 - Book Launch Details: The AI Con Release Events 45:07 - Can We Build Effective AI Guardrails? 50:30 - Synthetic Text Extruding Machine... STEM? 50:56 - Oxford Comma y/n? 51:18 - Thank you to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna for joining the AI Inside podcast Thank you to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna for joining the AI Inside podcast Contact us with questions and feedback: contact@aiinside.show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI, OpenAI adds shopping to ChatGPT in a challenge to Google, researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments, and so much more on the AI Inside podcast! Support the show on Patreon! http://patreon.com/aiinsideshow Subscribe to the YouTube channel! http://www.youtube.com/@aiinsideshow Enjoying the AI Inside podcast? Please rate us ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcatcher of choice! Note: Time codes subject to change depending on dynamic ad insertion by the distributor. CHAPTERS: 03:15 - Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI 12:36 - ⁠Duolingo More Than Doubles Courses as ‘AI-First' Push Draws Heat⁠ 15:07 - Google launches AI tools for practicing languages through personalized lessons 16:09 - Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists 22:53 - Prompt engineer: The Hottest AI Job of 2023 Is Already Obsolete 28:10 - Meta's ChatGPT competitor shows how your friends use AI 37:45 - Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI 39:53 - Altman and Nadella, Who Ignited the Modern AI Boom Together, Are Drifting Apart 41:21 - OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google 42:58 - Researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments 47:53 - Clip from our Interview with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of The AI Con Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When reports like Adecco's Global Workforce of the Future survey find that the average saving for workers using AI is 1 hour a day, we should question this. * What did those workers do with their time savings? * Should that time savings benefit the employer or the employee?* Can we trust such a hard-to-measure stat?Our latest episode tackles this and other disruptions happening to the creative and production processes. Matthew Krissel is the Co-Founder of the Built Environment Futures Council and a Principal at Perkins&Will. For over two decades, he has led transformative architectural projects across North America and internationally. We discussed how AI is disrupting architecture and lessons for digital product teams. He really struck powerful points many times during our conversation about questioning the role of time and permanence in a world when we want more, faster.Other points covered in the conversation:* Commoditizing design makes production easier, enabling societies to tackle challenges like housing shortfalls* Commoditizing design devalues other vital processes, like community engagement, respectful place-making, and longevity of projects* Over-indexing AI's potential as a workflow optimizer, while under-indexing the potential to reimagine how complex projects are planned and operationalizedListen on Spotify | Listen on Apple PodcastsIn this newsletter, I'd like to tackle the concept of time saving and what it means from the perspective of crafting an AI strategy. Here was the most important quote from the episode: So just because something took half the time it did before, what happened is we just did more. So we just filled the time. Is there something higher and better use? I suspect that somewhere along the line the designs got better. Also I suspect that somewhere along there was diminishing returns. We were just doing more because we could not that it was actually yielding anything better.  Are you gonna focus on fewer, but better increase your quality? Are you going to spend more time on business development or some entrepreneurial side hustle? Just go home early? What you decide to do as we start to gain productivity time is going to shape a lot of where this is all happening.Newsletter recommendation: Scott BelskyEssential insights and lessons from Scott Belsky that anyone building with AI must read. His newsletter is fantastic and a must-subscribe because of his unique cross-section of expertise across creativity, product, and innovation. His books have also always been pivotal reads to advance your craft. Hopefully, we can do some of the same with our Design of AI podcast and newsletter. Who should benefit most from your ability to learn AI: You or your employer?The challenge to creatives and builders is to decide who should benefit from these transformative technologies if you're self-taught:* Should you gift your employer the benefits if you've taught yourself ways of getting 25% more work accomplished in a day?* Should you gift yourself the benefits of your increased productivity and work on side projects, or spend more time with your family?Historically speaking, employers were responsible for the means and training of production. They paid for novel technologies —desktops, SaaS, big data— and were responsible for training you on how to use them. AI is different because employers are often lagging behind employees in embracing and educating on how to use the technology effectively. It is very easy to argue that the 200 hours you've spent learning AI outside of work hours should exclusively benefit you.AI Time Savings: Benefits & RisksTechnologies have consistently saved us time, but the resulting effects have been questionable. The internet and mobile phones connected the world, while also leading to increased poor health outcomes due to more time sitting. We also spend more time alone than ever.Further back, the Industrial Revolution raised the quality of life for everyone. Still, the commoditization of work led to industrialists exploiting child labour and putting everyone into deplorable working conditions that polluted communities. The time the workforce saved most benefited employers, with employees giving up their ways of life in favour of steady incomes. Most relocated to cities, got cut off from their families, and learned the pain of commuting for the first time.When it comes to AI, the benefits we hope for centre on automation and augmentation. The hope is that we will benefit from less shitty work (automated away) and that we can our new capabilities (augmented by AI) will enable us all become wealthy entrepreneurs. Sure, this may be true for the top 0.01% of AI users who learn how to run a typically 10-person business by themselves. For the rest of us our work may in fact get a lot shittier. At least that's what the authors of the upcoming book, The AI Con, believe. The authors (and upcoming Design of AI guests), Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender tell a tale of how AI's risks have been severely hidden under the rug. In their book, they document many examples of the technology performing so poorly at tasks that products were shut down within weeks.Maybe the future of businesses will look a lot like Amazon: A business offering endless products of questionable quality and provenance with no humans in sight except those working the worst possible jobs in sorting information, like something out of Severance. In this scenario, the majority of humans will be employed as mall cops of the technology, swooping in when a problem happens that slips between the programming and policies. At this point, AI hypers would argue that even if the enshittification of work is inevitable, AI will open up new and better types of jobs. Only time will tell. How does AI change our relationship with time?When buying productivity-boosting hardware and software, the expectation has always been that the results are undeniable. Going from handwriting to using a typewriter was immensely faster. The same is true when buying a new Saas platform that makes managing projects infinitely easier. Now, with GenAI-powered products, the ROI is unpredictable. The vast majority of capabilities deliver the illusion of rapid progress. Think of image and video generation —the immediate results are shockingly impressive. But getting results to be production-ready requires mastery of probabilistic software and/or resetting your expectations. It all means that the operator —you— ultimately plays a bigger role in the ROI of using this technology than with previous ones.So-called Vibe coding is a major testament to the time savings that AI can create. Anyone can now build a website and app without writing a line of code.Vibe coding platforms —like Cursor, Lovable, Replit, and many more— are fantastically easy to use… until they're absolutely painful to use. The stunning early rewards turn into confusingly broken components all over.Again, results depend on the operator's ability to debug using an entirely new interface paradigm (conversational). This continues the technology's remarkable inversion of the value paradigm, where workers define the quality of outputs.Looking ahead, mastery of data will triumph over mastery of interfaces. This favours employers who unlock the power of their first-party data and build solutions that augment and automate the expertise of their employees.Always worth reading, strategist and tech critic Tom Goodwin posted an intriguing analysis on LinkedIn this week. At the core of the guiding philosophy regarding AI-assistance is that the more complex the task, the less qualified AI is to work on the task unassisted.Check our previous podcast episode and newsletter for more details on how to unlock the power of your data. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit designofai.substack.com

Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn't go to waste. We're releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here's a preview of this week's premium episode with Alex Hanna, the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Institute. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.Support the show

In this episode of Brewing with BIM, we're joined by Alex Hanna of Strive. Alex shares his journey into the world of BIM, offering a fascinating glimpse into his background and what drew him to this transformative technology. We also discuss the exciting projects he's tackling at Strive and his vision for the future of BIM in the construction industry. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just getting started, Alex's insights are sure to inspire. Tune in now! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/brewingwithbim/support

Joe Marrese is joined by comedian Alex Hanna, Alex gets a little defensive when Joe asks him a question about TikTok, the home run names bracket is started and completed, and much more on the 178th episode of Joe Code! Be sure to subscribe, rate, & review the pod wherever you listen Write Joe an email: joecodepodcast@gmail.com Support Joe Code at www.patreon.com/joecodepodcast

On 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 9:37 Lumi Ray's Top Movies 13:06 How Alex Hanna Became A Door Guy At The Comedy Store 18:34 When Lumi Ray First Got Into Comedy 21:49 What School Lunch Was Like For Alex Hanna 31:08 Alex Hanna's Favorite Childhood Memory 32:09 Where Alex Hanna Gets His Creative Side From 33:57 The Best Piece Advice Alex Hanna Ever Got 35:11 The Life Event That Shaped Alex Hanna 39:28 Alex Hanna's Unpopular Food Opinions 42:05 Lumi Ray's House Was Vibing 50:13 Who Alex Hanna Would Bring To KBBQ 51:12 Alex Hanna's Comfort Food 54:00 Traveling In Cuba 1:00:02 A Passion That Alex Hanna Hasn't Done It 1:02:57 What Makes A Good Comic 1:04:35 How Working At The Comedy Store Has Helped Alex Hanna 1:07:31 No Substitutes Exclusive Comedy Store Scoop More Alex Hanna Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexhanna_good More No Substitutes Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nosubstitutespod/ X: https://twitter.com/nosubstitutess More Lumi Ray Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumi_ray X: https://x.com/lumina_rayy (the good link) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lumiray0 Crew: Show Runner: Christopher Kapoh-Perez https://www.instagram.com/kapohperez Producers: Ash Casanova https://www.instagram.com/ashcasanovacomedy/ Morgan Anderson https://www.instagram.com/itsthemorganator

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Professor Emily M. Bender, and sociologist Dr. Alex Hanna discuss the impact of Artificial Intelligence and whether our government can protect us from its potential harms via legislation, and regulation. We also discuss the sociological harms of AI, as well as the environmental impact. Lastly, Professor Bender discusses the reaction to a paper she presented in 2021, titled "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?

In episode 1697, Jack and Miles are joined by hosts of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Prof. Emily M. Bender & Dr. Alex Hanna, to discuss… AI Is Breaking The Internet and The World AI, Debunking Lies About AI Magic, Dangerous And Harmful Ways AI Is Actually Being Used and more! LISTEN: Out In The Sun (Hey-O) by The Beach-NutsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Eppo. Experimentation is how generation-defining companies win. Accelerate your experimentation velocity with Eppo. Visit  https://www.geteppo.com/twist Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. Now you can add the Pod Cover to any mattress! Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/twist to check out the Pod Cover and get $200 off the pod plus free shipping! Mercury. 90% of startups fail. Just 10 out of every 100 make it. Mercury exists to close that gap — helping companies succeed with banking and credit cards engineered for the startup journey. Join over 100,000 companies banking with Mercury at http://www.mercury.com⁠ * Todays show: Jason and Presh kick off the Founder University pitch competition (00:00), then we hear from Peter on Props AI (10:17), Alan on 2ndHandGeek (21:15), and Alex on Zweelie (37:18). Finally, Jason awards a $25K investment (), and details how to apply! * Timestamps: (00:00) Jason kicks off the show! (1:16) Jason brings on Presh to introduce today's pitches! (9:17) Eppo. Accelerate your experimentation velocity with Eppo. Visit  https://www.geteppo.com/twist (10:17) Peter Kirkham pitches Props AI (19:45) Eight Sleep - Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/twist for $200 off the Pod plus free shipping (21:15) Alan Blakeborough Pitches 2ndHandGeek (36:16) Mercury - Join 100K+ startups banking with Mercury at http://www.mercury.com⁠ (37:18) Alex Hanna pitches Zweelie (41:44) Jason picks the startup he will invest in! (43:26) Advice for founders and Q&A * Founder University: Cohort 8 begins May 9th! Apply here: ⁠https://www.founder.university⁠ * We are doing Founder Fridays! Go check out ⁠https://founderfridays.tech * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Follow Peter: X: https://twitter.com/k11kirky LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-kirkham Props AI: www.getprops.ai * Follow Alan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/f3zorroblake 2ndHandGeek: https://exchange.2ndhandgeek.com * Follow Alex: X: http://x.com/_alexhanna LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-hanna-founder Zweelie: http://zweelie.com * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (9:17) Eppo. Accelerate your experimentation velocity with Eppo. Visit  https://www.geteppo.com/twist (19:45) Eight Sleep - Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/twist for $200 off the Pod plus free shipping (36:16) Mercury - Join 100K+ startups banking with Mercury at http://www.mercury.com⁠ * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

This week we're talking with Dr Alex Hanna about AI hype and AI hell.

We're talking about the Turing Test, the grandmother of all tests for AI sentience. Joining us are AI researchers Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender, hosts of the Mystery AI Hype 3000 podcast. We discuss why the Turing Test is so influential in both fiction and reality – and why it is completely wrong. Later in the episode, we'll talk about another thing that humans got wrong when it comes to non-human intelligence: dog breeding.  

As a co-author of the often cited (and debated) Stochastic Parrots paper from 2021, Emily M. Bender is a staunch critic of large language models (LLMs). Having worked in computational linguistics for more than 20 years, Emily's deep understanding of LLM mechanics has her questioning many of the emerging use cases we see in the world. Also, Emily hosts Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, where, alongside sociologist Dr. Alex Hanna, she breaks down the AI hype, separates fact from fiction, and distinguishes science from bloviation. She joins Robb and Josh for a provocative exploration of generative AI on an important episode of Invisible Machines.

In episode 1631, Jack and Miles are joined by hosts of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Dr. Emily M. Bender & Dr. Alex Hanna, to discuss… Limited And General Artificial Intelligence, The Distinction Between 'Hallucinating' And Failing At Its Goal, How Widespread The BS Is and more! LISTEN: A Dream Goes On Forever by VegynSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 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 Institute known by its acronym, DAIR, which is now run by Timnit. In this episode, they argue that we should stop using the term AI altogether, and that the world might be better without text to image systems like DALL·E and Midjourney. They tell us how the AI hype agents are getting high on their own supply, and give some advice for young people going into tech careers.

Today we're joined by Alex Hanna, the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). In our conversation with Alex, we discuss the topic of AI hype and the importance of tackling the issues and impacts it has on society. Alex highlights how the hype cycle started, concerning use cases, incentives driving people towards the rapid commercialization of AI tools, and the need for robust evaluation tools and frameworks to assess and mitigate the risks of these technologies. We also talked about DAIR and how they've crafted their research agenda. We discuss current research projects like DAIR Fellow Asmelash Teka Hadgu's research supporting machine translation and speech recognition tools for the low-resource Amharic and Tigrinya languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, in partnership with his startup Lesan.AI. We also explore the “Do Data Sets Have Politics” paper, which focuses on coding various variables and conducting a qualitative analysis of computer vision data sets to uncover the inherent politics present in data sets and the challenges in data set creation. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/649.

Welcome back to the thrilling world of the What are We Doing podcast! In this electrifying episode, your charismatic host, Levi, is joined by the ever-engaging and insightful fellow podcaster, Los, of the acclaimed 280+ podcast. Prepare to be blown away as they delve into some of this year's most gripping topics.

The new wave of generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT and DALL-E, has got the tech business in a frenzy. Venture capitalists are pouring money into new AI startups: Investments in generative AI have already exceeded $2 billion. But there’s lots of unknown unknowns about the innovation. There’s virtually no oversight from the government, and teachers, artists, researchers and others are raising concerns. “There’s so much happening under the hood that we don’t get access to … there needs to be much more transparency,” said Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. On the show today: why AI is getting so much attention these days, ethical issues with the tech and what lawmakers should focus on when trying to regulate it. Plus, why some say it could exacerbate the climate crisis. In the News Fix, some Kia and Hyundai cars keep getting stolen, and insurance companies are taking notice. Plus, we might spend the most on health care, but health in the United States falls behind other high-income countries by several measures. And, why you might want to get ready for some inflation whiplash. Later, we'll hear from a listener who's pro-ChatGPT when it comes to writing cover letters. And in the spirit of Dry January, Elva Ramirez, author of “Zero Proof: 90 Non-Alcoholic Recipes for Mindful Drinking,” gives us a little history lesson on mocktails (or cleverages). Here’s everything we talked about today: “Investors seek to profit from groundbreaking ‘generative AI' start-ups” from Financial Times Alex Hanna’s “Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000” streamed weekly on Twitch “AI rockets ahead in vacuum of U.S. regulation” from Axios “Robots trained on AI exhibited racist and sexist behavior” from The Washington Post “What jobs are affected by AI? Better-paid, better-educated workers face the most exposure” from the Brookings Institution “Yellen Sees Low Inflation as More Likely Long-Term Challenge” from Bloomberg “State Farm says it has stopped insuring some Kia, Hyundai vehicles” from CBS News “Health care spending in the US is nearly double that of other wealthy nations: report” from The Hill We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART, and your submission may be featured in a future episode.

The new wave of generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT and DALL-E, has got the tech business in a frenzy. Venture capitalists are pouring money into new AI startups: Investments in generative AI have already exceeded $2 billion. But there’s lots of unknown unknowns about the innovation. There’s virtually no oversight from the government, and teachers, artists, researchers and others are raising concerns. “There’s so much happening under the hood that we don’t get access to … there needs to be much more transparency,” said Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. On the show today: why AI is getting so much attention these days, ethical issues with the tech and what lawmakers should focus on when trying to regulate it. Plus, why some say it could exacerbate the climate crisis. In the News Fix, some Kia and Hyundai cars keep getting stolen, and insurance companies are taking notice. Plus, we might spend the most on health care, but health in the United States falls behind other high-income countries by several measures. And, why you might want to get ready for some inflation whiplash. Later, we'll hear from a listener who's pro-ChatGPT when it comes to writing cover letters. And in the spirit of Dry January, Elva Ramirez, author of “Zero Proof: 90 Non-Alcoholic Recipes for Mindful Drinking,” gives us a little history lesson on mocktails (or cleverages). Here’s everything we talked about today: “Investors seek to profit from groundbreaking ‘generative AI' start-ups” from Financial Times Alex Hanna’s “Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000” streamed weekly on Twitch “AI rockets ahead in vacuum of U.S. regulation” from Axios “Robots trained on AI exhibited racist and sexist behavior” from The Washington Post “What jobs are affected by AI? Better-paid, better-educated workers face the most exposure” from the Brookings Institution “Yellen Sees Low Inflation as More Likely Long-Term Challenge” from Bloomberg “State Farm says it has stopped insuring some Kia, Hyundai vehicles” from CBS News “Health care spending in the US is nearly double that of other wealthy nations: report” from The Hill We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART, and your submission may be featured in a future episode.