The AI Con

How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

By: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna

Narrated by: Jade Wheeler

A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It 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, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.

Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, 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.

Hoping for Much Better

I was looking for a reasonable and well argued critique of AI and its accompanying hype. This is not it. There is some useful information, and overall I am glad I listened to it, but it is also full of inflammatory language and exaggeration, and alleged connections to other real societal problems that are just not well supported. Disappointing.

Weak arguments

I detest AI, but many of the arguments in this book wouldn’t be effective against AI boosters. At several points, the book claimed that the pursuit of general intelligence is inherently racist. It also claimed that humans are inherently more capable than machines without drilling down on why.

To convince someone, you need to speak to their values. For example, the book shines when pointing to concrete limitations in the technology. Also the self-serving nature of AI narratives. If you make weak ties from AI to racism, people are going to roll their eyes.

Solid Hype Balance

The readers tone was a little preachy but the thoughts, insights and evidence were good. Impactful and a valuable dose of downside realism. It impacted my thinking.

So-so

Not terrible, but I was hoping for a deeper dive into the technical details about what makes specific claims about AI’s capabilities false and what makes AI a “con." While there was a lot in the book that I agreed with, it was mostly a political opinion treatise. Little was “debunked” in any concrete way.

There was also too much focus on irrelevant and distracting issues like the question of whether AI is genuinely conscious. While that might be something interesting for philosophy class, I don’t understand what it has to do with scams or the threats from automation.

A must read, even if you're an AI optimist

Great voice, factual and entertaining. One of the best audio books I've read in a while.