The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

“The AI project has always been more fantasy than reality,” according to this scathing takedown. Bender (Linguistic Fundamentals for Natural Language Processing), a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, and Hanna, research director at the Distributed AI Research Institute, argue that AI is often less capable than its promoters let on, pointing out that “driverless” robotaxis, for example, usually require the assistance of remote drivers. That hasn’t stopped corporations from using AI to undermine human workers, the authors contend, discussing how the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike in 2023 to protest film studios’ plans to pay screenwriters a lower rate for “rewriting” AI scripts even when the changes were so extensive that the scripts were effectively new. The authors are as skeptical of “AI doomers” as they are of “AI boosters,” positing that while large language models are incapable of harboring any intent to wage war on humanity, the real threat lies in how they’re cheapening the quality of human labor, normalizing data theft, and subjecting individuals to ever more sophisticated surveillance. Though the narrative sometimes risks devolving into an undigested series of anecdotes about AI’s ills, the authors nonetheless drive home the troubling ways in which the technology is transforming society. AI skeptics will find plenty of fodder for their critiques. Agent: Ian Bonaparte, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (May)