Data centers are overburdening the planet, so tech billionaires have a new scheme ? put 'em in space! Astrophysicist Dr. Adam Becker joins Alex and Emily to launch this plan into the sun. We unpack all the reasons that this hilariously terrible idea will never be viable outside of sci-fi-villain fantasies.

Dr. Adam Becker is the author of More Everything Forever, a book about the terrible plans that tech billionaires have for the future and why they don?t work. Keep an eye out for his new podcast, Dreaming Against the Machine, which is launching soon.

References:

Also referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

AI boosters and the US military are engaged in a lethal love affair. Award-winning journalist Naomi Klein joins Emily and Alex to discuss how glitchy technology supports global imperialism ? and vice versa. Plus, we explore which Dr. Strangelove characters are currently running the US war machine.

Naomi Klein is a columnist for The Guardian and the international bestselling author of nine books published in over 35 languages. Her new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, written with Astra Taylor, will be published in September 2026.

References:

Previous episodes referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Move over Dr. Google, Dr. ChatGPT is here, and it's even worse as a medical intervention! Alex and Emily scrub in to slice up some harmful new nonsense in the world of "AI" for medicine. What's the cure for an expensive and inaccessible health care system? One thing's for sure ? it's not AI hype.

References:

Also referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

This is a special episode, and it?s not like our usual livestream recordings. Instead, our producer Ozzy dug through the Fresh AI Hell archives to create a supercut of Alex's improvised transitions. She's made up dozens of skits and songs about the demons of AI Hell, based on weekly prompts from Emily and listeners. Finally, hear all the lore together in one place!

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

For our last recording of 2025, Emily and Alex take on a TIME article naming the "architects of AI" as their person of the year. We also look back at the year in AI nonsense, and share findings from our Fresh AI Hell Wrapped. Happy Hype-y New Year!

References:

Also referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

There's a new definition of artificial general intelligence in town, and unsurprisingly... it's bad! Alex and Emily rip up the tissue-paper-thin premises behind this latest attempt to define "intelligence." Plus, we discover that AI hypers love using logos that look like buttholes.

References:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Tech leaders are pushing the idea that automation can strengthen democracy ? but as usual, their bold suggestions are based on castles made of sand. Alex and Emily tear down some flimsy arguments for AI governance, exposing their incorrect assumptions about the democratic process.

References:

Also referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Last month, Senate Democrats warned that "Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade." Ironically, they used ChatGPT to come to that conclusion. DAIR Research Associate Sophie Song joins us to unpack the issues when self-professed worker advocates use chatbots for "research."

Sophie Song is a researcher, organizer, and advocate working at the intersection of tech and social justice. They?re a research associate at DAIR, where they're working with Alex on building the Luddite Lab Resource Hub.

References:

Also referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

It's been six months since our last all-Hell episode! In honor of Halloween season, we take a long journey into the very scary Fresh AI Hell mines. Topics include terrifying uses of AI in education, scientific research, and politics ? plus, some delicious palate cleansers along the way.

AI bubble: bigger than dot-com bust?

No one wants to pay for ChatGPT

Meta lays off 600 from AI unit

AI data centers: an even bigger disaster than we thought

Public universities anticipate data center-driven power outages

Chaser: Deloitte has to pay back Albanese government after using AI in report

"AI" schools are "dead classrooms"

Fake sources in "ethical AI" education report

Parents letting kids play with AI

Startup sells 'synthetic influencers'

AI-powered textbooks fail to make the grade

Chaser: "High-reliability" AI slop

Nature offers "AI-powered research assistant"

AI bots wrote all papers at this conference

"AI" reviewing at AAAI

AI medical tools downplay symptoms in women and POC

Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT

Chaser: Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its technology

German initiative uses "AI" for voter education

Police gunshot detection mics will listen for human voices

SF's AI chatbot for RV dwellers

Cuomo campaign posts racist AI slop

DHS Ordered OpenAI To Share User Data

Chaser: LA County moves to limit license plate tracking

A new form of eugenics

"AI Superintelligence" prohibition letter

Emad Mostaque's LLM blurbs

Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery

Chaser:

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

So-called AI tools are increasingly infiltrating newsrooms, particularly when it comes to data analysis. DAIR writer-in-residence Decca Muldowney joins us to discuss the need for journalists to distinguish between "AI" and reliable, verifiable research methods.

Decca Muldowney is a journalist and writer who was our fact checker for The AI Con. She's also a writer-in-residence and web editor at the Distributed AI Research Institute.

References:

Fresh AI Hell:

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Powerful AI boosters claim to love science fiction novels, but why do they always seem to take the wrong lessons from them? Reporter and writer Reo Eveleth joins us to discuss the ways tech leaders misuse storytelling, and how we can avoid their visions to imagine better futures.

Reo Eveleth is a reporter, writer, and co-founder of COYOTE Media Collective. They created the hit independent show Flash Forward, which they also turned into a book of the same name. Reo?s work has been nominated for a Peabody, an Emmy, and an Eisner Award.

References:

Also Referenced:

Fresh AI Hell:

Correction: We misstated Lee Ostertag's name during the livestream for this episode. We apologize for the error!

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

It's Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000's third birthday! To celebrate, Emily and Alex respond to listener questions about the show, and reflect on the past and future of AI hype. Topics range from how to talk to your kids about LLMs, to what the MAIHT3k birthday cake looks like.

Artifacts referenced:

AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark

Data and its (dis)contents

Stochastic Parrots Day

Dr. Casey Fiesler on TikTok

Dr. Nicole Holliday on TikTok

Alex and Emily?s media appearances about The AI Con

Emily and Alex on The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan

Emily?s interview with Dr. Carl Rhodes

Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire

October 21st event for The AI Con

FAccT AI Workers? Inquiry Panel

Emily?s presentation at UNESCO Digital Learning Week ? Paper version on pp.41-45 here

A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.

Fresh AI Hell:

Meet the Robot Using AI to Ink Your Next Tattoo

Medicare Will Start Paying AI Companies a Share of Any Claims They Automatically Reject

Taco Bell AI drive-through

Can AI doulas improve maternal health?

Countries are struggling to meet the rising energy demands of data centers

Bluesky post about Business Insider

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Talking to chatbots can have serious mental health consequences ? fueling delusions and leading users away from consensus reality. Futurism writer Maggie Harrison Dupré joins us to unpack the hype around AI therapists, based on her groundbreaking reporting on "AI psychosis."

Maggie Harrison Dupré is an award-winning tech journalist at Futurism who?s reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping media, information, humans, and our real and digital lives.

References:

How AI Is Expanding The Mental Health Market

He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse.

OpenAI: What we're optimizing ChatGPT for

Also referenced:

Gov Pritzker Signs Legislation Prohibiting AI Therapy in Illinois

People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions

Stanford: New study warns of risks in AI mental health tools

Fresh AI Hell:

Bluesky post about DEI by chatbot

How AI is being used by police departments to help draft reports

Politico's recent AI experiments shouldn?t be subject to newsroom editorial standards, its editors testify

UK Asks People to Delete Emails In Order to Save Water During Drought

Sam Altman says 'yes,' AI is in a bubble

Google's AI pointed him to a customer service number. It was a scam.

Mastodon post about Dieter Roth's Literaturwürste

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Trump?s ?AI Action Plan? is his latest attempt to turn AI hype into official national policy. Kate Brennan and Sarah Myers West, of the AI Now Institute, join us to dig through this pile of deregulatory gifts to Big Tech.

Dr. Sarah Myers West is co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, and a former senior advisor on AI for the FTC.

Dr. Kate Brennan is associate director of the AI Now Institute, where she spearheads their policy work, informed by a doctorate in law and years of experience in the tech industry.

References:

Winning the Race: America?s AI Action Plan

Also referenced:

People?s AI Action Plan

Fresh AI Hell:

Medical Pros Risk Malpractice Suits by Avoiding AI Innovation

Google search?s next cash cow

AI Is Coming for the Consultants. Inside McKinsey, ?This Is Existential.?

The rise of AI tools that write about you when you die

Amazon?s Alexa Fund Invests in ?Netflix of AI? Start-Up Fable, Which Launches Showrunner: A Tool for User-Directed TV Shows

In federal lawsuit, students allege Lawrence school district?s AI surveillance tool violates their rights

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

After many months of making fun of the term "vibe coding," Emily and Alex tackle the LLMs-as-coders fad head-on, with help from security researcher Susanna Cox. From one person's screed that proclaims everyone not on the vibe-coding bandwagon to be crazy, to the grandiose claim that LLMs could be the "opposable thumb" of the entire world of computing. It's big yikes, all around.

Susanna Cox is a consulting AI security researcher and a member of the core author team at OWASP AI Exchange.

References:

My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

LLMs: the opposable thumb of computing

A disastrous day in the life of a vibe coder

Also referenced:

Signal president Meredith Whittaker on the fundamental security problem with agentic AI

The "S" in MCP stands for security

Our Opinions Are Correct: The Turing Test is Bullshit

AI Hell:

Sam Altman: The (gentle) singularity is already here

What do the boosters think reading is, anyway?

Meta's climate model made up fake CO2 removal ideas

Ongoing lawsuit means all your ChatGPT conversations will be saved

"Dance like you're part of the training set"

Some Guy tries to mansplain Signal to?Signal's president

WSJ headline claims ChatGPT "self-reflection", gets dunked

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

The chatbot boosters are looking for educators to play brand ambassador for more intrusion of so-called "AI" into the classroom. From the American Federation of Teachers' new partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft for a "national academy for AI instruction" to yet more articles extolling the alleged time-saving and future-proofing virtues of LLM-powered ed tech, the hype can feel relentless. Charles Logan joins Alex and Emily for a critical look at the latest propaganda for "AI" in the classroom.

Charles Logan is a former English teacher and current PhD candidate in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.

References:

Welcome to Campus. Here?s Your ChatGPT.

AI isn?t replacing student writing ? but it is reshaping it

AFT to Launch National Academy for AI Instruction with Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and United Federation of Teachers 

Also referenced:

Tressie McMillan Cottom on "predatory inclusion"

Daniel Greene's "The Access Doctrine"

The Group Chats that Changed America

Fresh AI Hell:

Missouri AG investigating why chatbots don?t like Trump

Gig workers calling ICE on other undocumented gig workers

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ?pay the price? for DEI

USF makes a PTSD detector...trained on children

People falling in love with Replika chatbots

Elon Musk thirsting over xAI anime construct

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

It's finally here! The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want hit the shelves in May. In this special bonus episode, Alex and Emily speak to tech journalist Vauhini Vara at one of the book's online launch events, where they covered the misleading nature of the term "artificial intelligence," why the use of tools like ChatGPT will only ever cheapen human labor and enrich the already powerful, and how people can fight the narrative that these technologies are inevitable.

Vauhini Vara is a technology reporter and writer. Her journalism has been honored by the Asian American Journalists Association, the International Center for Journalists, the McGraw Center for Business Journalism, and others. Her latest book is Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, a work of journalism and memoir about how big technology companies are exploiting human communication ? and how we?re complicit in this.

References

Everyone is cheating their way through college (with ChatGPT)

The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World by Allison Pugh

Te Hiku Media

Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence by Dan McQuillan

Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies

Pennsylvania's SEIU Local 668 wins a victory against AI

Elon Musk's xAI is polluting Black Memphis residents

Possible Futures: An Internet for Our Elders

Better Images of AI

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Because Sam Altman hates opening his laptop, OpenAI is merging with iPhone guy Jony Ive's design firm in the name of some mysterious new ChatGPT-enabled consumer products: Alex and Emily go full Mystery Science Theater and dissect the announcement video. Plus how tech billionaires like Sam Altman mythologize San Francisco while their money makes it less livable for everyone else.

References:

Sam Altman and Jony Ive are merging (Video)

Emplacedness, real estate, and gentrification in San Francisco

Anthropic? More like anthropomorphic

Karen Hao on her new book "Empire of AI" in conversation with Alex and Emily

Fresh AI Hell:

Don't use ChatGPT to summon demons

AI prompts accidentally left in novels

"AI" tutors are teaching fentanyl recipes

xAI's data center polluting Memphis with unpermitted methane generators

Gemini's on Bluesky - block it

Family uses "AI" generated avatar to give victim impact statement

The market for "AI friends"? Lonely losers

No, LGBTESCREAL isn't a thing

*****

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Our book, The AI Con, is out! Get your copy now.

Follow Emily: Bluesky/Mastodon
Follow Alex: Bluesky/

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Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

This week, Alex and Emily talk with anthropologist and immigration lawyer Petra Molnar about the dehumanizing hype of border-enforcement tech. From hoovering up data to hunt anyone of ambiguous citizenship status, to running surveillance of physical borders themselves, "AI" tech is everywhere in the enforcement of national borders. And as companies ranging from Amazon, to NSO Group, to Palantir all profit, this widening of automation threatens a future of faceless human rights violations with no attempts at accountability of any kind.

Petra Molnar is associate director of York University's Refugee Law Lab, and a faculty associate for the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She's also the author of the book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving immigration in the age of artificial intelligence.

References:

Department of Homeland Security: Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border

Leaked: Palantir?s Plan to Help ICE Deport People

Athens prepares to host DEFEA 2025, a major hub for international defence cooperation

Fresh AI Hell:

Meta served teen girls beauty product ads whenever they deleted selfies

Dating app/luxury surveillance leaks personal info

"AI" for subway crime prediction

CA used "AI" to make bar exam questions

CA using "AI" tool to bypass building permit process

Wildly unethical "AI persuasion" research on Reddit users

AI makeup to retouch Holoca

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Emily and Alex pore through an elaborate science fiction scenario about the "inevitability" of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI by the year 2027 - which rests atop a foundation of TESCREAL nonsense, and Sinophobia to boot.

References:

AI 2027

Fresh AI Hell:

AI persona bots for undercover cops

Palantir heart eyes Keir Starmer

Anti-vaxxers are grifting off the measles outbreak with AI-formulated supplements

The cost, environmental and otherwise, of being polite to ChatGPT

Actors who sold voice & likeness find it used for scams

Addictive tendencies and ChatGPT (satire)

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

It's been 4 months since we've cleared the backlog of Fresh AI Hell and the bullshit is coming in almost too fast to keep up with. But between a page full of awkward unicorns and a seeming slowdown in data center demand, Alex and Emily have more good news than usual to accompany this round of catharsis.

AI Hell:

LLM processing like human language processing (not)

Jack Clark predicting AGI

Sebastian Bubeck says predictions in "sparks" paper have already come true

WIRED puff piece on the Amodeis

Foundation agents & leaning in to the computational metaphor (Fig 1, p14)

Chaser: Trying to recreate the GPT unicorn

The WSJ has an AI bot for all your tax questions

ChatGPT libel

AOL.com uses autogenerated captions about attempted murder

AI coding tools fix bugs by adding bugs

"We teach AGI to think, so you don't have to"

MAGA/DOGE paints teachers as glorified babysitters in push for AI

Chaser: How we are NOT using AI in the classroom

AI benchmarks are self-promoting trash ? but regulators keep using them

DOGE is pushing AI tool created as "sandbox" for federal testing

"Psychological profiling" based on social media

The tariffs and ChatGPT

"I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government"

Pulling back on data centers, Microsoft edition

Abandoned data centers, China edition

Bill Gates: 2 day workweek coming thanks to AI...replacing doctors and teachers??

Chaser: Tesla glue fail schadenfreude

Chaser: Let's talk about the genie trope

Chaser:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight, or book a flight to a restaurant reservation. Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell joins Emily and Alex to help break down what agents actually are, and what to actually worry about.

References:

PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprises
An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web
Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation

Other references:

Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed

Bender vs. Bubeck: The Great Chatbot Debate: Do LLMs Really Understand?

Democratize art

Fresh AI Hell:

DOGE suggests replacing workers with "AI" (of course)

Vape, or the tamagotchi gets it

"AI" for psychotherapy, still bad, still hyped

Biology (not) of LLMs

Mark Cuban's grifty chatbot

Palate cleanser: "AI is the letdown"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html

Comic relief:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Measuring your talk time? Counting your filler words? What about "analyzing" your "emotions"? Companies that push LLM technology to surveil and summarize video meetings are increasingly offering to (purportedly) analyze your participation and assign your speech some metrics, all in the name of "productivity". Sociolinguist Nicole Holliday joins Alex and Emily to take apart claims about these "AI" meeting feedback tools, and reveal them to be just sparkling bossware, with little insight into how we talk.

Nicole Holliday is Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley.

Quick note: Our guest for this episode had some sound equipment issues, which unfortunately affected her audio quality.

Main course:

Read AI Review: This AI Reads Emotions During Video Calls

Zoom rebrands existing and introduces new generative AI features

Speech analysis startup releases AI tool that simulates difficult job interview conversation

Fresh AI Hell:

Amazon Echo will send all recordings to Amazon beginning March 28

Trump?s NIST no longer concerned with ?safety? or ?fairness?

Reporter Kevin Roose is feeling the bullshit

UW?s eScience institute pushing ?AI? for information access

OpenAI whines about data being too expensive, with a side of Sinophobia

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Emily and Alex read a terrible book so you don't have to! Come for a quick overview of LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman's opus of magical thinking, 'Superagency: What could possibly go right with our AI future' -- stay for the ridicule as praxis. Plus, why even this tortuous read offers a bit of comfort about the desperate state of the AI boosters.

References:

The cursèd book itself

AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark

Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre

Fresh AI Hell:

Parents rationalizing exposing kids to AI

Underage, sexualized celebrity bots

Bossware a bad look, actually

CalState faculty union opposes AI initiative

The kids are alright

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

In the weeks since January 20, the US information ecosystem has been unraveling fast. (We're looking at you Denali, Gulf of Mexico, and every holiday celebrating people of color and queer people that used to be on Google Calendar.) As the country's unelected South African tech billionaire continues to run previously secure government data through highly questionable LLMs, academic librarian Raina Bloom joins Emily and Alex for a talk about how we organize knowledge, and what happens when generative AI degrades or poison the systems that keep us all accurately -- and contextually -- informed.

??Raina Bloom is the Reference Services Coordinator for University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.

References:

OpenAI tries to 'uncensor' ChatGPT

Elon Musk's DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cuts

Guardian Media Group announces strategic partnership with OpenAI

Elon Musk's AI-fuelled war on human agency

(Post now deleted) A DOGE intern asks Reddit for help with file conversion

When is it safe to use ChatGPT in higher education? Raina recommends the table on page 6 of UNESCO's QuickStart guide.

Fresh AI Hell:

Irish educational body, while acknowledging genAI's problems, still gives LLMs too much credit

From haircuts to dress design, AI slop is creating unrealistic expectations that hurt small businesses

Attorneys still falling for "AI" search

The latest in uncanny valley body horror robotics

Google claims to have developed AI "co-scientist"

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Sam Altman thinks fusion - particularly a company he's personally invested in - can provide the energy we "need" to develop AGI. Meanwhile, what if we just...put data centers on the Moon to save energy? Alex, Emily, and guest Tamara Kneese pour cold water on Silicon Valley's various unhinged, technosolutionist ideas about energy and the environment.

Dr. Tamara Kneese is director of climate, technology and justice at the Data & Society Research Institute

Due to some technical issues during our recording, this week's episode is a bit shorter than usual.

References:

A data center ? on the moon??

Sam Altman is banking on fusion

Greenland is the new Mars

?Regenerative finance? in the crypto era

Fears of subprime carbon assets stall crypto mission to save rainforest

Corporate carbon offset company accidentally starts devastating wildfire

The AI/crypto crossoverAI/crypto crossover no one asked for

Blockchains wanted to build a smart city. The state could not sign off on its water rights

On petro-masculinity

Predatory delay and other myths of sustainable AI

Book: Digital Energetics, on Bitcoin/AI computing as a larger energy problem

Fresh AI Hell:

Fake books about indigenous languages

Surveillance company harrasses own employees with cameras

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

In January, the United Kingdom's new Labour Party prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a new initiative to go all in on AI in the hopes of big economic returns, with a promise to ?mainline? it into the country?s veins: everything from offering public data to private companies, to potentially fast-tracking miniature nuclear power plants to supply energy to data centers. UK-based researcher Gina Neff helps explain why this flashy policy proposal is mostly a blank check for big tech, and has little to offer either the economy or working people.

Gina Neff is executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, and a professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London.

References:

The AI Opportunities Action Plan

?Mainlined into UK?s veins?: Labour announces huge public rollout of AI

Gina Neff: Can democracy survive AI?

Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right

Fresh AI Hell:

"AI" tool for predicting how Parliament will react to policy proposals

"AI" detects age based on hand movements

Apple Intelligence misleading summaries of news

Book simplification as a service

CEO doesn't understand why kid turned AI features of toy off

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Not only is OpenAI's new o3 model allegedly breaking records for how close an LLM can get to the mythical "human-like thinking" of AGI, but Sam Altman has some, uh, reflections for us as he marks two years since the official launch of ChatGPT. Emily and Alex kick off the new year unraveling these truly fantastical stories.

References:

OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub

From the blog of Sam Altman: Reflections

More about the ARC Prize

o3's environmental impact

The brain is a computer is a brain

Fresh AI Hell:

"Time to Edit" as a metric predicting the singularity (Contributed by Warai Otoko)

AI 'tasting' colors

An AI...faucet??

Seattle Public Schools calls ChatGPT a "transformative technology"

A GitHub pull request closed because change would have been unfriendly to "AI" chat interface

Cohere working with Palantir

Elsevier rewrites papers with "AI" without telling authors, editors

The UK: mainlining AI straight into their veins

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

It?s been a long year in the AI hype mines. And no matter how many claims Emily and Alex debunk, there's always a backlog of Fresh AI Hell. This week, another whirlwind attempt to clear it, with plenty of palate cleansers along the way.

Fresh AI Hell:

Part I: Education
Medical residency assignments
"AI generated" UCLA course
"Could ChatGPT get an engineering degree?"
AI letters of recommendation
Chaser: 'AI' isn't Tinkerbell and we don?t have to clap

Part II: Potpourri, as in really rotten
AI x parenting
Et tu, Firefox?
US military tests AI machine gun
"Over-indexing" genAI failings
AI denying social benefits
Chaser: AI 'granny' vs scammers

Part III: The Endangered Information Ecosystem
Fake Emily quote in LLM-written article
Protecting Wikipedia
AI: the new plastic
Google AI on 'dressing'
"AI" archaeology
Misinfo scholar used ChatGPT
OpenAI erases lawsuit evidence
LAT "AI" bias meter
WaPo AI search: The Washington Post burns its own archive

Chaser: ShotSpotter as art

Part IV: Surveillance, AI in science/medicine
Apple patents "body data"
Chatbots "defeat" doctors
Algorithm for healthcare "overuse"
"AI friendships"
"Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas?"
Another LLM for science
Chaser: FTC vs Venntel

Part V: They tell us to believe the hype

Thomas Friedman: AGI is coming
Matteo Wong on o1's 'reasoning'
WIRED editor: believe the hype
Salesforce CEO: The "unlimited age"

Chaser: Emily and Alex's fo

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it sure seemed like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and company were luring investor dollars to their newly-formed venture solely on the hand-wavy promise that someday, LLMs themselves would figure out how to turn a profit.

Brian Merchant is an author, journalist in residence at the AI Now Institute, and co-host of the tech news podcast System Crash.

References:

Elon Musk and partners form nonprofit to stop AI from ruining the world

How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over

Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar AI Plan Is About Far More Than Saving the World

Brian?s recent report on the business model of AGI, for the AI Now Institute: AI Generated Business: The rise of AGI and the rush to find a working revenue model

Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld)

Fresh AI Hell:

OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive

If an AI company ran Campbell's Soup with the same practices they use to handle data

Humans are the new 'luxury item'

Itching to write a book? AI publisher Spines wants to make a deal

A company pitched Emily her own 'verified avatar'

Don't upload your medical images to chatbots

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with no education expertise keep using their big names and big dollars to hype LLMs for classrooms. Promising ?comprehensive AI tutors', or just ?educator-informed? tools to address understaffed classrooms, this hype is just another round of Silicon Valley pointing to real problems -- under-supported school systems -- but then directing attention and resources to their favorite toys. Former educator and DAIR research fellow Adrienne Williams joins to explain the problems this tech-solutionist redirection fails to solve, and the new ones it creates.

Adrienne Williams started organizing in 2018 while working as a junior high teacher for a tech owned charter school. She expanded her organizing in 2020 after her work as an Amazon delivery driver, where many of the same issues she saw in charter schools were also in evidence. Adrienne is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, as well as a Research Fellow at both (DAIR) and Just Tech.

References:

Funding Helps Teachers Build AI Tools

Sal Khan's 2023 Ted Talk: AI in the classroom can transform education

Bill Gates: My trip to the frontier of AI education

Book: Access is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality
Book: Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism

Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 26, Universities Anxiously Buy Into the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard)
Episode 17: Back to School with AI Hype in Education (feat. Haley Lepp)

Fresh AI Hell:

"Streamlining" teaching

Google, Microsoft and Perplexity are promoting scientific racism in 'AI overviews'

'Whisper' medical transcription tool used in hospitals is making things up

X's AI bot can't tell the difference between a bad game and vandalism

Prompting is not a substitute for probability measurements in large language models

Yet another 'priestbot'

Self-driving wheelchairs at Seattle-T

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

The company behind ChatGPT is back with bombastic claim that their new o1 model is capable of so-called "complex reasoning." Ever-faithful, Alex and Emily tear it apart. Plus the flaws in a tech publication's new 'AI hype index,' and some palette-cleansing new regulation against data-scraping worker surveillance.

References:

OpenAI: Learning to reason with LLMs

Fresh AI Hell:

MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index'

CFPB Takes Action to Curb Unchecked Worker Surveillance

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Technology journalist Paris Marx joins Alex and Emily for a conversation about the environmental harms of the giant data centers and other water- and energy-hungry infrastructure at the heart of LLMs and other generative tools like ChatGPT -- and why the hand-wavy assurances of CEOs that 'AI will fix global warming' are just magical thinking, ignoring a genuine climate cost and imperiling the clean energy transition in the US.

Paris Marx is a tech journalist and host of the podcast Tech Won?t Save Us. He also recently launched a 4-part series, Data Vampires, (which features Alex) about the promises and pitfalls of data centers like the ones AI boosters rely on.

References:

Eric Schmidt says AI more important than climate goals

Microsoft's sustainability report

Sam Altman's ?The Intelligence Age? promises AI will fix the climate crisis

Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 19: The Murky Climate and Environmental Impact of Large Language Models, November 6 2023

Fresh AI Hell:

Rosetta to linguists: "Embrace AI or risk extinction" of endangered languages

A talking collar that you can use to pretend to talk with your pets

Google offers synthetic podcasts through NotebookLM

An AI 'artist' claims he's losing millions of dolalrs from people stealing his work

University hiring English professor to teach...prompt engineering

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Can ?AI? do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, ?Can we automate the entire process of research itself??

Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT in the writing of research papers. But people keep trying to make ?AI Scientists? a thing. Just ask your chatbot for some research questions, or have it synthesize some human subjects to save you time on surveys.

Alex and Emily explain why so-called ?fully automated, open-ended scientific discovery? can?t live up to the grandiose promises of tech companies. Plus, an update on their forthcoming book!

References:

Sakana.AI keeps trying to make 'AI Scientist' happen

Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers

How should the advent of large language models affect the practice of science?

Relevant research ethics policies:

ACL Policy on Publication Ethics

Committee On Public Ethics (COPE)

The Vancouver Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work

Fresh AI Hell:

Should journals allow LLMs as co-authors?

Business Insider "asks ChatGPT"

Otter.ai sends transcript of private after-meeting discussion to everyone

"Could AI End Grief?"

AI generated crime scene footage

"The first college of nursing to offer an MSN in AI"

FTC cracks down on "AI" claims

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Did your summer feel like an unending barrage of terrible ideas for how to use ?AI?? You?re not alone. It's time for Emily and Alex to clear out the poison, purge some backlog, and take another journey through AI hell -- from surveillance of emotions, to continued hype in education and art.

Fresh AI Hell:

Synthetic data for Hollywood test screenings

NaNoWriMo's AI fail

AI assistant rickrolls customers

Programming LLMs with "fiduciary duty"

Canva increasing prices thank to "AI" features

Ad spending by AI companies

Clearview AI hit with largest GDPR fine yet

'AI detection' in schools harms neurodivergent kids

CS prof admits unethical ChatGPT use

College recruiter chatbot can't discuss politics

"The AI-powered nonprofits reimagining education"

Teaching AI at art schools

Professors' 'AI twins' as teaching assistants

A teacherless AI classroom

Another 'AI scientist'

LLMs still biased against African American English

AI "enhances" photo of Black people into white-appearing

Eric Schmidt: Go ahead, steal data with ChatGPT

The environmental cost of Google's "AI Overviews"

Jeff Bezos' "Grand Challenge" for AI in environment

What I found in an AI-company's e-waste

xAI accused of worsening smog with unauthorized gas turbines

Smile surveillance of workers

AI for "emotion recognition" of rail passengers

Chatbot harassment scenario reveals real victim

AI has hampered productivity

"AI" in a product description turns off consumers

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Dr. Clara Berridge joins Alex and Emily to talk about the many 'uses' for generative AI in elder care -- from "companionship," to "coaching" like medication reminders and other encouragements toward healthier (and, for insurers, cost-saving) behavior. But these technologies also come with questionable data practices and privacy violations. And as populations grow older on average globally, technology such as chatbots is often used to sidestep real solutions to providing meaningful care, while also playing on ageist and ableist tropes.

Dr. Clara Berridge is an associate professor at the University of Washington?s School of Social Work. Her research focuses explicitly on the policy and ethical implications of digital technology in elder care, and considers things like privacy and surveillance, power, and decision-making about technology use.

References:

Care.Coach's 'Avatar' chat program*

For Older People Who Are Lonely, Is the Solution a Robot Friend?

Care Providers? Perspectives on the Design of Assistive Persuasive Behaviors for Socially Assistive Robots

Socio-Digital Vulnerability

***Care.Coach's 'Fara' and 'Auger' products, also discussed in this episode, are no longer listed on their site.

Fresh AI Hell:

Apple Intelligence hidden prompts include the command "don't hallucinate"

The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age

Family poisoned after following fake mushroom book

It is a beautiful evening in the neighborhood, and you are a horrible Waymo robotaxi

Dynamic pricing + surveillance hell at the grocery store

Chinese social media's newest trend: imitating AI-generated videos

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

The Washington Post is going all in on AI -- surely this won't be a repeat of any past, disastrous newsroom pivots! 404 Media journalist Samantha Cole joins to talk journalism, LLMs, and why synthetic text is the antithesis of good reporting.

References:

The Washington Post Tells Staff It?s Pivoting to AI: "AI everywhere in our newsroom."
Response: Defector Media Promotes Devin The Dugong To Chief AI Officer, Unveils First AI-Generated Blog

The Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LLMs in the Newsroom

Also: New Washington Post CTO comes from Uber

The Washington Post debuts AI chatbot, will summarize climate articles.

Media companies are making a huge mistake with AI

When ChatGPT summarizes, it does nothing of the kind

404 Media: 404 Media Now Has a Full Text RSS Feed

404 Media: Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)

Fresh AI Hell:

"AI" Alan Turning

Google advertises Gemini for writing synthetic fan letters

Dutch Judge uses ChatGPT's answers to factual questions in ruling

Is GenAI coming to your home appliances?

AcademicGPT (Galactica redux)

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Could this meeting have been an e-mail that you didn't even have to read? Emily and Alex are tearing into the lofty ambitions of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who claims the future is a LLM-powered 'digital twin' that can attend meetings in your stead, make decisions for you, and even be tuned to different parameters with just the click of a button.

References:
The CEO of Zoom wants AI clones in meetings

All-knowing machines are a fantasy

A reminder of some things chatbots are not good for

Medical science shouldn't platform automating end-of-life care

The grimy residue of the AI bubble

On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: a work rant

Fresh AI Hell:
LA schools' ed tech chatbot misusing student data

AI "teaching assistants" at Morehouse

"Diet-monitoring AI tracks your each and every spoonful"

A teacher's perspective on dealing with students who "asked ChatGPT"

Are Swiss researchers affiliated with Israeli military industrial complex? Swiss institution asks ChatGPT

Using a chatbot to negotiate lower prices

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

We regret to report that companies are still trying to make generative AI that can 'transform' healthcare -- but without investing in the wellbeing of healthcare workers or other aspects of actual patient care. Registered nurse and nursing care advocate Michelle Mahon joins Emily and Alex to explain why generative AI falls far, far short of the work nurses do.

Michelle Mahon is the Director of Nursing Practice with National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country. Michelle has over 25 years of experience as a registered nurse in various settings. In her role with NNU, Michelle works with nurses across the United States to protect the vital role that RNs play in health care as direct caregivers and patient advocates.

References:

NVIDIA's AI Bot Outperforms Nurses: Here's What It Means

Hippocratic AI's roster of 'genAI healthcare agents'

Related: Nuance's DAX Copilot

Fresh AI Hell:

"AI-powered health coach" will urge you to drink water with lemon

50% of 2024 Q2 VC investments went to "AI"

Thanks to AI, Google no longer claiming to be carbon-neutral

Click work "jobs" soliciting photos of babies through teens

Screening of film "written by AI" canceled after backlash

Putting the AI in IPA

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

When is a research paper not a research paper? When a big tech company uses a preprint server as a means to dodge peer review -- in this case, of their wild speculations on the 'dangerous capabilities' of large language models. Ali Alkhatib joins Emily to explain why a recent Google DeepMind document about the hunt for evidence that LLMs might intentionally deceive us was bad science, and yet is still influencing the public conversation about AI.

Ali Alkhatib is a computer scientist and former director of the University of San Francisco?s Center for Applied Data Ethics. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, and why our technological problems are really social ? and why we should apply social science lenses to data work, algorithmic justice, and even the errors and reality distortions inherent in AI models.

References:

Google DeepMind paper-like object: Evaluating Frontier Models for Dangerous Capabilities

Fresh AI Hell:

Hacker tool extracts all the data collected by Windows' 'Recall' AI

In NYC, ShotSpotter calls are 87 percent false alarms

"AI" system to make callers sound less angry to call center workers

Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5 evaluated for "graduate level reasoning"

OpenAI's Mira Murati says "AI" will have 'PhD-level' intelligence

OpenAI's Mira Murati also says AI will take some creative jobs, maybe they shouldn't have been there to start out with

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

You've already heard about the rock-prescribing, glue pizza-suggesting hazards of Google's AI overviews. But the problems with the internet's most-used search engine go way back. UCLA scholar and "Algorithms of Oppression" author Safiya Noble joins Alex and Emily in a conversation about how Google has long been breaking our information ecosystem in the name of shareholders and ad sales.

References:

Blog post, May 14: Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you
Blog post, May 30: AI Overviews: About last week

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Noble

Fresh AI Hell:

AI Catholic priest demoted after saying it's OK to baptize babies with Gatorade

National Archives bans use of ChatGPT

ChatGPT better than humans at "Moral Turing Test"

Taco Bell as an "AI first" company

AGI by 2027, in one hilarious graph

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

The politicians are at it again: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's series of industry-centric forums last year have birthed a "roadmap" for future legislation. Emily and Alex take a deep dive on this report, and conclude that the time spent writing it could have instead been spent...making useful laws.

References:

Driving US Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United States

Tech Policy Press: US Senate AI Insight Forum Tracker

Put the Public in the Driver's Seat: Shadow Report to the US Senate AI Policy Roadmap

Emily's opening remarks on ?AI in the Workplace: New Crisis or Longstanding Challenge? virtual roundtable

Fresh AI Hell:

Homophobia in Spotify's chatbot

StackOverflow in bed with OpenAI, pushing back against resistance

OpenAI making copyright claim against ChatGPT subreddit

Introducing synthetic text for police reports

ChatGPT-like "AI" assistant ... as a car feature?

Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Will the LLMs somehow become so advanced that they learn to lie to us in order to achieve their own ends? It's the stuff of science fiction, and in science fiction these claims should remain. Emily and guest host Margaret Mitchell, machine learning researcher and chief ethics scientist at HuggingFace, break down why 'AI deception' is firmly a feature of human hype.

Reference:

Patterns: "AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions"

Fresh AI Hell:

Adobe's 'ethical' image generator is still pulling from copyrighted material

Apple advertising hell: vivid depiction of tech crushing creativity, as if it were good

"AI is more creative than 99% of people"

AI generated employee handbooks causing chaos

Bumble CEO: Let AI 'concierge' do your dating for you.

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

AI Hell froze over this winter and now a flood of meltwater threatens to drown Alex and Emily. Armed with raincoats and a hastily-written sea shanty*, they tour the realms, from spills of synthetic information, to the special corner reserved for ShotSpotter.

**Lyrics & video on Peertube.

*Surveillance:*

*Synthetic information spills:*

*Toxic wish fulfillment:*

*ShotSpotter:*

*Selling your data:*

*AI is always people:*

*TESCREAL corporate capture:*

*Accountability:*

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm the humans who are vital to scientific research.

Dr. Molly Crockett is an associate professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Dr. Lisa Messeri is an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, and author of the new book, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles.

References:

AI For Scientific Discovery - A Workshop
Nature: The Nobel Turing Challenge
Nobel Turing Challenge Website
Eric Schmidt: AI Will Transform Science
Molly Crockett & Lisa Messeri in Nature: Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research
404 Media: Is Google's AI actually discovering 'millions of new materials?'

Fresh Hell:

Yann LeCun realizes generative AI sucks, suggests shift to objective-driven AI
In contrast:
https://x.com/ylecun/status/1592619400024428544
https://x.com/ylecun/status/1594348928853483520
https://x.com/ylecun/status/1617910073870934019

CBS News: Upselling ?AI? mammograms
Ars Technica: Rhyming AI clock sometimes lies about the time
Ars Technica:

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Dr. Timnit Gebru guest-hosts with Alex in a deep dive into Marc Andreessen's 2023 manifesto, which argues, loftily, in favor of maximizing the use of 'AI' in all possible spheres of life.

Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team, in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace. Timnit also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian highschool students, free of charge.

References:
Marc Andreessen: "The Techno-Optimism Manifesto"
First Monday: The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence (Timnit Gebru & Émile Torres)
Business Insider: Explaining 'Pronatalism' in Silicon Valley

Fresh AI Hell:
CBS New York: NYC subway testing out weapons detection technology, Mayor Adams says.
The Markup: NYC's AI chatbot tells businesses to break the law

The Guardian: DrugGPT: New AI tool could help doctors prescribe medicine in England
The Guardian: Wearable AI: Will it put our smartphones out of fashion?
TheCurricula.com

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

Find our book, The AI Con, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Award-winning AI journalist Karen Hao joins Alex and Emily to talk about why LLMs can't possibly replace the work of reporters -- and why the hype is damaging to already-struggling and necessary publications.

References:

Adweek: Google Is Paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI Platform

The Quint: AI Invents Quote From Real Person in Article by Bihar News Site: A Wake-Up Call?

Fresh AI Hell:

Alliance for the Future

VentureBeat: Google researchers unveil ?VLOGGER?, an AI that can bring still photos to life

Business Insider: A car dealership added an AI chatbot to its site. Then all hell broke loose.

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

Find our book, The AI Con, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Alex and Emily put on their social scientist hats and take on the churn of research papers suggesting that LLMs could be used to replace human labor in social science research -- or even human subjects. Why these writings are essentially calls to fabricate data.

References:

PNAS: ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasks

Political Analysis: Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples

Behavioral Research Methods: Can large language models help augment English psycholinguistic datasets?

Information Systems Journal: Editorial: The ethics of using generative AI for qualitative data analysis

Fresh AI Hell:

Advertising vs. reality, synthetic Willy Wonka edition

A news outlet used an LLM to generate a story...and it falsely quoted Emily

Trump supporters target Black voters with faked AI images

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

Find our book, The AI Con, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

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Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Science fiction authors and all-around tech thinkers Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders join this week to talk about Isaac Asimov's oft-cited and equally often misunderstood laws of robotics, as debuted in his short story collection, 'I, Robot.' Meanwhile, both global and US military institutions are declaring interest in 'ethical' frameworks for autonomous weaponry.

Plus, in AI Hell, a ballsy scientific diagram heard 'round the world -- and a proposal for the end of books as we know it, from someone who clearly hates reading.

Charlie Jane Anders is a science fiction author. Her recent and forthcoming books include Promises Stronger Than Darkness in the ?Unstoppable? trilogy, the graphic novel New Mutants: Lethal Legion, and the forthcoming adult novel Prodigal Mother.

Annalee Newitz is a science journalist who also writes science fiction. Their most recent novel is The Terraformers, and in June you can look forward to their nonfiction book, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.

They both co-host the podcast, 'Our Opinions Are Correct', which explores how science fiction is relevant to real life and our present society.

Also, some fun news: Emily and Alex are writing a book! Look forward (in spring 2025) to The AI Con, a narrative takedown of the AI bubble and its megaphone-wielding boosters that exposes how tech?s greedy prophets aim to reap windfall profits from the promise of replacing workers with machines.

Watch the video of this episode on PeerTube.

References:

International declaration on "Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy" provides "a normative framework addressing the use of these capabilities in the military domain."

DARPA's 'ASIMOV' program to "objectively and quantitatively measure the ethical difficulty of future autonomy use-cases...within the context of military operational values."
Short version
Long version (pdf download)

Fresh AI Hell:

"I think we will stop publishing books, but instead publish ?thunks?, which are nuggets of thought that can interact with the ?reader? in a dynamic and multimedia way."

AI generated illustrations in a scientific paper -- rat balls edition.

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

Find our book, The AI Con, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Just Tech Fellow Dr. Chris Gilliard aka "Hypervisible" joins Emily and Alex to talk about the wave of universities adopting AI-driven educational technologies, and the lack of protections they offer students in terms of data privacy or even emotional safety.

References:

Inside Higher Ed: Arizona State Joins ChatGPT in First Higher Ed Partnership

ASU press release version: New Collaboration with OpenAI Charts theFuture of AI in Higher Education

MLive: Your Classmate Could Be an AI Student at this Michigan University

Chris Gilliard: How Ed Tech Is Exploiting Students

Fresh AI Hell:

Various: ?AI learns just like a kid?
Infants' gaze teaches AI the nuances of language acquisition
Similar from NeuroscienceNews

Politico: Psychologist apparently happy with fake version of himself

WSJ: Employers Are Offering a New Worker Benefit: Wellness Chatbots

NPR: Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy expert

Palette cleanser: Goodbye to NYC's useless robocop.

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

Find our book, The AI Con, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

Alex

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.