Podcast appearances and mentions of alex hanna

I participated in another Socratic Debate about the Future of "AI" and XR at Augmented World Expo 2026 with Leslie Shannon, Alvin Graylin, and Louis Rosenberg (you can listen to last year's debate in episode #1611). Shannon and Graylin argued for "AI," whilst Rosenberg and I argued against "AI." In my write-up, I wanted to leave some breadcrumbs to more in-depth, skeptical arguments against "AI" that we didn't have space or time to dig into during the debate, but "some breadcrumbs" ended up being over 30k words, and more like an outline for an entire book. Writing a book isn't on my to-do list at the moment, but disseminating the work researchers, journalists, linguists, and critics of "AI" have done is urgent and necessary, so I'm sharing the results of this deep dive here, in bullet list format. My fellow panelists, Alvin Graylin and Louis Rosenberg, indulged me in extending our debate offline after AWE, pushing me to test my ideas further and demonstrating how and why this is an extremely active field of study with polarizing points of view that often come down to philosophical differences. Clearly, it's just getting started. My objections to "AI" is loosely organized by various themes, but some framing may be helpful in approaching it. My objections to "AI" center around the limitations of LLMs, the consolidation of wealth and power from Hyperscaler companies, and threats from automated decision making systems and surveillance capitalism melded with democratically-backsliding authoritarian governments. I'm including a broad range of critiques spanning the domains of philosophy, technology, sociology, politics, economics, culture, and ethics. I'm coming from the orientation of Process Philosophy & Peircean Semiotics that emphasizes the relational and contextual dimensions that the "AI" field tends to de-emphasize or completely collapse. I see process-relational philosophy as a necessary paradigm shift away from the underpinning philosophies of the "AI" community, which tend to be Functionalism, Naturalism, Computational Theory of Mind, Physicalism, & the TESCREAL bundle. Below you'll find my own process philosophical emergency response to "AI embedded within my curation of excerpts and commentary of primary sources that I'm leaning upon. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (2025) by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (also see episode #1563). Bender & Hanna say, "To put it bluntly, 'AI' is a marketing term. It doesn't refer to a coherent set of technologies. Instead, the phrase "artificial intelligence" is deployed when the people building or selling a particular set of technologies will profit from getting others to believe that their technology is similar to humans, able to do things that, in fact, intrinsically require human judgment, perception, or creativity." Emily M. Bender wrote the "Artificial Intelligence" [preprint] (2026, June 25) entry for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society. Bender's concluding paragraph gives a great overview of the seven different ways that the idea of "artificial intelligence" operates in the world. She says, "The notion of artificial intelligence is frequently sold as present or near-future and inevitable technology. In fact there is no coherent set of technologies that can serve as the denotation of the phrase, nor do any of the technologies so marketed rise to the fantastical but ill-defined claims of 'AI' is or soon will be. Nonetheless, the idea of artificial intelligence has been extremely impactful in the world. In order to better understand and deal with those impacts, it is helpful to look at artificial intelligence through the varied lenses of how the idea operates in the world: as the name of a research field, as one approach to cognitive science, as a parlor trick, as a an ideology, as a way to hide and devalue human labor, as a way to shift and/or obfuscate accountability, and as a means to centralize power." Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century [dissertation] (2020, December 14) by Jonnie Penn. Penn says, "The phrase ‘artificial intelligence' was coined by John McCarthy, an American mathematician, in 1955. It has travelled with a noticeably amorphous definition since." "AI" has always had a spotty history of technologists using a "brain is a computer" metaphor while also using "poor citation practices." From page 14, Penn says, "The vocabulary Simon, Rosenblatt, McCarthy and Minsky chose to describe new techniques in major newspapers and scholarly journals informed Americans' still plastic understandings of what was possible, and indeed desirable, in the emerging information age… During the mid to late 1950s, these men turned to clannishness, self-aggrandizement, speculative rhetoric, fluid definitions of key terms and poor citation practices to shore up legitimacy for their controversial new techniques — actions that drew attention toward questions of how to accomplish such aims and away from whether they were well founded." Part II: Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence: Philosophy as Emergency Response (2026, June 9) by Matt Segall. In a multi-part Substack series, process philosopher Matt Segall calls for a philosophical emergency response to "AI." He says, "In each case a new media technology intended to expand the power of thought ended up transforming the very nature of the thinker who invented it. Each new medium furnishes the very terms in which we come to understand ourselves. This is why the philosophical response is always an emergency response: by the time anyone has noticed what is happening, what may be lost and what gained, the mutation has already done half of its work." Segall warns about the computational metaphor of the mind by saying, "The large language model now tempts us to adopt an even stranger self-image: that human minds are no different than machines, our thoughts just the statistical echoes of our training data. The creators of this latest technological upgrade are encouraging us to downgrade our estimate of human consciousness, thus narrowing the distance between ourselves and the machines built to imitate us." "Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of 'AI': The View from the Humanities" [lecture] (2026, February 10) by Emily M. Bender. Here are the lecture slides with a bibliography at the end. Bender does an amazing overview of how the marketing of "AI" uses pernicious dehumanization tactics built on an underlying "brain is a computer metaphor." From page 15 of her talk: "Scientific metaphor used and debated in neuroscience: "THE BRAIN IS A COMPUTER. "PR metaphor used by technologists: "THE COMPUTER IS A BRAIN" Bender cites Baria & Cross' paper titled "The brain is a computer is a brain: neuroscience's internal debate and the social significance of the Computational Metaphor (2021), which says “the Computational Metaphor rests on other well-ingrained ideologies in which a hierarchy of human value is tied to a particular notion of intelligence such that the quality of being emotional is considered inferior to being rational." Bender also cites Dijkstra's 1985 lecture "On anthropomorphism in science": "A more serious byproduct of the tendency to talk about machines in anthropomorphic terms is the companion phenomenon of talking about people in mechanistic terminology." Here are a couple of examples of how "AI" Hyperscaler companies like OpenAI use dehumanizing tactics to sell us on "AI" Hype. Sam Altman will say things like, "A kid born today will never be smarter than AI. Ever." Or another example is when Altman says, "For me, AGI is basically the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker... And then Superintelligence is when it's smarter than all of humanity put together." These statements collapse the human experience into one dimension of "intelligence," which amplifies the dual harm of treating machines more like humans and treating humans more like machines. It is also questionable the degree to which this statement is even true given the potential non-computational aspects of "relevance realization." More on this down below. Part IV: Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence: Hegel's Loom and the Difference Reason Makes (2026, June 10) by Matt Segall. Segall brilliantly breaks down the "Brain is a Computer Metaphor" by saying, "Metaphor is not just a shiny paint job on the vehicle of cognition. It is the engine of thought. Its coupling of concepts drives the limits of conceivability, shaping what is thought together and what is not thought at all. The metaphorical imagination is our main means of tuning in to the otherwise invisible effects of new media technologies. Part of the discipline philosophy brings is allowing us to notice an analogy as an analogy before advertising crystalizes it into the unnoticed transparency of common sense. A fact is a fact, but it might also be a fossilized metaphor. The governing analogy of our age is that cognition is computation: the brain an information-processing device, perception its input and behavior its output, memory a form of physical storage, learning the adjustment of weights, and intelligence an algorithm for minimizing error or surprisal. On this view, given enough training data and computational power, consciousness itself will eventually be engineered… The metaphor “the mind is a computer,” for example, tacitly proposes that mind is to brain as software is to hardware… Reiterated in textbooks and earnings calls, in grant applications and policy briefs, the partial comparison congeals into an ontology, until we find ourselves insisting not that the mind is like a computer in some respects but that it simply is one — and,...

Callers tell us about their concerns about the rapid pace of AI expansion and how they are finding ways to resist the technology. Our guests include Alex Hanna, author of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want and pollster Shachi Kurl with the Angus Reid Institute.

On the untenable middle ground of "responsible AI use" The AI Con and Brazil - a conversation with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna about the dangers of ‘AI' https://youtu.be/lgvpUH7bc-g?si=3C3T0zV3Gfty9NpXLive no YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzrcEJPAFPc

This episode pulls back the curtain on the AI gold rush, the data centers, the water bills, the NDAs, and what it all means for rural communities that rarely have a seat at the table.AI sounds like the future, but the costs are landing unevenly, especially outside major cities. Heidi and Joel join Dr. Emily Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna to dig into the real, and rarely discussed, toll of our digital infrastructure boom, from secretive corporate deals to environmental strain, and ask the question nobody in Silicon Valley wants answered: who actually pays the price?In this episode:The gap between AI hype and reality, and why it mattersData centers sprouting faster than the regulations meant to govern themThe true costs to energy, water, and local infrastructure that corporations aren't advertisingPublic resistance, NDA nightmares, and the political pressure to build fastWhy regulation hasn't kept pace and how communities are pushing backThe risks of AI overreliance, hallucinations, and why source-checking mattersWhere international regulation stands and the gap in U.S. policyGuests:Emily Bender - Twitter | University ProfileAlex Hanna's WebsiteDAIR InstituteThe AI boom isn't slowing down, but neither are the people asking the hard questions. Tune in, get informed, and maybe think twice before you trust the hype.The Hot Dish is brought to you by the One Country Project. To learn more, visit OneCountryProject.org, or find us on Substack (Onecountryproject.substack.com), and on YouTube, Bluesky, and Facebook (@onecountryproject).

It's an Emmajority Thursday on The Majority Report On today's program: Trump reflects on his visit to China where he failed to find any support in his efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, moments after Trump's meeting with President Xi, Iran let Chinese ships pass through the Strait. At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Rep. Dave Min highlights how China is leaving the U.S. in the dust on renewable energy. Alex Hanna joins Emma for a conversation about her book co-authored with Emily Bender, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want".   In the Fun Half:   Politico publishes a paper-thin smear piece on Michigan candidate for Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, in which they question his qualifications as a "real" doctor.   Graham Platner responds to his opponents questioning his working-class credentials.   Nick Shirley responds to Hasan Piker calling him medically stupid with a medically stupid response.   Rep. Mike Lawler recounts being accosted by Rand Paul's son with an antisemitic rant.   All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: FAST GROWING TREES:  Get 20% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/majority ONE SKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at www.oneskin.co/majority BLUELAND: Get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems. Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI's inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action. This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation: Instituto Nuevos Horizontes Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor. The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias. DukeGPT Wendy Brown Ivan Illich "Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender "The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender "It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna "It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna "The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna "The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender "The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender "Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna "How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender 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

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems. Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI's inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action. This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation: Instituto Nuevos Horizontes Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor. The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias. DukeGPT Wendy Brown Ivan Illich "Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender "The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender "It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna "It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna "The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna "The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender "The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender "Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna "How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems. Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI's inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action. This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation: Instituto Nuevos Horizontes Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor. The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias. DukeGPT Wendy Brown Ivan Illich "Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender "The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender "It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna "It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna "The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna "The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender "The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender "Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna "How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender 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

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems. Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI's inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action. This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation: Instituto Nuevos Horizontes Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor. The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias. DukeGPT Wendy Brown Ivan Illich "Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender "The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender "It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna "It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna "The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna "The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender "The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender "Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna "How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems. Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI's inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action. This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation: Instituto Nuevos Horizontes Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor. The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias. DukeGPT Wendy Brown Ivan Illich "Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender "The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena "AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender "It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna "It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna "The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna "The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender "The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender "Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna "How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

This week, Sam talks to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna about the marketing ploys of “artificial intelligence,” why ridicule works to keep big tech's claims in check, and what makes them hopeful for the future. They're the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want.Dr. Alex Hanna is a writer and sociologist of technology, labor, and politics. She's the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. 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.They also host the The Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast which “deflates AI hype and draws attention to the real harms of the automation technologies we call ‘artificial intelligence'.”  Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw' for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want Emily's cartoon  Questioning the Normalization of Surveillance by the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown You Are Not a Parrot at NY Mag YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/UwBZiuH-1QY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juliana Lopes da Silva, professora da UTFPR Curitiba, conversou com Adolfo Neto e Carolina Ferreira, da equipe da Rede Emílias de Podcasts. O tema principal foi sua tese de doutorado: “Facetas do trabalho por conta própria: Relatos de carregadores de caminhão e trabalhadores(as) da área de Tecnologia da Informação”.Juliana é graduada em Psicologia pela UNESP Bauru, mestra em Psicologia pela PUC Campinas e doutora em Psicologia Social pela Universidade de São Paulo, com período de doutorado-sanduíche na Universidade de Oxford, na Inglaterra, e estágio doutoral na Universidade do Porto, em Portugal.Algumas perguntas deste episódio:O que a psicologia social tem a ver com o trabalho em TI?O que têm em comum chapas de caminhão e desenvolvedores de software? O trabalho por conta própria realmente oferece liberdade e autonomia?Como a pandemia afetou de formas distintas chapas e profissionais de TI?Links de Juliana:CV Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/4082780184367206 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliana-lopes-da-silva-734a6432/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliana.lopes.psi/ RocketReach: https://rocketreach.co/juliana-lopes-da-silva-email_247390994 Tese de Doutorado:Facetas do trabalho por conta própria: Relatos de carregadores de caminhão e trabalhadores(as) da área de Tecnologia da Informaçãohttps://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/47/47134/tde-05092023-172531/pt-br.php Artigo: A Psicologia Social do Trabalho como perspetiva de pesquisa : focalizando vivências no trabalho informal https://journals.openedition.org/laboreal/21892Indicações:Trabalho ilustrado : uma crítica bem-humorada às empresas contemporâneas e ao mundo do trabalho, Raoni Rocha https://www.repositorio.ufop.br/items/cc851251-c237-4d0a-a282-aa19114d8091 Flexíveis, Virtuais e Precários?: os Trabalhadores em Tecnologias da InformaçãoMaria Aparecida Bridi e Jacob Carlos Lima https://amzn.to/4uDCsmW Os laboratórios do trabalho digital: Entrevistas, Rafael Grohmann https://amzn.to/3PgaMVb Becos da memória,  Conceição Evaristo https://amzn.to/4bjDAVu (Adolfo) Livro “The AI Con” de Emily M. Bender e Alex Hanna https://amzn.to/4rCICBa Entrevistadores:Adolfo Neto - Professor da UTFPR ⁠https://adolfont.github.io/⁠ Carolina Ferreira - Estudante de Engenharia de Computação da UTFPR e Bolsista do Emílias Podcast.Editor: Adolfo NetoEpisódio 135 do Emílias Podcast.O Emílias Podcast é um projeto de extensão da UTFPR Curitiba que faz parte da Rede Emílias de Podcasts ⁠⁠⁠https://fronteirases.github.io/redeemilias⁠ .  Descubra tudo sobre o programa Emílias - Armação em Bits em ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/Emilias⁠   #podcast  #EMILIAS

Teaser ... How Bob's and Paul's names wound up in the Epstein Files ... Epstein's double option play ... Understanding Moltbook ... Bob on the “big question” Moltbook raises ... Paul: What planet are Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on? ... Heading into Overtime: Friends in the Epstein Files, the strangest thing Bob's ever done for money and more. ...

Alex and Emily's book, The AI Con ... Beyond the AI booster-doomer spectrum ... What—and who—is AI actually useful for? ... The AI productivity question(s) ... Emily: AI won't take your job, it'll just make it shi**ier ... Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, and semantics ... Are LLMs really black boxes? ... Do AIs “understand” things? ... Debating using AIs as experts ... How “neural” are neural nets, really? ...

00:08 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.  This is a rebroadcast from summer of 2025. The post Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on The AI Con appeared first on KPFA.

In Locust Radio 31,  Tish and Adam read poems from the forthcoming issue, discuss Trumpism and art in Venice, and try to unpack the editorial for Locust Review  13. Tish and Adam also listen to the song “Dortn” by Sister Wife Sex Strike. Discussed in this episode: Alma Allen; Suvrat Arora, “People are using AI to talk to God,” BBC (October 18, 2025); Editorial, “Lucky 13,” Locust Review 13 (Winter 2025/2026); Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper Collins, 2025); Timothy Binkley, “Autonomous Creations: Birthing Intelligent Agents,” Leonardo 31.5 (1998), 333-336; Ben Davis, “What is the Mysterious New Group Behind Trump's Venice Biennale Pick?,” Artnet (November 25, 2025); Benoit Dillet, “Technofascism and the AI Stage of Late Capitalism,” Blog of the APA (American Philosophical Association), (March 10, 2025); Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917); Robert M. Geraci, "Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76.1 (March 2008), 138-166; Jesse Clyde Howard; Holly Lewis, “Towards AI Realism: Opening Notes on Machine Learning and Our Collective Future,” Spectre (June 7, 2024); Alex Press, “US Unions Take on Artificial Intelligence,” Jacobin (November 8, 2024); Michael A. Rosenthal, “Benjamin's Wager on Modernity: Gambling and the Arcades Project,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 87.3 (2012), 261-278; Victor Tangermann, “AI Now Claiming to Be God,” Futurism (September 16, 2025); Adam Turl, “All is Concealed: CAM's Direct Drive,” West End Word (October 5, 2016); Adam Turl, “Selling Out,” Locust Review 13 (Winter 2025/2026); Tish Turl, “Elegy for the Faithful Mapmakers,” Locust Review 13 (Winter 2025/2026); Gareth Watkins, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism,” New Socialist (February 9, 2025); Luke Winkie, “Lost Vegas,” Slate (November 18, 2025); Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All (Little, Brown and Company, 2025)

This episode is an audio version of a virtual panel held online via the Linguistic Society of America, on August 16, 2025. This is part two of our conversation on GenAI and linguistics, this time focusing on Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Ph.D.’s recent book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want.” I am joined again by our amazing panel of linguists to talk about the problems of anthropomorphizing AI, how AI magnifies inequalities affecting minoritized people, and what linguists can do to push back against the constant AI hype. Panelists: Aubrie Amstutz, Responsible AI Research Scientist at Grid Dynamics Alicia Beckford Wassink, Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington Katie Swindler, specialist in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, most recently a Program Manager at Mother Tongue AI and currently freelancing as a consulting linguist Part 1 of the discussion is here Topics include – generative AI – ethical AI – AI hype – anthropomorphization – language use – journalism – activism If you’d like to support this show, we’ve got a Patreon!The post Episode #79: The AI Con Discussion Panel (Live) first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

00:08 Emily M. Bender,a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, and Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), co-authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want  [Re-broadcast of an interview originally recorded on July 10]     The post The AI Con [rebroadcast] appeared first on KPFA.

This week we have a chat with Prof Emily M Bender and Dr Alex Hanna about their latest book The AI Con.

Here's the panel discussion of Socratic Dialogue on the Future of AI and Immersive Technology with Alvin Wang Graylin, Kent Bye, Louis Rosenberg, Leslie Shannon that was recorded on the main stage of Augmented World Expo on Thursday, June 12, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. See more context in the rough transcript below, and you can watch the original video here. Here's some other relevant episodes that I've done recently in preparation for this debate on AI: #1563: Deconstructing AI Hype with “The AI Con” Authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna #1568: A Process-Relational Philosophy View on AI, Intelligence, & Consciousness with Matt Segall #1585: Debating AI Project and a Curating Taiwanese LBE VR Exhibition at Museum of Moving Image #1609: Framework for Personalized, Responsive XR Stories with Narrative Futurist Joshua Rubin #1610: Scouting XR & AI Infrastructure Trends with Nokia's Leslie Shannon #1629: Niantic Spatial is Building an AI-Powered Map with Snap for AR Glasses & AI Agents #1630: Keiichi Matsuda on Metaphors for AI Agents in XR User Experience: From Omniscient Gods to Animistic Familiars #1611: Socratic Debate on Future of AI & XR from AWE 2025 Panel This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Live Linguistics Careercast coming your way on August 16! Join us for part two of our conversation on GenAI and linguistics, this time focusing on Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Ph.D.’s recent book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want.” And we’ll follow the taping with a networking event in Gather! Host Laurel Sutton will be joined again by Alicia Beckford Wassink, Katie Swindler, and Aubrie Amstutz to continue the conversation from our live episode at LingFest25, which we released as a podcast on April 22, 2025. The 90 minute panel will take place in Zoom and will include a Q&A portion. After the panel, we'll move to Gather for an hour of networking. We invite attendees to mix and mingle, and to have space to process the great conversation. PANEL DISCUSSION/LIVE PODCAST: 10:00 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada) GATHER NETWORKING EVENT: 11:30AM – 12:30PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Tickets are $5 for LSA members, and $7 for the general public. Registration can be found on Linguistic Society of America (LSA)’s website: https://www.lsadc.org/ev_calendar_day.asp?date=8/16/2025&eventid=106&mc_cid=d47d2d569b Big thanks to LSA for sponsoring this event! Haven't read the book yet? Pick up a copy or stop by your local bookstore!The post Live Linguistics Careeercast August 16 2025 – The AI Con Discussion first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

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 replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025), Bender and Hanna offer a, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. They show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech's drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects. Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School. 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

00:08 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.

Kris returns from Vegas, poorer in money but rich in experiences, which she is here to share. Later, the pair deep dive into the latest season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love. As of the time of recording, the final episodes had not been released, so these are very in-process thoughts.  Official Recommendations From Kris: Sally (2025) Kris's official recommendation this week is the documentary Sally (2025), which explores the life of the first female astronaut, Sally Ride, including her accomplishments and the revelation about her sexuality after her death. Kris described this as a powerful documentary, emotional and informative, and she thinks she and Sally would have been great friends. From Tara: A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell Tara's official recommendation this week is A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell, an enemies-to-lovers queer romance set in the Regency period. It features a young woman who wishes to be taken seriously as an anthropologist and ventures to find an old Viking burial ground she believes to be on her property. Works/People Discussed FUBAR (Netflix) Alone (The History Channel) Alone: Australia (SBS) My Mom Jayne (2025) The Ultimatum: Queer Love (Netflix) RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars (Paramount+) KPop Demon Hunters (2025) The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna  This is Who I Am by Harper Bliss Support & follow the show Buy us a Ko-fi Sign up for our newsletter on Substack Facebook: @QueerlyRecommended Instagram: @queerlyrecommended Bluesky: @queerlyrec.bsky.social Get all our links on Linktr.ee

Emily 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 AI. -Alex Hanna The boosters say AI is a thing. It's inevitable, it's imminent, it's going to be super powerful, and it's going to solve all of our problems. And the doomers say AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent, it's going to be super powerful, and it's going to kill us all. And you can see that there's actually not a lot of daylight between those two positions, despite the discourse of saying these are two opposite ends of a spectrum. -Emily M. Bender Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. -Alex Hannay Resources The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) The Princess Bride Emily Tucker, Executive Director, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? By Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell Emily M. Bender's website How the right to education is undermined by AI, by Helen Beetham How We are Not Using AI in the Classroom, by Sonja Drimmer & Christopher J. Nygren  Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, by Karen Hao

Will artificial intelligence usher in a world of increasing convenience and productivity, as its boosters claim? Or will AI take away our jobs and risk a robot apocalypse? Scholars Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender say: neither. They warn us against falling for either version of AI hype and discuss the impact of purported artificial intelligence—chiefly large language models and text-to-image generation–on surveillance and work, education and science. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want Harper, 2025 Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash The post Hyping AI appeared first on KPFA.

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in.The third episode in the series features her conversation with Dr. Timnit Gebru, the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute. Last year, Dr. Gebru wrote an New York Times opinion that asked, “Who Is Tech Really For?” In the piece, she also asked, “what would an internet that served my elders look like?” This year, DAIR has continued to ask these questions by hosting an event and a blog called Possible Futures that imagines “what the world can look like when we design and deploy technology that centers the needs of our communities. In one of these pieces, Dr. Gebru, along with her colleagues Asmelash Teka Hadgu and Dr. Alex Hanna describe “An Internet for Our Elders.”

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://freeform.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/152572

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

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

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”.

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.

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.

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