“The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype And Create The Future We Want”

The Book in Common for the current academic year at Chico State and Butte College lands in the middle of contentious claims from employees (and ex-employees) of OpenAI and Anthropic, Google Gemini and xAI, that autonomous AI agents will either cure cancer or destroy humanity.

But the authors of “The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype And Create The Future We Want” ($32 in hardcover from HarperCollins; also for Amazon Kindle), linguist Emily Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna, call foul on both claims. With careful analysis and a conversational (and sometimes sardonic) tone, the authors inveigh against both the Boosters and Doomers. 

They are “two sides of the same coin … the belief that the development of AI is inevitable and that that resulting technology will be both autonomous and powerful…. One shows a utopian world of abundance, the other a dystopian hellscape.” And, pointedly, “Neither depicts the real harms of actually existing automation, at best dismissing them as less important than the imaginary existential threats.”

Though the authors are writing at the end of 2024, their critique of AI (“a marketing term”) remains surprisingly relevant despite the debut of increasingly powerful frontier systems. (The authors refuse to anthropomorphize chatbots, calling them instead “text synthesis machines.”)

Though there is certainly good automation, the authors say, the examples of companies misusing AI (like insurance companies determining whose claims get rejected) are legion (they cite hundreds of examples). The focus on “AI safety” deals with “fake scenarios” whereas those “working on issues of concrete harms of AI systems” (dealing with “racial and economic equity, freedom of movement across borders, personal safety from state violence” and more) are interested in the here and now.

AI is high on its own supply. So fight the AI hype which “helps others get rich by giving them cover to collect (e.g., steal) and then launder massive amounts of data.” Ask questions about what is being automated, resist using the “tools” at work, demand accountability, create and enforce current legislation protecting civil rights, engage in collective action.

No AI was used in the writing of this column. 

“Tales From Tehama, Vol. 1”

On February 3, 2024, the Red Bluff Daily News featured the first of a weekly 600-word column celebrating Tehama County’s history. Its author, Josie Reifschneider-Smith, longtime board member of the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society, has now collected the first fifty-two columns in “Tales From Tehama, Vol. 1” ($20 in paperback from Tehama County Genealogical And Historical Society, an imprint of Heidelberg Graphics).

The columns are historically accurate, but far from stodgy. Reifschneider-Smith asks readers to “get ready for a rollicking trip into Tehama County’s past,” and so it is. “Is that an ostrich swimming across the Sacramento River, twice? … While paying respect to a man’s lonely grave in the Paskenta Cemetery, are those war whoops and gunfire you hear riding in the wind?” All the answers are found within.

“Gerber’s Saxophone Field Day” in 1927 had me laughing out loud. A newspaper in Illinois noted that “They are threatening to make it a national event; isn’t there some law to compel them to quarantine it and keep it?” 

More than 500 saxophone players showed up and, Reifschneider-Smith writes, “there was even a saxophone throwing contest where ‘grown men will pitch a saxophone with the bell filled with lead. If the horn hits a “gobbler” (saxophone player) and kills him, the thrower will be given a free ticket to the inquest’ (Red Bluff Daily News, August 18, 1927).”

“On May 20, 1914, the same day Ranger Abbey from Mineral watched in disbelief as Lassen Peak awoke with a blast of ash and steam, 20-some miles to the northwest, an 18-year-old sawmill worker stared in wonder from the porch of the crew’s bunkhouse as Lassen erupted. The young man’s name was Floyd Tipple. Two weeks later, he would find himself scrambling for his life during an eruption while visiting the crater.” Historical photographs complement the text. 

Personalities obscured by time are brought to life, like J. Granville Doll who in 1853 pretty much owned Red Bluff. 1950 brought “the naked lady of Vina.” And in 1954, Annie Wilkins passed through Red Bluff, the “last of the saddle tramps.”

“Tales From Tehama” is a wonderful guide, a history book with sax appeal.

“Babylon Must Fall: Children Of Heremone Trilogy, Book 3”

The Botswana Free Press newspaper lards unbridled praise on the country’s Interior Minister, Sir Bitrus Bitrus Ghirmai, who provides free electricity for its citizens and, through the Botswana Academy for Science and Technology (BAST), is engaged in animal DNA manipulation so all animals might “live in peace and harmony with each other.” 

And yet a letter writer claims Lord Ghirmai’s manor “concealed a sex trafficking operation under the pretense of helping orphaned children.” Enter the New Freedom Warriors, led by a young Botswanan woman named Esi Ada Ogolla, guided by the true Light of the Almighty One, who together with a small group of believers set out to destroy Ghirmai’s evil.

The story plays out over three novels by longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living with his wife, Karen, in Brentwood. “The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane” tells of Elijah’s coming to the Light; “The New Freedom Warriors” details Esi’s imprisonment. 

Now, “Babylon Must Fall: Children Of Heremone Trilogy, Book 3” ($12.99 in paperback from Resurgam Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by David Henry Dirks with Zeek Payen, brings a miraculous release to Esi and probes the source of Ghirmai’s malevolence, requiring breaking into the secret basement of Ghirmai’s manor. 

Which turns out to be the synagogue of an ancient Jewish sect, and the place where they “defeated King Eshun, Watcher Heremone’s avatar” by singing a hymn called “Arise O Lord” (Dirks and Payen provide the words and music). The evil Heremone was “pushed back” for two thousand years—until now.

Lord Ghirmai established a kind of portal, as Esi describes it, “a supernatural passageway between dimensions.” The Warriors’ weapons against Ghirmai are a shofar, lyre and drum; “we are the instruments of the Almighty,” one of the Warriors says, “whom we trust will use us to release the supernatural against Ghirmai and Heremone.” Ghirmai’s “Babylon” must fall.

“The stories may be fiction,” Esi’s father points out in an insight that goes beyond the novel. “The principles are real.”

Dirks brings matters to a thrilling conclusion, though that isn’t the end. Is there a yet more sinister force behind Heremone? That, he writes, leads to the next trilogy.

“Backyard Circus: The Life And Times Of Grace Jr. And Arvel Victor Allread”

“I know that everyone has a unique childhood experience,” writes Terry Tim Allread in a unique remembrance of his growing up years, “but it wasn’t long before we figured out that not everyone had an elephant, a pony, twenty monkeys, and a Malaysian sun bear in the backyard.”

It was a circus, all right—a real one. Allread, the sixth of seven kids, was  born (along with twin Perry) in 1952 “on his grandfather’s Red Bluff, California, sheep ranch amidst his parents’ Great Pan-American Zoological Exhibit’s wild animal menagerie….”

The story is told in “Backyard Circus: The Life And Times Of Grace Jr. And Arvel Victor Allread” ($32.99 in paperback from Memoir Books), replete with historical photographs. 

Grace and Arvel took their children to any passing circus within 200 miles and toured with a circus of their own. In 1950, their Robinson Bros. Circus wagon debuted in Greenville “with Susie, their new Indian elephant,” or, as the local newspaper put it, “Susie, a ponderous performing pachyderm of prestigious repute, accompanied by Tiny, the prancing Pinto Pony….”

In 1953 “the Clyde Beatty Circus returned to play Chico on the grassy Hann Field lot at 5th Street and Oak. Arvel got to sit in with the band while Grace and the kids played in the backyard.” Musician Arvel became a music teacher, directing “high school programs at Hamilton City, Orland, and Willows, and taught at Princeton in Colusa County.”

In the mid-50s the family settled in Chico at 1430 Bidwell Avenue, a venue “where they could relocate their circus wagons, the rest of the Great American Zoological Exhibit’s equipment, and animals. They could put up the Main Tent” and even install a “makeshift ring.”

As a kid, Arvel wanted to join the circus. The book is a fitting tribute to that dream.

The public is invited to the following book signings:

• Tehama County Museum, 275 C Street in Tehama, on Saturday, September 12 from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM.
• Chico Chai House, 1441 Park Avenue, Sunday, September 27 from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM.
• Chico History Museum, 141 Salem Street, Saturday, November 14 from 10:00 AM till Noon.