The AI Con

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

by ,

Hardcover, 240 pages

English language

Published by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:
978-1-84792-861-0
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(4 reviews)

A smart, incisive take-down of the bogus claims being made about so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, exposing the real harm these technologies do to our jobs, health, society and environment, who stands to gain from them, and how to fight back.

Is AI going to take over the world? Have scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to replace all our jobs, even creative ones, like doctors, teachers and care-workers? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

The answers to these questions, as the expert authors of The AI Con make clear, are 'no', 'they wish', 'LOL', and 'definitely not'. In fact, these fears are all symptoms of the hype being used by tech corporations to justify data theft, motivate surveillance capitalism, and devalue human creativity so they can replace meaningful work with jobs that …

3 editions

reviewed The AI Con by Emily M. Bender

High Expectations - Met

This book will now be my go-to recommendation for anyone who wants to understand the AI industry. With their characteristic wit and meticulous analysis Bender and Hanna absolutely demolish the hype around current AI technologies, detailing the technological underpinnings of the field, how framing is used to warp public perception, and the incentives that the hype serves. It's also incredibly well referenced - citations pepper the text reassuringly whenever a statement is made (unlike most books on AI). My only very minor gripe is with the policy recommendations towards the end - I would've liked antitrust to make a more prominent appearance, and I'm skeptical of some of the other suggestions put forward - but this is just a small bump in what is otherwise a masterful work. Highly recommend

reviewed The AI Con by Emily M. Bender

The AI Con - A Review

An excellent overview of the harms and pitfalls of modern AI systems, in particular generative AI. Because I'm terminally online, I was already fairly familiar with most of the arguments, but what this book does excellently is collate them all into one place, as well as making them accessible for people new to the topic. Oh, and it's chock full of references, which will be incredibly useful for my own research

reviewed The AI Con by Emily M. Bender

We don't have to accept this

AI is being increasingly pushed as inevitable everywhere, but this book provides hope and recommendations for how to see through that hype. I had a slightly different perspective than most of the audience of this book, as a developer who has worked for years in language technology, but for the most part, the technical details matched my experience. I definitely recommend this book for anyone wanting to push back on the attempts by businesses and government agencies to automate away our jobs, knowledge, and vital services, which has become even more important in the last few months.

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Subjects

  • Artificial Intelligence

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