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

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

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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

• Archive version

(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"

Is AI 'reasoning' or 'pretending'? It's a false ch

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

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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

Schools SWATing kids based on AI outputs

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

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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

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

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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 forthcoming book! Pre-order THE AI CON: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

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

Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.

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Emily

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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

A look at a pilot program in Georgia that uses 'jailbots' to track inmates

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

Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.

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Emily

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• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

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

• Background: Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
• Background: Cory Booker's track record on 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-Tacoma International Airpot

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

Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.

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Emily

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Alex

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• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.